If the chill in the air and the early darkness didn’t tip you off, the calendar surely should have.

Summer is gone.

Friday was the last full day of the 2018 summer season. For the dedicated sportsperson, the changing of the seasons isn’t a mournful event. Instead, it brings its own anticipation as shorts are traded for hiking pants, hunters head to the hills, photographers search for changing colors, climbers head to the gym or start sharpening ice tools and skiers desperately try to get in shape.

Still, it’s good to mark the change. Here you will find some of the best reader-submitted photos from the summer of 2018.

In September, Craig Goodwin took a complicated selfie from one of his favorite spots to watch sunsets on the Spokane River.

“I recently wondered what it would be like to include myself in the magical reflections I have grown to love so much,” Goodwin said in an email. “Last week I paddled out and took this photo. I programmed the intervalometer to open the shutter every 10 seconds, while I was in the kayak, and composed myself in the shot for what amounts to a very complicated selfie.”

Also in September, Buck Domitrovich spotted a bull moose wandering through Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge. The picture illustrated the annual migration of male moose from higher elevations to lower climes.

And Jerry Rolwes captured a cool shot of a reclusive Virginia rail. Virginia rails are “seldom seen but often heard,” according to the Audubon society.

Late in August, Joanie Christian caught her husband relaxing in the Little Pend Oreille Lakes. He’d just broken his fishing reel and decided to just take in the view.

In July, Lee Prouty took a stunning photo of a pine cone burned by the Upriver Beacon fire in the Beacon Hill area. Prouty, who loves Beacon Hill, was encouraged to see some beauty come out of the destruction.

Also in July, Melanie Williams took a quintessential summer photo of a boy flying through the air from a rope swing above Fish Lake. As the weather turns cold, this photo will remind us all of the joys of summer.

In June, Kyle Tarry took a scary (yet beautiful) photo of an avalanche sloughing off the slopes of Mount Rainier.

In May, Tiffany Hanson captured the ephemeral beauty of the Northern Lights above the Rathdrum prairie. Hanson said she’d been planning the shot for a “couple of years.”