I was pretty excited yesterday afternoon when I checked the aurora forecast and it said the current aurora activity was at STORM level! The promising numbers were carrying into the evening but unfortunately cloud cover was moving in as well. I decided to take a drive inland to see if the cloud cover was thinner away from Lake Superior. Indeed, I found some nice, reasonably clear skies. The stars were beautiful and the night was so calm that they were reflecting in the water with hardly any distortion at all. The aurora activity level had calmed down quite a bit by the time I found some clear sky, but it was still a beautiful glow on the northern horizon.
My first lightning bolt capture from the round of storms that went through on the night of September 4th. As I mentioned in the last lightning post, this was really a fun time photographing the storms because for much of the light show there wasn't any rain falling. Usually I feel extremely lucky if I can get even a few shots in before it starts pouring rain. Not on this night! I was able to photograph about 90% of the duration of the lightning before it started raining. It was great fun :-)
Sleeping Giant Provincial Park - Ontario, Canada
No trip to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park would be complete without a short hike to the Sea Lion, a rock arch on the Lake Superior shoreline. The Sea Lion is one of the most famous features of the park. The arch was the last stop on our 22 kilometer round-trip bike/hike to the Top of the Giant, but if all you want to see is the arch, it is a relatively short hike (just over one kilometer) from the Kabeyun Trail parking lot. I love this park and I can't wait to explore more of it!
We had quite a nice lightning show last night! It was one of those rare times when lightning was flashing all around the sky but there wasn't any rain falling (although it did start raining after most of the lightning had passed us by). It also was not windy at all. Last but not least, most of the lightning was up in the sky and not making any apparent ground connection. I made this photograph looking at the summit of Mt. Rose in Grand Portage National Monument. It was a 12 second exposure at f/5.6 and ISO 400.
While hiking at Sleeping Giant Provincial Park earlier this week there was a section of trail that passed by a grassy meadow that was lined with a lot of beautiful cedar trees. Some of the trees were very big and probably very old. The one shown here is one of the biggest ones we saw. I just love cedar trees, especially big old ones like this, which have likely been around for several hundred years. It's interesting to stand beside these old ones and ponder all that has happened in human history while these ancient trees have been alive. Kind of humbling, I think :-)
On the hike back down the mountain we paused once again at the first overlooks we passed on the way up. This the view looking down on Tee Harbour and Lehtinen's Bay. Isle Royale National Park can be seen on the horizon. The Top of the Giant hike in Sleeping Giant Provincial Park definitely has some of the best overlook views to be found anywhere along the shores of Lake Superior. I cannot wait to do this hike again on a clear, blue sky day as the views will be even more incredible!
Just one of the many awesome views from the Top of the Giant at Sleeping Giant Provincial Park in Ontario. This week Jessica and I had an unforgettable biking and hiking adventure at this gem of a park. The trailhead parking lot is only about a 2 hour drive from our house, yet we had never been on this hike before. We woke at 6 AM to have some breakfast and load the car with our bikes and gear we needed for the hike. We had a couple of errands to run on our way but we still arrived at the trailhead lot by 9:30. By 9:40 we were headed off down the Kabeyun Trail on our bikes. You can bike the first portion of the route, which makes this much more practical as a day route. Otherwise it's almost a 17 mile round trip hike. Definitely still attainable as a day hike, but makes the trip much longer. We were able to bike the first 5.5 miles, which brought us to a bike rack at the start of the much more rugged uphill portion of the journey.
From the bike rack it would be 3 miles of hiking, much of it uphill. The trail was beautiful and excellently maintained. We never had any trouble following the trail. We passed a very lovely grassy meadow along the way which was lined with some amazing old growth cedar trees, some of the largest cedar trees I've seen. Just after passing the meadow we came to the steepest part of the hike. The air was incredibly calm and warm and we were praying for a breeze to pick up from Lake Superior to help cool us down, but no such luck. We were both dripping with sweat by the time the trail brought us out into the open and to the first views of Lake Superior. The first overlooks gave us an incredible panoramic view of the Lake Superior shoreline with Tee Harbour and Lehtinen's Bay in the foreground. The full length of Isle Royale National Park, all 45 miles of it, was visible on the horizon. We could even see Passage Island, which lies a few miles off the eastern tip of Isle Royale.
We continued on the trail, which now worked its way across the relatively flat top of the giant. Eventually we came to the west side of the summit, which offered equally amazing views of Thunder Bay and Pie Island. The trail ended at a large crack in the cliff face, which is where we stopped and ate our lunches. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever sat and enjoyed a trail-side lunch. We were right on the edge of cliffs that dropped straight down almost 1,000 feet to Lake Superior. This place is definitely not for those who suffer from vertigo! Even I had a hard time inching my way to the edge and peering over to make this photo. To my amazement, when peering over the edge, I saw a rock ledge about 10 feet down and there was a small chipmunk on it! Moments later, the chipmunk appeared at the top of the cliff and ran off into the woods. A few minutes later he returned and somehow scurried back down to his ledge. He must have a den within one of the cracks in the rock. The heights didn't seem to bother him one bit. We sat and enjoyed the view for a while then headed back down the trail. We still had a few sights to see on the return, which I will share with you later :-)
