One night outdoors

The other weekend I spent a whole night outdoors, because I wanted to see how dark the nights can get nowadays and if there is some fog on the lakes. Tom accompanied me and we drove to different places to check out the surroundings. We knew that there was gonna be a huge amount of mosquitoes outside, because lately the weather was perfect for the mosquitoe populations to grow. A lot of precipitation followed by very warm temperatures. So we took precautions, covered ourselves in Beckolja and took it with us in our bags, as well as a lot of clothes to cover our skin.

Ready to face the mosquitoes.

Totally not prepared for that amount of mosquitoes… Despite every effort they swarmed me the second I left the car and sat down everywhere… I was so desperate that I even put on my long skirt over my boots and leggins and a mosquito net on my head. But they swarmed me so much, that I coul hardly see anything.

These are the photos I took at the first location we were at, before I got too freaked out with the crazy amount of mosquitoes and decided to get back into the car and go somewhere else.

On our way we made a short stop and I took some pictures of the plants I saw growing in the forest close to the road.

We went to Abborrsjön, the lake we had quite recently visited. There I decided that no matter how many mosquitoes there are, I will not get out in those clothes again, because it just felt wrong. As expected there were quite a lot of mosquitoes and I got bitten everywhere on my body, but I also got some pictures I am really happy about!

After the day had been so warm, we wanted to go swimming in Abborrsjön, but the ground was very rocky and not very deep, so it was hard to get far enough into the water to actually swim… We decided to go to Grössjön instead, but there it was quite windy and cold, so we decided to go to a bathing place in Graningebruk I had read about on Facebook. We made a quick stop at my house, because it was on the way to pack some towels we had forgotten earlier and continued driving to Graningebruk.

We were there at around 01:00h in the morning, so the darkest time of the night, but at that point both of us were feeling too cold to take a swim and were totally swarmed by mosquitoes again, so we decided to take some more pictures and go home. However on the way home we saw some small bits of fog appear on the fields and the lake and we decided to check out a little swamp we had seen earlier on our way to Abborrsjön, to see if there was some mystical fog.

Just as we arrived there, a wall of fog came exactly out of the direction we were headed and started covering everything in this mysterious and dim darkness fog brings with it. We were so mesmerized by it that we decided to drive to Abborrsjön and check out what it would be like there around the lake.

We were not disappointed. And since the darkest time of the night was already over, I decided to take out my drone again and have a look at what it looked like above the clouds.

First I only flew a little bit over the lake and forest. Then I flew the drone straight up into the clouds. Quickly I lost sight of the drone and the drone didn’t have any views either. There was just the grey of the fog and I was starting to fear that the clouds were too thick for the drone to fly in. After all does every cloud also mean moisture and moisture can’t be good for an electrical device. But just as I started to hesitate and wanted to steer the drone back down again could I see some colors on the screen and knew that the drone had passed the fog and was above it now. Here are the photos that I took then.

I was so mesmerized by the view and the light and everything, that I didn’t pay attention and didn’t notice how the battery hit 30%. That is the time when the drone and remote start beeping frantically to remind me to get it back to the ground. I immediately started steering it back down, but of course that horrible beeping didn’t stop until the drone had landed on the ground.

Completely enchanted by the view up in the clouds, but a little chilled from the cold weather, Tom and I sat back in the car to chat, heat up a little and plan what to do next. When I checked the time I noticed that it was only 20 minutes left until sunrise, so we decided to wait a little. about 10 minutes before sunrise I noticed how drained my cellphone battery already was and got a little anxious because it requires a cellphone to fly the drone.

5 minutes before sunrise we decided to go out again and set everything up. After all it would take 2-3 minutes to get the drone ready and up in the air and up above the sun would rise a little earlier than could be seen from the ground. Said and done, here are the pictures I took:

The view was absolutely majestic and on the way down again I took some more pictures of the forest we were in.

Then it was finally time to get back home and into bed. After all it was now after 03:00h. So super late to be up. Except that it didn’t really feel that late because of the brightness. On our way home the fog lifted and revealed an absolutely beautiful pink sky. We even saw a pinkish illuminated rainbow, but it disappeared almost entirely as soon as I left the car to photograph it.

Can you see the pink stripe in the middle of the picture? It looked so strong from the car!

In our back the sky was illuminated by the sun and was just as beautiful. Of course I took some pictures!

And I couldn’t help but pick some of those cute fluffy flowers. I picked some more wild flowers on the way back home and put them in a vase into the kitchen. It is so nice to be able to just pick flowers and take them home.

Back at home it was almost entirely bright and after this wonderful night had ended we went straight to bed.