Longest Day Challenge

Each year Spark and Dad have the "Longest

Day Challenge".  The event is held in late June on or about the longest day of the year.  Winter here in the Northern Plains are long and dark, but in the summer we get extra long days.  On
June 21, where we live, sunrise is at 5:26 and sunset 9:09 PM.  Almost 16 hours of sunlight.  Since we are far from the equator our dawn and dusk periods are much longer as well--4:54 to 9:47 PM.

The first picture of the day is the sunrise.  It's hard to get a picture just as the sun comes over the horizon.  Here I clicked a second too early.

 The sunrise!! The exposure makes it look dark out, actually It is light enough we didn't need the car's headlights on. 

 After the sunrise picture we headed to a nearby lake to fish (also a Longest Day Challenge, or LDC, tradition). This is headed west, you can see how light it is at sunrise.  After fishing a while we went to McDonalds in a nearby town so Spark could have a "big breakfast with hotcakes," also a LDC tradition.  More fishing after breakfast at different lake where only Spark caught any fish.  Normally we have some other fun activities planned but, due to the recent hail storm, we had to go home to assess garden and car damage and clean up fallen limbs. 

After supper, we headed to church to hear a missionary speak, went grocery shopping and headed home.

 We only had time to drop off the groceries and head out to get the last pictures of the LDC, the  sunset.  Because our location is so far from the equator after the sunsets the western sky still glows red for hours.  The night time period between nautical dusk and dawn is only 5 hours long. We have to drive a ways to find a good vista because there are a lot of hills and trees here.

 Going, going...

Gone!!!  Luckily dusk is long here since we still had chores and other work to do.