"Days Like This" - The first day of summer in the U.P. was a doozy

You don't expect to see articles about the Upper Peninsula in the Huffington Post. But..

The Upper Peninsula Is Underrated, And We Have The Photos To Prove It

"In Marquette, a remote Michigan beach town further north than some parts of Canada, the only thing more enchanting and boundless than the views of Lake Superior is the sky above it. Most of the year, the northern coast of the Upper Peninsula is too cold for the average person to sit for hours marveling at the scenery, though weather won’t deter locals and hardy adventurers like Marquette's own nature photographer Shawn Malone.

And when her city does get its few months of warmth, coinciding with increased hours of daylight, Malone rarely strays from behind the camera, even to sleep. She's determined to capture all of the beauty the North Country has to offer. That’s how she ended up documenting the spectacular variations in the sky over Lake Superior in one 24-hour period last month, catching bright stars, moody clouds and the vibrant colors of both the Northern Lights and a double rainbow."

The article references Shawn Malone of Lake Superior Photo and an album she posted on Facebook "Days Like This..." featuring six remarkable photos of the Michigan sky, including a spectacular dawn, rainbow, and northern lights, all shot on 6/22/2015.

The cool thing is that while Shawn was shooting these pictures over Lake Superior, we were also mesmerized by the U.P. sky and shooting pictures over Big Shag Lake.

Our Big Shag Lake 6.22.15 "Day Like This" started with a spectacular sunrise...

Finished with a gorgeous sunset...

But the best was after dark, when, forewarned by internet alerts, we observed a spectacular Northern Lights show when the planet was hit by a mega solar storm.

The display was augmented by a power blackout at the lake that eliminated virtually all light pollution. My GoPro efforts to capture the display were a waste of time, but Harlan has a real camera and the mad skillz to capture it all:

It turned out to be one of the bigger solar storms of recent years:

"On Sunday, the summer solstice, a major explosion on the sun propelled a coronal mass ejection toward Earth at about 4 million miles per hour. It then swept up two smaller, slower coronal mass ejections from last week, creating one big smorgasbord of geomagnetic exuberance. The whole mess reached Earth Monday afternoon with a bit more energy than expected."

Quite the show, quite the day. After seeing one small Norther Lights display during my first 50+ years of  Shag Lake sojourns, I've now seen two full sky displays in the last 3 years. When you pick the right day in the U.P, there's no place like it on earth.