This time last week I was in northern Michigan at one of my favorite places (You may have noticed I have quite a few favorite places in northern Michigan) intent, once again, on getting the perfect Milky Way image.
Esch Beach, near Empire MI
I had a walk-in site at Platt River Campground, reserved weeks ago, and high hopes that at least one of the three nights would be clear.
My perfect camp site.
The site was beautiful. I knew it would be because I’d camped there once before a few years ago. It’s at the end of a trail, about 1/4 mile into the woods. Along the way are three other campsites, but mine was the last one.
This was my first camping trip of the season. It took me forever to get this tent up.
The good thing about a walk-in site is that there are no RVs near you running their air conditioning all night. (Though I wouldn’t have minded having air, it was 98 F inside my tent most of the first night.) The bad thing about a walk-in site is that you have to carry everything in. So I stayed pretty minimal.
Anyway. I had high hopes for Monday night, thinking it should be clear. And it was hot and sunny when I first arrived.
Before I even went to the campsite to set up the tent I drove the Pierce Stocking drive that provides a number of opportunities to stop and explore.
It’s almost mandatory that you take this image while you’re there.
But gradually, by late afternoon, clouds had moved in and that evening there were no stars to be seen. It even rained late Monday night, which brought the temperatures down. I was conflicted, grateful for the temperature relief but disappointed that I wasn’t out under the stars with my camera.
Looking toward Sleeping Bear dunes from Empire Beach on Tuesday.
Tuesday I explored a few beaches looking for possible places to shoot the Milky Way, if the sky ever cleared. But it didn’t clear that day.
Not very promising for star photography.
So I did the next best thing. I hiked a loop through the woods where there was the possibility of lots of birds. You know how I love taking photographs of birds. I had high hopes again of capturing something special.
Because I was covered in bug spray this was a fun hike.
About 2.5 miles, the trail was supposed to be filled with song birds, particularly warblers.
I took a close up picture of the map with my phone, and I’m glad I did. The trail wasn’t always obvious.
I heard lots of birds, none of them identified by my Merlin app as warblers, but I only saw one bird for a slight second, hidden in the trees, and I have no idea what it was.
I don’t suppose any of you know what this brownish bird is, hiding behind leaves and out of focus.
Tuesday night it rained again. I don’t mind a little rain on the tent, but it meant there was no star shooting that night either.
Wednesday was predicted to be overcast as well, so I made plans to drive about an hour north and meet a couple friends in Northport, another of my happy places. It was time to spend a little bit of time in civilization.
Scenic route through Pierce Stocking park.
That was definitely fun and had a lower mosquito to human ratio, but it deserves it’s own post, so stay tuned.
My sister and I spent our days exploring Michigan’s eastern UP the last week of August, but we spent our nights looking for clear skies. We were on a mission to capture the Milky Way over interesting stuff, in particular over the Upper Falls at Tahquamenon State Park.
A view of the falls from along the path, taken during our morning research for the night time adventure.
I’d seen images done by other photographers and I figured what the heck, how hard could it be. Right?
We’d made the recognizance trek back to the falls, and down the 94 steps to the viewing platform during the day. We’d check the position the Milky Way would likely be over the falls, using my hand dandy phone compass. We’d strategized how the whole even would go down, including talking to rangers ahead of time so they’d know where we were.
From the viewing platform.
Still, as we parked in the giant, but empty, parking lot after dark that second night of clear skies I was worried, as I always am, about what could go wrong. As we sat there waiting for it to be dark enough headlights came up the long driveway toward us.
“DARN!” I said (well maybe not that exact word).
These stairs are easier to maneuver in daylight.
I’m never happy to have other people around when we start out on a night mission, unless I know who they are. The truck went on past us and parked in front of the bathrooms. The park rangers were there to clean up the facility after the day of tourism.
Now I was in another quandary. I didn’t want to walk up on them and startle them. So we waited until they were done, and on their way out they stopped to talk to us, wanting to know what we were doing. The lady ranger recognized me from our earlier discussion and told us to have fun and be careful.
Yep lots of water falling off that ledge.
So with an official blessing my sister and I packed up our gear and began the long walk back to the falls. It’s not really that difficult, given what most people have to do to get to scenic places, the trail is paved and pretty level as long as you watch for the occasional tree root.
The path winds along the ridge above the falls, flat and wide.
Still, by then it was pitch black. Do you know that noises are scientifically louder when heard in a dark woods vs. in your own driveway? It’s a fact. Anyway, we made it back to the long set of stairs and picked our way very carefully down to the viewing platform.
The first thing I noticed once we were down there, other than that the roar was very loud, was how much mist was blowing off the falls. And that it was blowing right at us.
I had my sister turn on her flashlight so I could see how much mist was flying. Turns out it was a lot.
But there was the Milky Way, exactly where we figured it would be, right above the falls. To our eyes it looked great. I could imagine just how it was going to look through my camera lens.
Except for this darn railing that is just about the same height as the top height my tripod will go. And I need to shoot in portrait (vertical) to get the Milky Way and the falls in a single shot. Which put the railing smack dab in the middle of the frame.
Oh…and I forgot to turn off my red flashlight too.
How annoying. I dabbed at the mist on my lens and considered that maybe I could shoot from a lower perspective, between the rails.
I was struggling with the composition so much that I didn’t spend any time on focus.
The noise from the falls and the waves of mist washed over me as I reconfigured the tripod and tried sitting down to shoot.
Seriously this was not going well. Then I tried holding the camera on the top railing manually, even though I knew that was ridiculous and there’s no way I could hold it steady for 20 seconds. In what felt like a monsoon.
I really needed a taller, more steady tripod. In fact at one point the whole tripod tipped over and somehow, some way, I managed to grab a leg in the dark before the whole thing fell over.
And I need to be there on a clear night when there is less mist. I wonder if that’s even possible?
Maybe I should find a spot over the LOWER falls.
And mostly I need to learn how to do panoramas, because if I could have shot the top of the Milky Way in landscape (horizontal) slices, down to the falls I could have stitched it all together into one really pretty image.
Or so I’m told. I haven’t done those segments of my class yet. I guess this is the winter to buckle down and learn that stuff while the Milky Way is resting, so that when she wakes back up next spring I’ll be ready.
EventuallyI had to focus on just the stars, and even then we were getting soggy from the mist.
So ladies and gentlemen, I present to you zero great images of the Milky Way over the Upper Falls at Tahquamenon State Park. But don’t be discouraged. I plan to try again after I do more learning and more research.
I guess the Milky Way over the Upper Falls just wasn’t in the stars for me that night. (You see what I did there?)
But we will be back, if nothing else because walking into the dark woods and then walking out a little damp but none the worse for wear was a thrill in itself!
You might find us just about anywhere!
I hope you all come along with us on our next adventure!
I know you’re all waiting to see how the night photography worked out on my recent trip to the UP. After all, that was one of the main reasons we went. But I just haven’t taken the time to process those images yet.
I will soon. Promise.
This must be a self portrait of the family that camped in our site just before we did.
Meanwhile I thought this series of pictures from our campsite picnic table might make you smile.
We noticed the chalk image, left by the prior campers, as we were setting up our tents. My sister and I wondered why the mom was frowning. Though as kids we camped in a big green army tent with our large family and we can say with some expertise that there were many reasons for a mom to be frowning while camping in a tent. With kids.
Looking a little worse for wear. I bet mom was frowning even more after the rainy night.
The first night it rained a bit and the third night it poured all night. When we got up the fourth morning the entire artwork was gone.
Our imaginary family is only a memory.
But I have it for posterity. I’m hoping mom is smiling more now.
The last week of August my sister and I planned on traveling to South Dakota for a little vacation. Why South Dakota you ask? Well…I have a friend there who lives on a ranch and the skies are really dark. Exactly the perfect sort of place for night sky photography. So we arranged to spend a few days there, watching the sky by night and exploring the area by day.
Our campsite had lots of shade. And mud.
But the title of this post is “Camping in the UP” you say? How does that relate to South Dakota?
Well, sometimes life gets in the way of plans, and it turns out we needed to be closer to home this year. Luckily Tahquamenon Falls State Park in Michigan’s UP had just reopened after some bathroom renovations and there were lots of open camp sites.
I snagged one and we adjusted our plans.
The upper falls and late summer goldenrod.
There’s so much to see in the eastern part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, so we used the campsite as a home base and set out exploring. On our very first day we stopped by the Tahquamenon Upper Falls AND Whitefish Point!
Lots of people out at Whitefish point at sunset were looking for Yooper Light rocks.
And that’s after driving all the way up there, across the Mackinaw Bridge and deep into the northern woods. It was a long day, but we had beautiful, hot, blue sky kind of weather.
The next day at Whitefish point the weather was decidedly different.
And in Michigan you know not to waste a second of it! It could all change tomorrow! And of course it did.
When it was cold and windy outside we did the museums instead of the beach.
It was still cold and windy the third day when we visited Grand Marais. Usually the stone picking there is spectacular, but it was so windy we didn’t stay on the beach long.
There were people out there looking for rocks. We were not those people.
We did end up at the local diner for some lunch.
A nod to nostalgia on a cold afternoon.
And on the last full day of our trip we explored the coast of Lake Superior, heading east along the Byway to Sable Falls…
The short trail back to Sable Falls includes over 300 stairs. Just a heads up.
…and Point Iroquois Lighthouse.
Such a beautiful place.
We had a beautiful day and found some beautiful rocks to remind us of our trip.
Thursday was a wonderfully warm day, perfect for sitting near the water.
We explored the back roads and found a unique bakery.
Wonderful baked goods out in the middle of nowhere.
And then we had lunch at a sunny little inland lake before we headed back to camp for our last night.
So peaceful!
We enjoyed a last fire at our campsite before we turned in for the evening. It would be an early morning the next day if we were to beat predicted rain and get camp packed while things were still dry.
Of course we had to have one last s’more too.
And then it was time to head back home.
Early morning light on our empty campsite. Bye site 171!
Oh…what about night sky photography? Did we get any of that done?
Some of the lower falls on the Tahquamenon River.
Well. I guess you’ll have to tune in to find out. But what do you think?
We had some really hot weather up here in Michigan and it seemed to last forever. Of course it didn’t last forever, but for my two nights of camping at a local state park the heat hung heavily in the air even late into the night.
Even though it was hot I enjoyed a fire each evening.
I hadn’t camped at this park for a few years, not since Katie and I camped there and struggled with noisy kids partying all night just a few sites away.
This site is surrouned by woods.
This time it was much more quiet. I was in my favorite site at this campground, full shade, with lots of privacy. I went there specifically to watch the birds that hang out in the trees surrounding the site, many of which I don’t see at home around my feeders.
My app Merlin says this is a wood thrush. I don’t think we have wood thrushes in Michigan.
And I went to give Penny an opportunity to see a campground for the very first time. Her dad brought her over in the evenings and we sat around and talked.
“I’m a little anxious, mom. And it’s hot out here!”
She sat around and observed. Everything.
“What’s that over there, mom?”
I didn’t ask her to get into the tent for a number of reasons, one it was too hot inside the tent, and two she isn’t really happy in the tent yet.
“Mom, do you have any treats over there?”
But she did get to watch people and dogs and kids walk by and begin to realize she didn’t have to bark at everyone.
“You’re still here, right dad?”
It wasn’t easy for her. Watching dogs walk by, listening to noisy trucks as they hauled trailers past our site was hard.
“Dad? Those kids on bikes need to be herded!”
But little kids on bikes? Now that deserves a big bark, mom!
“So, this is your favorite site mom?”
We still have a lot of work to do, it was all new to her. But I can see potential.
“OK mom, that was interesting, I’m going back to my air conditioning now!”
There are, of course, a lot of memories at my favorite site, memories of camping with my Katie-girl. And I think she was there with me last week.
My girl used to use this leash to wander the site when we camped together so long ago.
I miss her so much, even while little Miss Penny is bouncing around distracting me. Penny says that’s OK and I appreciate her giving me some grace.
Hey Katie-girl, I know you were there.
On my last day at site 16, just before I started packing up and while I was feeling sad and missing Katie, a female cardinal arrived. She hopped around, up on the picnic table, underneath it, across the parking pad, always keeping an eye on me.
“Hey Lady! Don’t feel sad, she’s right there in your heart!”
I kind of think Katie sent her. She made me smile, just like Penny does, who, I’m sure, was also sent by Katie.
I don’t know what this bird is, but it’s pretty!
There’s lots of summer left. I hope I get to take Penny to another campground before the end of the season.
“Just remember lady, you’re never alone!”
And I figure by next summer she just might be ready for a real adventure, even if it’s camping in our own backyard.
So what does a person do while camping at Harrisville State Park once the main mission has been accomplished?
It was a dark and stormy day.
Well. If we’d had another clear night I’d have been out there on the beach getting a second good look at the Milky Way. But we weren’t that fortunate.
We went to the marina on Tuesday to look at the boats. There weren’t many there.
Monday, as we were setting up camp under blue skies, a park employee told us that Tuesday would be rainy but Wednesday was going to be nice. We figured we’d get through Tuesday and find something fun to do on Wednesday.
Tuesday looked like this most of the day.
We figured wrong.
During the day Tuesday we kept expecting it to rain, but it was just breezy and cold. The rain held off, but we expected it at any time. It was really too cold to enjoy walking on the beach.
Layers helped. Sort of.
We went to the local library to stay warm as we tried to find something to do. I googled “What is there to do in Harrisville Michigan?” Google came back with 5 things.
The clouds were cool, though.
1. Sturgeon point lighthouse. Been there, it wasn’t open but we got an amazing image.
2. Harrisville State Park. That’s where we were staying.
3. Cedarbrook Trout Farm. Well, I guess that was a possibility.
4. Bailey School. Saw it through the window, it wasn’t open.
5. Sturgeon Point State Park. Well, that’s where the lighthouse is…so…..
We spent a couple hours at the library, reading magazines and hanging out. When we headed back to camp to make dinner it began to rain.
You can always count on a library to fill a couple of hours.
So we each grabbed some snacks and our reading material and ducked into our tents.
Peanut butter on crackers…perfect snack food.
Fourteen hours later it finally stopped raining. Though I like listening to waves while I sleep I really didn’t need to listen to them for that many hours in a row.
The view from my bed.
And the kicker was that Wednesday wasn’t really any better than Tuesday had been. Windy and cold. We decided to go to the local diner for breakfast.
A warm breakfast always helps to make the day brighter.
There we asked the waitress what there was to do in Harrisville, and she mentioned a couple of stores. One was an art gallery that we had planned on visiting, another was a resale shop with supposedly cool stuff just waiting to be picked over.
Not open for the season yet.
We had hope.
We skipped, reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, down the city sidewalks. We were still cold.
But it turns out neither place was open because we were up there before Memorial Day, the official start to summer. Sigh.
We walked around the nearly empty town and then drove back to the library where I skimmed a book and she read another magazine.
A library can warm you up.
And then we decided to pack it in and go home.
Time to go, even though it wasn’t technically time to go.
We’d only made one meal at camp. We’d spent way more hours in our tents than we’d planned. It was cold and wet.
We’d accomplished my goal so we could call the trip a success, and sleeping in a real bed in a warm house looked pretty good. It only took us an hour to throw everything in the car and head home.
Sometimes you have to admit that Mother Nature won.
Of course halfway home we stopped at a roadside park and the sun came out. But that was OK, we felt good about our decision to bail on our last night at camp.
The sun came out on our way home.Made us smile.
After all, there’s always another adventure waiting in the wings. I could tell you what and where, but that would spoil the story.
Let’s see. When I left you last my sister and I had driven a few hours north, scoped out a potential night sky photography site at a lighthouse, and set up our campsite at Harrisville State Park.
The view from our campsite.
The purpose of this three night camping adventure was to capture the Milky Way in darker skies than those around my house. I’d made the three night reservation six months ago in order to get a prime Lake Huron shoreline site.
I was sure that at least one night would have clear skies.
A view of the lighthouse from about where we planed to stand later that night.
Based on weather forecasts it looked like Monday night/Tuesday morning was my only chance. So we set our phone alarms to get us up at 2:00 a.m. and in the early morning darkness we drove the few miles to the lighthouse.
We quickly found the “X” we had drawn in the sand earlier in the day and began to set up shop. But while I was lengthening the tripod legs I noticed a light way out on the horizon, shining just above the bench I intended to use as a foreground. The light bothered me because it was so bright.
See that light in the middle of the horizon? It was a lot brighter than it looks here. The orange is light pollution.
I took a couple shots but didn’t like what I was seeing.
Too much light from towns to the south.
I decided to shorten the tripod legs in an attempt to hide the light behind the dune. I sent my sister over to the bench so I could try to focus on it, intending for it to be in the foreground which would be stitched together with another image with the focus being the stars.
She’s walking back using the red light. You can still see some of that bright light on the horizon to the right of her.
That didn’t work, I couldn’t focus on her at all, so I gave up that theory. Plus we were too far away from the bench and if I moved closer there would be that darn light out there on the horizon.
I decided to just try for a single image, nothing I had to stitch together later, just practicing getting the stars in focus. That worked and I took several of the same image so I’d have some spares to practice stacking when I got back home.
You can see the bench, but it’s really small and there’s too much light pollution.
But all the time I was focused on the Milky Way I’d been distracted by the lighthouse to my right. The grounds had a single large light on the other side of the building which was lighting up the side of the tower. I thought it was beautiful and wanted to get a shot of that even if it wasn’t a Milky Way image.
I started to move the camera around while not realizing the shutter was still open.
So once I was done with the multitude of stackable images of the Milky Way, and feeling disappointed in the images I had so far, I turned the camera toward the lighthouse. And the first test image I took I realized included a small part of the Milky Way!
How exciting, it was possible to get the Milky Way and the lighthouse in the same image! Quickly I shifted the camera to the right. And this is what I saw:
Nikon Z6ii, 20 mm, iso 3200, 12 seconds.
The yard light they had perfectly lit the tower without being obscene. I had enough time in between flashes of light to get the image because there was so much other light around. And by moving to the right I had eliminated most of the ugly orange light pollution that blasted out over the lake.
I was thrilled.
The rest of the night I worked on getting the best composition, and then taking multiple shots to stack later. I think I was also trying to get one image with the lighthouse in focus that I could use as a foreground to be blended with my best sky shot.
To be honest I don’t know if I did that. I haven’t looked closely at all the images yet. I fell in love with the single image I’m showing you now and sort of stopped looking after that.
It’s such a great reminder of the entire adventure.
If I don’t end up doing anything more with these I’ll still be happy. I need to read the study guides in my online class to learn how to do blends where part of the image is from one shot with the foreground in focus and the rest of the image is from a sky shot with the stars in focus. It can’t be that hard. Right?
Right???!
So what did we do the rest of our three nights at Harrisville? Well…this has gotten too long already so once again you’ll have to wait and see. But I don’t think anything we did the rest of our time there will top that first night.
Hint: There were no more clear skies, day OR night!
When I’m out shooting the stars I don’t feel the cold. My sister, who was patiently waiting for me was marching up and down the beach trying to thaw her toes. I didn’t notice the cold until we got back to the car, and then I realized I was cold to the core.
We got back to camp about 5 a.m. and headed to our tents to get one hour of sleep before the 6 a.m. sunrise which we wanted to photograph. But we were both so cold all we did was shiver in our tents, even with our electric blankets, as we waited for the sun to come up.
The first hint of sunrise.
And after we got a couple shots with the sun rising we scurried to McDonalds to get a hot cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich. It took a couple hours before we were ready to head back to our tents for a nap.
It was pretty but we were too cold to appreciate it.
Warm was good.
So Monday night/Tuesday morning was the highlight of our camping adventure. Would it be worth it to stick around Harrisville for the rest of our reservation? Hard to say. When I get some more time I’ll show you around town.
Six months ago I reserved a campsite on the shores of Lake Huron during a new moon cycle, intent on doing some Milky Way photography. Many years ago Katie and I camped at this state park and I remembered a lighthouse located just a few miles north that might work for night photography.
This is the Sturgeon Point Lighthouse.
My sister drove all the way up from Alabama just to go with me on this photography adventure. Last Monday we set out early in the day so that we had time to scout out the lighthouse location for potential night shots.
My sister noticed this split in color on the lake.
You see, the weather didn’t look promising beyond Monday night. That’s what happens when you have to book something months out. Weather is always the unknown element. We expected a clear night Monday, but rain and cold Tuesday and Wednesday.
We discussed going back home Tuesday if it was miserable.
Monday was a beautiful day.
And we knew we’d only have one night to get the Milky Way. So we needed to be ready.
The lighthouse was just as I remembered it, standing tall on the shores of the Great Lake. We wandered the beach looking for something interesting to put in the foreground.
The bench might look fun under the Milky Way.
Eventually we decided we needed to be quite a bit behind the lighthouse in order to be shooting Southeast where the Milky Way would be. We found a place that might work, tucked low behind a small dune, and made a big X in the sand so we could find the spot in the darkness of 2 a.m., our planned shoot time.
Probably not this angle though.
Then we explored other places on the site, including Baily School which wasn’t open, but we got an interesting shot through the window anyway.
A school room from back in the day.
We wandered down the beach to the south, thinking maybe the rocks out in the water might be interesting. Even if we didn’t end up shooting there at night, they made a nice, minimal, image in the sunshine we were enjoying.
Maybe we could light paint this rock.
Eventually it was time to go check into the campground. If all three days were as nice as Monday we’d have a wonderful time. If only.
Our campsite, right on the shore, was small, but we managed to make it work.
Maybe the weather forecasts were wrong.
We did note that of the handful of people camping along the shore we were the only ones in tents. Perhaps we were a touch too early in the camping season.
The view from our camp site looked promising.
Not to worry, we each had electric blankets and we were confident that we’d be fine. This was not our first spring camping experience.
Our beach. Though it was too cold to swim.
So…you might ask…what happened on Monday night? Did we leave our nice warm, snuggly beds to drive up to the lighthouse at 2 in the morning? Or did the waves lapping on the shore lull us back to sleep after our alarms rang?
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.
My first composition included more of the water in the bay. The light on shore is someone with a flashlight, probably also out looking at the meteor shower.
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.
I like this composition too, with more of the trees we walked through to get out to the point included.
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.
I was lucky enough to get the meteor in the shot – barely.
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.
The green might be air glow, or it might be northern lights. There was some pink in the sky too.
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.
Such a perfect place to star gaze.
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.
Uh oh, clouds have invaded.
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.
During our exploration walk out to the point earlier in the day.
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!
Change Is Hard 