Headed up to the Adirondack Balloon Fest in Glens Falls, NY with the wife early Saturday morning. By early, I mean we left the house at 5am with expectations of getting there between 6 -6:30 (based on how long it took me last year with traffic). We made great time on the Northway, and arrived at the exit just before 6. Then, we hit the traffic. It took us over an hour to move less than half a mile.
It really was an unbearable situation. We did not see any cops directing the traffic until we got to the entrance to the airport. They really needed to get some help out there in the morning to manage the traffic. Folks were inventing their own lanes, cutting in front of others... it was mayhem. Our only thoughts as to why it was so much worse than when I came up the year before, was that Sunday it was expected to rain. So Saturday was really going to be the only shot.
Finally, we scrapped the official directions and improvised a shortcut using side roads, that we weren't sure were going to lead us where we needed to be (no map or GPS!). Anyway, after being able to cut ahead of much of the traffic that was in front of us, the sun was now up and every once in awhile we could see a glimpse, through the trees, of some of the balloons taking to the air as we approached the Glens Falls Airport. Some of them could be seen risinig out of the golden mist. It would have made a great picture, if I wasn't still stranded in the car. As we got to the airport we could see that folks were already leaving. Not a good sign!
We finally parked our car at 7:30 and there were many balloons still on the ground, or to be more specific, grounded. The mist had turned into a very heavy fog and the balloonists didn't have enough sight distance to launch. It was cold (in the '30s) and you couldn't see much through the fog, so we decided to have breakfast in the hangar and wait for the fog to lift. Well after breakfast, the fog was still there, but the balloons weren't. They deflated and packed it in, presumably to have better luck with a launch in the evening.
We left and headed up north to check out some of the scenery. While there were some Fall colors, we were still at least a week away from peak. Still, we had a nice day taking the gondola to the top of Gore Mountain, driving around and exploring. I managed to take a few pix. We made a short stop in Saratoga to drop off a print to be matted and then headed home, too tired to head back up to Glens Falls and deal with the traffic again for the evening's activities which were still a few hours away.
We got back to the house about 11 hours after we left it, ready for a nap. Hopefully we won't have as much bad luck at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta in New Mexico, next week. Looks like we just may have to get up earlier!
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