From airships to hot air balloons, adventure outfitters offer some extraordinary ways to rise above it all.
Ever since the Wright Brothers first took to the skies at Kittyhawk in North Carolina, the US has been obsessed with claiming the heavens as their own. Take the Goodyear Blimp for example: for more than a century it has acted as a giant logo and camera platform for filming sporting events. Historically, this ultimate box seat has been the rare privilege of a select few. But, in 2009, a new company called Airship Adventures welcomed ordinary passengers to ride in the blimp’s much larger cousin, the airship.
Measuring 246ft in length and powered by three engines, the airship can reach freeway speeds but spends much of the time gracefully cruising at a more gentle pace above San Francisco at just 1,300ft. Some guests describe it as “flying on your own personal cloud”.
Even today’s small plane operators offer far more than just floating gently over bucolic scenery. To spice things up, one outfitter called Fighter Combat Training has added real ex-military pilots, fuselage-mounted smoke machines, laser lights, cameras, guns and high performance acrobatic aircraft to recreate a realistic air-to-air combat mission. The bullets may be fake but the buzz is most definitely real.
In Alaska, you can take to the skies while still hanging out with man’s best friend. Skytrekking Alaska follows the Iditarod, the largest dogsled race on earth, for the full 1,161 miles of the course. Small planes equipped with skis touch down in remote villages before taking to the skies again to chart the teams’ progress.
The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, held in the first week of October, is the largest festival of its kind in the world. There is something eternally graceful and awe-inspiring about a group taking to the skies en masse. At dawn on “mass ascension” days, as many as 600 balloons take off in a simultaneous display that covers the horizon with a rainbow of gently rising colour.
If you are looking for a lofty feeling of being completely unencumbered by anything at all, the weightlessness of space cannot be beaten. Flight passengers aboard one of Zero-G’s specially modified 747s, climb to 34,000 feet, then – when the plane dives – experience 30 seconds of weightlessness. Neil Armstrong would certainly approve.
The article ‘America’s airborne adventures’ was published in partnership with Lonely Planet.
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