Summer Family Vacation: Part I: 4th of July in Glens Falls, NY

We are back from our vacation and I have so much to catch up on. We made our way to Lake George area on the Fourth of July with little plans of what the day would bring. The Fourth of July has never held any traditions for our family, and each year we have been at several different locations for picnic, fire works and all those things American's do on the Birth of Our Nation, but nothing that has been a yearly tradition. I was really not expecting much, although Mark had made mention of spending the evening in the village (Lake George) and seeing the fireworks. I was not as excited, because I knew it would be a MAD house of people jammed in a relatively small area along the shore. I didn't let the thought get me down, and we called my mother in law to meet us for dinner at The Harvest Restaurant.

This is one of our favorite dining places, the food is YUMMY. Rachel Ray has even made her mark on the place (she is from the area) and they have a pizza named after her. We usually get the pizza here as well, but we really went big and got tons of food.

We pretty much just ate off each others orders, Pizza, turkey Club, chicken fingers, onion rings, and potato skins. It was a "pig" out evening, and boy did we!

If you are ever in Queensbury, NY look up The Harvest Restaurant, I promise you will not be disappointed.
After dinner we settled in at Bube's house and discussed the plans for the fourth of July evening.  We knew we wanted to do fireworks, but where? I was so grateful when Mark said Crandall Park! And so we were off!

This was quite the celebration. There was the Glens Falls Symphony playing, a tribute to the Armed Service, a play ground,  food, ice cream and of course Fireworks.

Our view of the symphony from our comfy lawn chairs. The music was beautiful, but it sure was hot!

The crowd! There were tons of people! But we never felt overcrowded! I loved that!

It was so hot we decided to get ICE CREAM! I had to laugh at the name of  the ice cream truck, Mr. Ding-a-Ling! This poor women in the cart was so overwhelmed and so hot! I felt bad for her! I reminded of how much money she was making that evening!

Chillin after the ice cream bar. We all had to eat fast, it melted in moments. Ben decided on Fried Dough instead of ice cream.

After some music and munchies, it was time to move ourselves over to the area where the fireworks were about to be! We got there much earlier then most, and were able to score FRONT ROW SEATS! We were so close the only thing in front of us was the fireman tape to keep people out!

We were able to catch the fire truck drive by as we were waiting. Good thing they are being safe, Lets hope there is no reason to need them.

This is what the sky looked like above us. I wasn't sure if we would miss any rain.

Then the FIREWORKS BEGAN!!!!! They were amazing and RIGHT on top of us.

We were so close, I'm not even sure if you can tell they are fireworks.

They just kept on coming, and there were so many "oh" and "ahh" from us and the crowd behind us.

This picture looks like a UFO.

There were so many times that it looked like the trailing flames were going to land on top of our heads, and the "bangs" were go loud it roared us in our seats. We were even getting backdraft from the smoke.

They were still amazing. The kids and I agreed although they were not the most spectacular fireworks we had ever seen, they were certainly the most amazing viewing point we had ever encountered. The grand finale was a series of bangs and lights one after the other after the other, and it felt like it was gonna keep on going!

Pretty stinken cool! We all cheered and whipped it up at the end. Perhaps the best show ever in my hole 43 years of fireworks! We continued to talk about how much we liked the show as we exited to the back lot, (where hubby had parked away from the hundreds) Ben lead the way on the wooded path with his iphone! It was the best start of any vacation! We were all pumped feeling that the fireworks show was a good omen for the rest of the week! back to Bube's for some rest. Tomorrow we hit the village of Lake George and some go cart racing!