Go Up and Away!
You’ve never seen anything as magical as a field full of hot air balloons taking to the skies. Unfortunately, there were a few delays at this year’s Big Country Balloon Festival in Abilene. The balloon portion of the event was rained out on Friday and Saturday morning, but the rain didn’t slow down the races—more than 200 runners did the 10k, and 26 kids took part in the 1k. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the balloons finally took to the skies on Saturday afternoon.
The rain couldn’t stop the four Boy Scout troops and 11 packs that camped out in Rosebud Park for the 100th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts as part of the festival.
As a Gold Sponsor of the event, First Choice Power partnered with the Boy Scouts of America and Food Bank of West Central Texas to encourage festival attendees to donate cans as part of our Food First™ program. The scouts also brought food, and we awarded gift cards to the Boy Scout troop that donated the most cans. Our hearts swelled like those high-flying balloons when the winning troops voted unanimously to donate their gift card to the food bank, thus doing their good turn for the day.
“Our Scouts are committed to their motto of ‘doing a good turn daily,’” said Greg Simmons of the Texas Trails Council. “Since Texas ranks as the third state in most need when it comes to hunger, we are making this cause a priority this month.”
Between the canned food donations and the gift cards, the food bank will receive more than 1,800 lbs of food.
“We want to thank First Choice Power for being a sponsor and for bringing us all together,” said Robin Hicks, organizer of the Big Country Balloon Festival. Check out a nice video of Robin and Jody Houston, executive director of the Food Bank of West Central Texas.