Back in July 2018 we went to the Hudson Valley Hot-Air Balloon Festival at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck, NY.

The festival’s website describes it as follows:

The Hudson Valley Hot-Air Balloon Festival is in its 28th year of hosting balloonists and vendors from all over the country. The festival’s history has evolved into a Hudson Valley tradition and has grown into a full weekend of activities, drawing tens thousands of visitors from all over the world. Some of the festival favorites are the evening Majestic Hot-Air Balloon Illumination Moon Glow, tether rides, and rides in the hot-air balloons throughout the weekend! In addition to 100 balloon launches scheduled annually, we offer helicopter rides, hayrides, games, live music, adult and children’s activities and so much more

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It was a nice day, if a little windy, which turned out to be a bit of a problem since the balloon’s can’t launch if the wind is too high. Also we failed to understand that the balloon’s launched only twice during the day: very early (which we were too late for) and early evening, which meant that we had to wait around for about 5-6 hours (not a very attractive proposition since there wasn’t enough going on to keep us interested for time we would have to wait).

For a while it looked as if the balloon’s in the picture above would be the only ones that we would see. It turned out that this wasn’t the case but more on that below.

Taken with a Sony A77M2 and Tamron A18 AF 18-250mm f3.5-6.3.

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