Date night under the stars brings laughs

OK, it wasn’t really date night, but we were under the stars on Wyoming Avenue in the dark of night. After seeing people post awesome photos of the northern lights in real time Thursday evening and recognizing that they were actually viewing in town in Post Falls, Rathdrum, Hayden and Coeur d’Alene and not from a mountaintop, I convinced Bert to join me in driving a few blocks so we could have an unobstructed view. Our yard and neighborhood are treed and without a good sightline to the north, so about 8:30 p.m., we hopped in the car. I may or may not have been wearing flannel and slippers for our “date.”

Our “a few blocks” was actually a couple of miles as we headed north on Idaho Street. There seemed to be an unusual amount of traffic on Prairie Avenue and Idaho Street for that time of night on a Thursday, so we kept traveling north looking for a safe place to pull over. Finally, we turned east on Wyoming in our quest to see the dazzle of the aurora borealis dancing in the sky. We had a straight-line view of Rathdrum Mountain from our pull-out spot, noticing after we parked and turned out the headlights that it looked like a drive-in movie on the prairie. Dozens of cars parked along the road or at approaches to the fields; we were in good company.

By now it’s about 8:45 p.m. and while beautiful and quiet under that clear night sky, there was nothing resembling the photos I’d been seeing for the past hour or so. We turned our cellphone cameras to night mode thinking that might be the secret. Nope. Nothing. We took a number of photos thinking maybe it was like that old Polaroid film that takes a minute or so to develop. I note that we were having a good laugh about the whole escapade.

We packed it in at about 9:15 p.m. and I joked that I’d post one of our pitch-black photos of the northern lights to my Facebook page. What a hoot! It appears we weren’t alone in striking out on the lights according to quite a few commenters.

But then about 10 p.m. social media lit up again with magnificent local photos of the northern lights. What? Well, it seems the phenomenon has a period of fade and then comes roaring back. What are the odds that we would be out on the prairie during a fade? About 10 p.m. the lights again lit up the sky. Too late, we were tucked in for the night.

So thank you Mother Nature for the good laugh and to my Facebook village for sharing all of your beautiful photos for those of us who were a day late and a dollar short.

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Wrapping up high school homecoming royalty shoutouts for our local schools ... congratulations to Coeur d’Alene Homecoming King Ryder Deming and Queen Sarah Williams.

For those who are focused on the football aspect of homecoming, the Vikings won their game.

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How many days until Christmas? 70. Two months and a day or two! And for those keeping track, the first day of summer arrives in 238 days.

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Happy birthday today to Jordan Hudson, Misti Flood, Kathie Lyon, Pam Nygaard, Brad Perry and Mike Farquhar. Celebrating tomorrow are Faith Tonna, Laurie Cook, Dana Albanese, Rosemary Fuller and Karen Deering. On Friday, Arlene Pischner, Keith Erickson, Terry Gurno, Will Wolff, Kevin Clement, Kathy Reid and Lauri Armon blow out the candles. Turning the page on the calendar Saturday are Tom Hamilton, Bobbi Koep, Louise Jackson (60!), Linda Chapman, Dan Gookin and Holly Hall. On sunshiny Sunday ageless and fabulous Mary Lou Reed turns 94, sharing a birthdate with Luke Malek, Mary Willeford, Jodie Krieg, Nick Peacock, Brooke Litalien and Jerry Lee. On Monday, Carly Goodlander, Mike Threadgill, Monika Krapfl and Paul Mikel do the birthday dance. Wish Jazmine Brown, Whitney Brown, Dick Brantley, Sara Fetters and Chastin Jaeger a happy birthday Oct. 22.

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Kerri Rankin Thoreson is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and the former publisher of the Post Falls Tribune. Main Street appears every Wednesday in The Press and Kerri can be contacted on Facebook or via email thoreson.kerri@gmail.com.