Our FUN, yet not so great ADVENTURE!!

Well, a few months ago Tyler read a story online about someone who decided to launch a weather balloon with a camera and GPS tracker attached. His hope that he would get pictures of the ground like you would get from an airplane. Instead he got pictures like this:

The balloon went to about 90,000ft before it burst! We decided we wanted to try! So we got all the supplies: camera, boost mobile phone with GPS tracking system, hand warmers, weather balloon, rope, bags to create drag when falling, helium tank, duct tape, a big 2 GB SD card and tin foil. We used an online program to determine where we should launch the balloon so it would land in a reasonably good location that it would be easy to spot and retrieve.



Finally, Saturday arrived and the weather looked pretty good. We raced out to our launching location. Got everything set up, and launched the balloon.





My Dad (Stan) and brother (Shawn) tracked our balloon until it got to 20,000 ft when we...lost signal and.... never...got...it...back!!! :( We hoped it would eventually pick back up, but nothing. We've gone out looking for our balloon by calculating where it should have popped and then where it should have landed, but to no avail. Sadly, we lost our experiment, but we are all determined to try again. Next time we will use an actual GPS tracking system instead of Boost mobile. For now we just hope someone will call us if they find it. :)


While looking for our balloon we split up into two cars. Tyler and I drove all around these fields out in the middle of no where, when we suddenly approached this beautiful canyon!!!! It's literally just out in the middle of miles and miles of farm land! No balloon, but awesome discoveries!


Tyler was excited that he got to try out our four-wheel drive for the first time in our new "manly" Exterra. The tires on this this are HUGE!!! We love our new car!! :D And yes, that is the "road" we drove on.



Well, we will most definitely try this again now that we know a few things to do differently. ha, oh yes, and after we sent our balloon off we all took a turn sucking helium that was left over in the tank. SO FUNNY!! I have videos on facebook, so check them out! :D