After the bagpipe parade my sister and I began to prepare for a night trek through the cedar forest and along the sandy beach out to the end of Sunset Point. The wind was picking up and we were worried that waves we heard crashing somewhere out in the lake would be washing over the point.

At 11 p.m. we decided to head out there and check it out for ourselves. There was a certain amount of anxiety as we wound our way through the woods and along the beach, but we were relieved to find there were no waves anywhere near the point and we were able to set up on a picnic table out on the point with a perfect view of both the Milky Way to the southwest and the Big Dipper to the north.

I lightened these somewhat for Facebook, but you’ll still want to look at them in a dark room if you can, and on a larger screen.

She sat in a chair and watched the northern sky, exclaiming in excitment every time she saw a meteor streak across the sky. I focused on the Milky Way, deciding to include some of the bay in my first set of images, and then moving slightly to the left to include all the trees in the next series of shots.

But she was seeing so many streaking meteors that I decided to turn my camera around and see what happened. I liked the rocky point jutting out into the dark lake.

And then I asked her to go sit on a rock at the edge of the gravel, still many yards away from the water, and sit very still for 20 seconds while I took a shot of her watching the sky.

I love this shot so much. The image looks peaceful, but in actuality the wind and wave noise was so loud I had to signal when the shot was finished by flashing a light at her.

Then we realized I could set up the camera and she could push the remote shutter release while I sat on the rock watching the sky.

This was sooooo cool, to sit out at the end of a rocky peninsula and look at the stars. In this image I think there are 3 meteors, though at the time I didn’t see any of them.

My sister had been watching part of the Milky Way which was directly overhead and she asked if I’d take a picture of that, so I pointed the camera straight up and pressed the shutter release.

But when we looked at what we had we realized the clouds had suddenly moved in. Our night of shooting stars was over. Our window of opportunity had been less than 2 hours. I was very glad we went out there a bit earlier than we had planned. I was happy with what we had captured and we hoofed it back down the point, across the beach and through the woods to our waiting car.

Back in camp, snug in my tent, I scrolled through my images on the back of my camera. I couldn’t see much detail in the small screen, but I knew it was there. I was smiling so big it was hard to go to sleep.

I don’t know if I would have gone out that night, given the roar of the lake and the gusty wind, if my sister hadn’t been with me. Thanks to her we had a magical couple of hours, and now you get to share in it too!