Just for fun, while there's still some summer left, here's a travel idea to see one of nature's most magnificent light shows. During hot summers on the High Plains, we still get a chance to see lightning bugs dancing at twilight. But the Great Smoky Mountains National Park takes it to a new level.
The Daily Yonder reports that there are only two spots on the globe that feature lightning bugs that blink in sync. One is in Southeast Asia, and the other is in the forests of East Tennessee, on the border of North Carolina. Here, the fireflies create a spectacle, blinking in waves that begin on a hill and sweep down into a large valley. The fireflies only perform their splendid spectacle for nine days, and they begin on a different day each year. But the National Park is fairly accurate at predicting when the lightning bugs will begin to synchronize, using soil moisture and temperature readings.