How come we can't see the milky way like some of these other people can?

If you live in the Upper Midwest as I used to and you go out on a cold winter night when there isn't either dust or moisture in the air and you let your eyes become adapted and are well away from yard and street lights, then the Milky Looks like a sweeping path of thousands of stars. It never looks like these photos to the eye. This is closer to the way it looks a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2009/06/the_last_100_years_1929_hubble/MilkyWayFalling.jpg" rel="nofollow"http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/…/a and even this shows brighter than eye shot. But notice the difference in density of stars between the center of the photo and the edges. This is even closer a href="http://www.nies.ch/sky/stars/Milky_Way.jpg" rel="nofollow"http://www.nies.ch/sky/stars/Milky_Way.j…/a although light at horizon is distracting.