A Sunset Boat Ride

When I left for the cottage yesterday morning, I had scheduled a blog post to be posted at 8:13 p.m. last night, in which I shared a couple of photos I took last week of a boat riding through the path made by the sun as it set in the western sky and I said, "if I had a boat, I'd want to go for a ride at sunset."

The really cool thing is that as that blog post was going live last night, guess where yours truly was?  If you guessed getting ready to hop on a boat to go for ride to enjoy the sunset, you'd be right!!

We had just finished eating dinner outside, taking advantage of a perfect summer evening with no wind, and were enjoying our view of the setting sun and amused by nine mallards that had just climbed up on a fallen tree at the front of our property to preen and bathe themselves:

Momma on the right with her 8 almost grown ducklings

when the phone rang.  It was our good friends Rosemary and Tim, calling to ask if we wanted to go for a boat ride. Actually, it was Tim asking, with Rosemary in the background saying, "who wouldn't?"  So true.  Of course we said yes and quickly took turns to use the facilities, grab jackets and in my case, the camera (no surprise there) and head down to the dock.

Here's Tim and Rosemary arriving to pick us up:

It was such a beautiful evening. The sun had dropped behind the trees on the opposite shore as we drove down one side of the lake and along the other.  There was a half moon moving in and out behind clouds, no wind and only a few other boats on the lake with us.  Lots of people on the shore were enjoying bonfires.

Here are just few of the many amazing photos I took on that ride:

I love the contrast between the neon blue and black tones of this photo.  It was pretty much full dark when I took this shot, and this is exactly how it came out, I haven't enhanced or altered the colours at all!

I took this shot as we started to head back across the lake to home.  Can you see the moon in the top middle of the photo?  What I thought was cool was all the little extra dots in the photo - ghostly visitors along for the ride, perhaps?

I took this photo as we were slowly heading in towards our dock, with only the boat's big spotlight to guide our way:

And finally, this was the view from our dock as their boat was pulling away - I love the cool lines that somehow resulted from the lights of our neighbour's cottage on the left, the moon in the middle and the boat lights on the right, and again that beautiful indigo blue of the image itself.

Many thanks to Rosemary and Tim for such a magical ride, the perfect way to end a special summer's day at the cottage.