Wow. Those photos in the link to LakeSuperiorPhoto at takesiteasy's post (#21) are incredible. Don't miss them!
Experiences with the northern lights are so magical we remember them the rest of our lives.
I first saw them in, of all places, southern Pennsylvania. I was riding in the back of my parent's car when they appeared above the mountain ridges to our west. I had mixed feelings about them. My Dad told us what they were but I wasn't so sure. This was, after all, the Cold War era and those sneaky Russians might just be up to something. That might be the 'radiation' from ICBMs I had been hearing so much about. Such were the Cold War days for a kid.
My second sighting (and my wife's first) was about 45 years later and about three hours north of Regina, Saskatchewan. This was in August, near the town of Melfort, SK, which, it turns out, bills itself as "The City of Northern Lights" for the frequency of their appearances there. We were skeptical it would happen on an August night but of course sat out late just in case. The Milky Way became apparent as we counted eleven satellites and two shooting stars. Then some of the stars below the Big and Little Dippers seemed to fade into what we thought must be a cloud. The cloud started to move ever so subtly and then brightened into a drapery of light. We drove to a better vantage point and watched for an hour or so before it faded.
The next August we were in northern Manitoba. We had driven to Thompson, MB and took the train to Churchill, hoping to see a polar bear in the wild there on the shores of Hudson Bay (and did!). In the middle of the night we drove out of town to look for the northern lights and did see them but the best was yet to come. Our train back south left late-- around 10 pm. About an hour later we noticed the northern lights beginning to make an appearance. We first saw them out one side of the train but as we watched, they filled the sky. We were in a light-tunnel of northern lights! They faded out after about an hour but that was indeed a magical time. We were like over-excited kids jumping back and forth between windows and going out between the train cars where we had a bit of a higher view.
-OC
