We have been talking about seeing the aurora borealis off and on for some time. There was a time last winter when I proposed that we book tickets to the Aurora Capital of North America – Yellowknife – because flights from Philadelphia with multiple stops were actually pretty reasonable for a remote Canadian town north of Manitoba. Even today I could book a ticket a month out flying from Newark (big airport in New Jersey about 2 hours from us) for under $500 round trip. But we haven’t pulled the trigger. And Yellowknife is known for being able to see the northern lights around 240 days out of the year, so a long weekend gives you pretty good odds that you’ll be able to see them at least once in your trip.

From time to time when we had the opportunity to see them here in Philadelphia it hasn’t been good weather. When people earlier this year were seeing the northern lights as far south as Florida, Philadelphia had heavy cloud cover and nothing was visible. We checked a couple times in the night but no luck!

So when we were driving home from dinner with clear skies and saw reports from an hour north of us that they could see the northern lights, we decided to take a detour out of the city to see what could be seen, and we ended up two hours north in Scranton!

As we zigged and zagged away from the city lights, we stopped on a hill with about a dozen other people who were using their phones/cameras to pick up the northern lights, which were barely visible to the naked eye but well picked up by the camera. Rather than call it a night and drive home, we plunged forward in the hopes that we would eventually get far enough north to see them. On the backroads for a while, we eventually picked up the northeast extension to the turnpike and started making faster progress in our drive north.

We had stopped for gas at the rest area and passed through the Lehigh tunnel when all of a sudden we started seeing hints of the color on the horizon before us and to the east. The sky shortly afterward exploded in colors all around us, and for about ten minutes we felt like we were in Alaska or northern Canada (except without any snow)! Our kids had long ago fell asleep, and the show stopped before we could find somewhere safe to stop and get out of the car and wake them, but in that window Jayne and I got a real treat.

As we approached Wilkes Barre the lights died down, and we couldn’t find a good dark perch atop a hill to wait for more. We drove through Scranton on the highway wondering if we would see them again when we got north of the city, but they had passed. And we decided to head for home after a long day.

We heard later that we would have been able to see them from Philadelphia during that burst, and people were posting sightings as far south as DC. A similar showing happened later in the night, after we had returned home and gotten to bed at 2 AM from our adventure. Despite the short viewing period, we were satisfied and exhilarated with our encounter with the northern lights and our random weeknight adventure into northeastern PA to see them!

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