Kids & Family

Her Head and Heart in the Georgia Clouds, Michigander Finds 'The Mitten'

Sara Edwards was headed home on Tuesday when a mitten in the sky caught her eye and tugged at her heart.

Michigan native Sara Edwards spotted a cloud resembling the Lower Peninsula – which Michiganders call “The Mitten” – on her way home just north of Atlanta last week. So she slid her iPhone open and snapped a picture of the familiar cloud formation.

It was cute, she thought, something that would cause some chatter on Instagram or Facebook, she told MLive/The Grand Rapids Press.

“Then, my friend said I should send it to someone more official,” she said.

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Edwards sent the picture to Michigan Awesome, a company in Holland that sells Michigan paraphernalia. Michigan Awesome shared the picture on its Facebook page, and it generated more 18,000 likes and 8,000 shares.

It turns out that The Mitten showed up in North Carolina, too, according to Sarah Levitt Hayes, who posted another cloud formation picture that looked like the Lower Peninsula.

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Chrissy Niver, another native Michigander now living in Germany where her husband is stationed with the U.S. Army, also chimed in with another picture of The Mitten. “Talk about making me miss home,” she posted.

Edwards, who grew up in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, told MLive/The Grand Rapids Press that she received encouraging and enthusiastic feedback on her photo.

“Friends started messaging me telling me that it had gone viral or that their friend from Oklahoma who doesn’t know me just posted it on their page,” Edwards said.

Some people were skeptical of the picture and argued that the Instagram filter placed on the photo suggested it was Photoshopped, but Edwards laughed at those comments.

“If these naysayer knew me,” she said, “they’d know I can barely work my phone or download an app. Plus, I think if I were to photoshop it, I’d take out the power lines running across the whole picture.”

Steve Shaft commented on the Michigan Awesome Facebook page that he put the photo to the test with the high-tech software he uses in his business to determine if a photo has been doctored. Nope, he said, this is the real deal.

“ … This photo has definitely not been edited or altered in any way,” he posted, adding it’s “completely legit, which makes it crazy awesome.”



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