The Adirondack Balloon Festival comes to my backyard!

Every September the city of Glens Falls, NY hosts the Adirondack Balloon Festival. This year, I got to see the festival from a unique vantage point - my own backyard.

This afternoon, my wife @alladesria and I got to see dozens of hot air balloons from the comfort of our back patio in what can only be described as a shotgun blast of hot air balloons skittering across the sky. Crandall Park, the launch point for today's balloons, is literally a block and a half from our new house, and the balloons were so close that we could hear the burners as the balloonists fired them.

The pictures I took really don't do the balloons justice. I was stuck using the camera on my Samsung Galaxy J3 6, and while it's got a 4X zoom it's really not the best. Still, I managed to get quite a few nice shots while barely moving a muscle - though I did wander into the middle of the road for a couple of shots. Lucky for me our street is relatively quiet!

I will say that the backdrop of early autumn in the Adirondacks made for some nice images. The edges of many of the trees are beginning to turn, leading to a sky that looks like it's about to catch fire.

Combined with a deep blue sky almost devoid of clouds, it made for some excellent balloon watching!

Say what you want about my craptastic camera, I kind of like a few of these shots. The pixelation from the digital zoom gives some of them a painterly look. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself.

I've always loved hot-air balloons, and it was an absolute treat to get to see them so close. They floated by behind the trees like massive beach balls, climbing rapidly and dwindling off into the distance. We're lucky the wind was blowing towards us or we would have never seen them at all!

Finally, the wind did begin to shift, and the balloons began drifting off in a different direction. Night began to fall, and the best we could do was to look out across the horizon whenever we heard the burners begin to blow. The sky lit up as pillars of flame blossomed in the growing dark.

The balloon festival is going on all weekend, but this is the only day we'll be able to enjoy it. My brother's wedding reception is this weekend, so we're leaving for the wilds of Long Island. I feel incredibly grateful that we still got a taste of the festival, and all without having to get jostled by the crowds down at the park!

Did you like these images? You should check out the ones taken by Bill Toscano, a good friend of mine that works for the Glens Falls Post-Star newspaper. He's got an actual camera, and he was covering the event for the paper today - you can even see many of the same balloons I snapped my own pictures of, but up close and personal!