Tito and I drove to Sault Ste. Marie on the weekend – a pretty ambitious endeavour since the Sault is about 9 hours from Toronto (13 if you stop, as we tend to do, for every interesting looking thing you see along the way). Before I do a post showcasing how gorgeous Lake Superior is, I need to show off the pics that made me the happiest.

This is a sun dog, photographed from Toronto at 6 am:

I felt it was a good omen to see atmospheric phenomena right at the beginning of our journey. That night we found a road we thought (wrongly) would be empty, pulled over, and got to enjoy an au natural Canada Day light show:

The best thing was that this time, they were so bright that I saw them. Not squinty after my eyes adjust to the darkness and I think ‘kinda maybe?’. Nope, I saw them. They were so bright that at first I thought it was still blue hour, even though it was 11:30pm.

They dimmed after that, but I still got some gorgeous images, despite the fact that the ’empty road’ turned out to be a highway and the mosquitos gorged themselves silly on me.

All taken in the wee hours of Canada Day – what a great way to celebrate!