Yesterday evening I managed to stay up late enough to go for a walk at midnight. Because of daylight savings time, the sun isn't at its lowest until 01:00, so I guess this post should be titled, "1 am sun"
I wandered by the old cemetery, which made news recently as it was the site of an unsuccessful and acrimonious attempt to find genetic material from the 1918 flu pandemic.
I also stopped by the old museum, where most of the interesting stuff was apparently left behind when the museum moved to its slick new digs downtown
Fossils of temperate climate plants are pretty common around here:
The paleomagnetic record here shows that this area has been migrating steadily north from the equator over the last 300 million years or so. These fossils are about 100 million years old.
I also stopped by the church, which is the northernmost church in the world
I saw some things you might expect to find in any Lutheran church
and some that seemed a little out of place:
Near the church is a 24-hour sunclock. There was a bank of clouds covering the sun at solar midnight, but I did see a shadow a bit earlier:
