Whoa guys, the time sure has flown! Just last week I was asking Mom if she thought the leaves were changing color due to the stress from the drought this summer. She said, “No Niki, it’s the end of September. It’s Fall.”
That hit me hard. Fall.
I feel like I missed out on half of the year!
But that’s okay, there is still plenty of time for me to catch up now that the weather has finally cooled off. We hit 106 degrees F in June, and the lack of rain only continued for the rest of the summer. It was brown this year. So brown it didn’t even look like summer.
Since my last post in July about the Northern Lights, I haven’t really done a whole lot. I don’t even think I picked up my camera once since then.
Guys, I’ve become boring.
I would go to work, come home, watch TV, crochet my temperature blanket, and repeat the cycle again the next day. No wonder most of the world is “asleep.”
So what did I do this summer?
I got a kayak! I think that might be the most exciting thing that happened this year. But I didn’t get a chance to use it as much as I would have liked. It’s a beast of a boat and I need help loading it and unloading it from my car.
But I did get to take it to Wisconsin and paddle around the whole lake and even up a couple of the streams on the property that I wasn’t able to get up before. I even got to take Vala out on the water with me!
I went to Mercer for our family camping trip on the Fourth of July. That was a blast! Quite literally too. The small town of Mercer hosts one of the best displays of fireworks I have ever seen. It was 16 minutes straight of non-stop explosives and I loved every single second of it.
Then, I did nothing. See, I told you I was boring..
There was no exciting weather to chase down, very few days where I could actually capture the northern lights because of all the smoke that hung thick in the air. Very few days I even wanted to go outside due to the sweltering heat the stuck in the 90s. Us northerners aren’t used to that sort of heat.
The real excitement came when I got a kitten. His name is Minion and he’s one devil of a cat. Unfortunately, my other cat Gru, is not Minon’s biggest fan.
Then I thought I was going to lose my job for a little bit. But then everything with that was okay and out of nowhere, the store I worked at closed so I did lose my job. Currently, job hunting and chilling on unemployment while helping out around the farm.
What is yet to come this year?
I have a trip to Wisconsin planned for the Aurora Summit. I’m so incredibly stoked that I get to go this year and meet and learn from like minded individuals. I’m hoping there will be a spectacular show while we’re all up there!
I definitely am going to get some more shots of the Northern Lights in North Dakota this year.
Might go check out the UP to be a leaf peeper and see the shoreline I missed out on last time I did the Lake Superior Circle Tour when my car died in Houghton.
Definitely am going to head west into Montana. Something about the Big Sky state has really been calling to me. And I have had my eye on a property just across the Montana-Dakota border.
I have a podcast interview scheduled about Midwest travel on the calendar in a couple of weeks. I’m super excited and so nervous to do a podcast interview, I’ve never done one before!
I also won a stay at The Cobblestone Suites in Broken Bow, Nebraska. And the last time I was in NE, I cut across the corner of the state near Wyoming just to say I have been there. It’s time I properly see the state.
What else?
I really don’t know what else to tell you other than now that I’m unemployed you can definitely expect to see some more content on Chasing Departures in the coming weeks. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll finish writing that photography book I have as an outline/draft on my desktop.
Hope to see you around the internet!
