After I went through the SnowVillage, even freezing my butt on the kiddie ice slide, I made the way up past the ski resort at Levi, to the Northern Lights Ranch. Google Maps/Waze are off by about a mile, but a quick phone call and they guided me right there.
A quick note before I forget, those cars handle ridiculously well, even on the many roads that look like this:
So when Waze says something will take 4 hours, in the states you may beat it by a few. In Lapland, you can easily shave an hour off.
Back on topic, I arrived, and the check in process was simple and painless, they walked me to my cabin, informed me I had been upgraded, and showed me all the features. A pair of snowshoes hand outside, all the floors a heated (which is awesome), water pressure and temperature was great, and a large selection of toiletries.
Well it was starting to get dark so I got to taking pictures. At one point, my Mavic froze and started descending onto a tree, when finally the connection came back and I was able to bring it home with only one propeller damaged. Anyway... I am far from a professional so I played around with different settings on my mirrorless, used my GoPro a bit, and my phone as well. IIRC, that pic in the first post was taken with my GoPro.
I had been keeping an eye on the weather and KP index (I have no clue what it is, but I know what to look for, kinda like Bitcoin). It was going to be a cloudy afternoon/evening, with them parting in the early night. Hopefully. Another hiccup was a predicted KP of 1.33-1.67, max. In short, you want 2+, preferably 4+ at that latitude.
After taking a few hundred pics, I decided to get some work done and wait for the clouds to clear. And clear they did! I think it was about 10 when I finally looked up and saw them. It was weird, because at that weakness they disappear if you look directly at them, but they're clear as day in your periphery. But I immediately whipped out the camera and that's where my lack of skills became apparent. I could not get them on "film" through the glass. I think it was due to some ambient light coming in from outside causing the reflection to amplify with the long exposure. But what do I know. So at that point I cheated. I took some clean inside pics, then went outside and got some more, and then merged them into this composite:
I know it's cheating, but I'm happy
I then fell asleep and woke up at 5am with the big dipper framed perfectly in one of the panels above my head. The whole thing was so mesmerizing. I got up a little later as it began to get light, took a few more pictures in and out, including the drone pic in the first post, then got ready to check out.
At that point I remembered that they had mentioned a snow chapel and some baby reindeer, so I went to inquire. One of the employees showed me to the chapel, which I thought was incredible (for 2 days...), then they let me feed the reindeer some treats. Adorable little things.