I first “met” the tree when I met Denise in April. We went down to the St. Croix River at 2am to get a photo of the Milky Way for a Kristine Rose Photography class we were all taking together.
But the tree was in the wrong spot to get a photo with the Milky Way behind it (and I won’t even mention the light pollution, even at 2-3 am!
I did get a fantastic photo though, which later became the first photo I ever printed.
Anyway, we still wanted that tree, but after our April adventures, my son was getting married. Our next opportunity wasn’t until August. We had so much rain this summer, makes everything green and beautiful but the bugs were intense. (I love my mosquito net hat!!)
I have an app that I use, Planit Pro and I knew that August would be the last opportunity this year to get the tree with the Milky Way. We try to plan around the full moon because we don’t need any more light pollution than we already have being this close to the Twin Cities.
We talked about our plan through all the months prior. The location is tricky, there are campgrounds around the path, and weekends were pretty busy so it was decided not to go on a weekend. We finally took the plunge and decided to go on August 6. Time was running out!
Honestly, I had given up, figuring we wouldn’t have a chance to do it this year, so I was already planning out for next year. (Starting in July, yuck) but the skies cleared, the opportunity and time presented itself and we decided to go for it!
Honestly, I still don’t think I can find the path to the tree. We are so lucky to have a guide. After all the rain the path was treacherous and we discovered (the hard way) that the path had actually washed out in one spot. We had to back up to a further location with less chance of getting the photos we wanted.
After about an hour and attempts to light the distant tree since we couldn’t get any closer, we decided to go home and try again next year.