Dec. 30, 2015---riding around in the valley and search for northern lights:

We started today off by heading to the little airport in Independance and having breakfast at the restaurant there.  It was a unique experience eating breakfast and watching diners leave by airplane.  Then we rode around the airport neighborhood a bit.  Interesting that they had roads for driving cars on and back "alleys" for driving airplanes to their garages attached to the back of the houses.  I was in a neighborhood something like this in South Florida for an estate sale but have to admit the one in S. Florida was a whole lot fancier.

 Riding around in the valley we had spectacular views of Mt. Hood some 90 or more miles away!

 Looking towards the coastal range.  The Willamette Valley is a great place to live!  Most of the really bad weather is caught by the mountains on either side.

 Every where you look in the valley there's incredible scenery.

 Looking towards the coastal range again with the Dallas co-op silo in the foreground.

 More silos, most likely owned by an individual.

 the co-op from another angle.

 Heading back into Dallas from the Dallas-Salem highway (which becomes E. Ellendale).

 Just a couple more views of Mt. Hood from the valley with my 600mm zoom lens.

 We heard on the news that there was an exceptionally large solar flare a few days before and it was reaching the Earth's atmosphere tonight.  They were saying the northern lights might be visible from Oregon.  So we went to the slough about 1am and watched for awhile.  All we saw was the moon.  I had seen the northern lights on an Alaskan cruise one night and would love to see them again.  They are really spectacular.

About 2am we headed back to the house.  No northern lights for us. :(