better luck next time

I knew we had a good chance of northern lights in Colorado on New Year's Eve, but Lizard wasn't comfortable taking a drive when all the "crazies" and "drunks" would be out in force. Parkinson's often comes with a good dose of anxiety. I've learned to modify my dreams and goals to help make his life as pleasant as possible.

We had too much cloud cover and metro city light to view the aurora borealis from home this time around.

I stepped out in the very light snow on our driveway about six times throughout the night, just in case.

I'm so thankful we have the technology (and internet bandwidth!!!) to be able to enjoy the northern lights whenever they happen!

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The Chase

heavily photoshopped, no regrets

We got to see the Northern Lights!!!

For a couple months now, I've hoped we could go far north when northern lights were expected to break into Wyoming and Colorado. Last Thursday was the first time I was actually able to leave home to chase the aurora borealis. I am officially addicted now!

tiny hints of northern lights over the Denver metro

We watched the weather and smoke forecasts prior to the big event. We'd planned to go to Estes Park and drive up Trail Ridge Road. The forecast there, though, was cloudy and possibly stormy. So we thought perhaps Fort Collins or Cheyenne. But both were forecast to be too smoky. So were Fort Morgan and Sterling.

The only north part of the state, which was about all Lizard thought he could handle, with a possibility of clear skies was directly east. I thought perhaps Last Chance might be far enough from the metro city lights for us to see what I expected to be a tiny band of color.

Denver metro northern lights

Neither of us had ever been to Last Chance, so we didn't know we passed right through it. We kept thinking we would find this little town with the final gas station before the Kansas state line. I could see what looked like smoke to the north. I kept trying to look for color as we passed through one tiny little blip on the map after another. Nothing was open.

Last Chance

Finally, at 8 p.m., I noticed two beams of white emanating from the "cloud" of smoke. I knew that wasn't smoke. I told Lizard we found northern lights, and I pulled over on the very next county road, which had power lines, but what we saw was so overwhelming, I didn't mind the distractions.

straight out of camera

Once I got out of the car, the white "cloud" was no longer white. The tint on the car windows had camoflaged the pink and green. The naked eye view wasn't intense, but it was most definitely northern lights, and I could see them! I snapped a phone photo, and it captured an explosion of color! I'd heard that often happens, that the aurora is more dramatic via digital images.

straight out of camera

We watched the lights dance all the way up over our heads for about 15 or 20 minutes. I took a few photos. The wind was blowing, so I had a hard time keeping the tripods still, but my phone has image stabilization, so my photos aren't too bad, in my opinion. They are not perfect, but they captured what might be one of the best nights of my life.

filtered

We decided to continue looking for Last Chance because I was getting low on fuel. Next thing we knew (had to wait a long time for cell phone signal), we were 39 miles from Burlington, where I hoped we could get gas. Gas was available, but food was not. Both of us were hungry. All we had in the car were cheese crackers, cashews and a few chocolate mint wafer cookies. Oh, and one bottle of water.

filtered

We kept seeing fields of flashing red lights. Lizard thought they might be directional assistance for flights. We noticed the outline of a windmill, and Lizard announced, "They are windmills, and a lot of them!" Boy, there really were! Fields and fields full of them for miles!

All the way back into the metro area, almost everything was closed. It was after midnight, and both of us were hungry. We finally found a McDonald's in Limon. I didn't know what I was going to eat; I don't eat beef because it's too hard for me to digest. They had chicken Big Macs!

We got home about 2 a.m., so it was a long day. We both were so exhaused, we both fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows. I think we both will be dreaming about northern lights for many days to come!

heavily photoshopped, no regrets

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Mooned

I'm often unable to get back to sleep after giving Lizard his 4 a.m. pills. I'll often curb the frustration by working on snowflakes, which sometimes relaxes me enough to get back to sleep before my own 5 a.m. alarm goes off. Sometimes even crochet doesn't work, so I fire up the computer to check the weather, record the overnight low for my 2023 crochet temperature project, and check work email, although I try very hard not to begin working before I'm supposed to...

The work computer is in the spare bedroom we've converted into an office. I have blinds over the window to keep the sun from bleaching my books and melting my computer equipment. If I'm in there with the light on, I often don't notice the sunrise, and I often miss it.

On May 17, I was working on a snowflake in the home office prior to sunrise when one of my bosses began emailing me copies of receipts from his then-current business trip for his expense report. He was two hours ahead of me, so he wasn't truly trying to put me to work that early. :) Thanks to audible email notifications on both computers, I jumped up from the work computer to silence my personal computer in the bedroom so as not to wake Lizard, who'd actually been able to fall back into deep sleep after his pills. (I have my work email set up on both computers because work email archiving renders the work computer useless during the process, and I can respond in a timely manner from my personal computer.)

Had I not jumped up and run into the bedroom, where the shades were still open because the sun had not come up, I would have missed the extremely narrow sliver orange moon just above the horizon with Jupiter right there, nearly touching the moon, as if the Heavenly bodies were best of friends. Coolest blessing in the world for me at that moment. I was SO thankful I had been able to see it! I wished I could shoot it!!! The sun would have crossed the horizon and erased any trace of night sky lights before I could grab my camera and drive to a suitable photography location. Many times these days, I have to be grateful I'm able to watch magical moments and not worry about recording them photographically.

I later searched the internet and found the lovely photo above (by Colorado photographer Lars Leber) of what I'd been able to briefly enjoy.

And then I set to work trying to recreate what I had seen in AI, or artificial intelligence.

Oh, the frustrations!!! I actually ran out of paid time in the program for the first time ever and was given a choice of buying more time or waiting until June to try again. I was not tempted one bit to pump more money into AI. And, even though it wasn't as brilliant and colorful (and Jupiter isn't nearly as close to the moon because I had to wait for a cloudless morning), I was able to photographically capture the phenonenon last week when Jupiter appeared on the opposite side of our moon. (Handheld, I might add. I didn't have time to dig out the tripod.) Once again, what I create with my camera or in Photoshop is better than anything AI can muster.

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