Looking Up

It's the first day of summer, and I'm going to talk about the sky. The brilliant sky was one of the things that really impressed us when we first visited this area. I know I've previously mentioned that the typical color is something we call "Keweenaw Blue." Remember when you stretched out on the grass when you were a kid - gazing up at the clouds during the day or the stars at night? Trying to see pictures in the sky? I spent a lot of time doing that on the farm when I was a kid. Well, I still enjoy gazing at the sky. You've seen a lot of sunset sky shots on this blog. Need more proof? I was looking through the photos I took on our last trip to and from Saginaw at the beginning of May. One thing that struck me was how many photos I took of the sky. Most of our trip in both directions was spent under a cloudy, gray sky, but I was sky-gazing anyway.

We had a long trip ahead of us, and we got an early start. We still had quite a bit of snow on the ground when we left.

It was a little hazy as we were driving down into Hancock and Houghton.

Ice was still visible on Lake Superior as we traveled along the shore across the U.P., and the clouds in the sky started to have more definition.

We were driving in rain by the time we made it to the Mackinac Bridge.

The weather seriously hindered my sky-gazing and bridge-gazing experience.

 

Here's what I could see out the side window as we crossed the bridge. 

I couldn't see the sky; I couldn't even see the water! Thankfully, the rain stopped as we continued traveling south, and we saw some very interesting clouds.

 

We even saw a rainbow.

 

 

Four days later, we were headed home and started out another trip under cloudy skies.

 

The Mackinac Bridge was soon in view.

 

 

I could see the sky and the water as we crossed this time.

More interesting clouds as we drove through the U.P.

 

Things had been melting, but we saw some ice on Lake Superior.

We had to make a quick stop at Menards in Marquette that evening. We needed to pick up something for our contractor, and I wanted to get some exterior lights they had on sale. 

It was dark and raining by the time we got to Houghton.

This is Hwy. 41 going through Hancock.

As we headed into the pitch black countryside between Hancock and Calumet, we experienced some incredible lightning.

I just happened to time that last photo perfectly to catch the way the lightning lit up the sky. It was after Midnight by the time we made it home, and it was raining buckets and lightning something awful. We sat in the car for 20 minutes until we got a break to run into the house. By the time we turned up the heat and checked to make sure the house was still secure, the rain had stopped. Steve was able to get the car unloaded without getting soaked. That was a good ending for our final trip to Saginaw for quite a while.

Stay tuned. I'll have some beautiful Keweenaw Blue sky shots again in future posts!

All is well in the Keweenaw.