Post by erikruud on Jul 23, 2012 13:38:11 GMT -6
So far, bringing a scope on camping trips has not worked out as well as I would have hoped.
This spring, we went to Prophets Town State Park near West Lafayette, Indiana. It has reasonably dark skies without too much light coming from the nearby town. It also has some wide open space to view from. On that trip, the skies tended to cloud over in the evenings spoiling any observing.
Last month we went to Lake Le-Aqua-Na state park near Lena, IL. This state park doesn't have many open areas to observe from and again the early night sky was cloudy. The first night, I woke around 3:00. I went outside and looked up at the sky and it was really dark. I was standing there just looking up at the stars when something growled at me from the darkness. I had heard coyotes earlier that night, but this sounded too deep, more like a large dog, but as far as I could recall, I hadn't seen any large dogs at any of the campsites in that direction. I decided I didn't want to find out what it was and went back to sleep. If it was a dog, I didn't want it to start barking and wake up the camp. If it was something else, it was best to leave it alone.
This weekend, we were at Blue Mound State Park in Wisconsin. This place had potential! The top of the mound has a huge open space with nothing higher than 10 degrees of azimuth except for a microwave tower at one end. The skies were dark and there were no clouds, but humidity was a bit high. We had gone up on the mound before sun set because there was sing-a-long at the picnic shelter. Shortly before dark, two guys walked through the field. I was close enough to them to here them make some derisive comments about my setup as they went by. When they got to their car near the other end of the mound, they started pulling out equipment at that end of the field. Based on their comments, I decided to ignore them and didn't go over to see what they had. I set up the Ares 5 and we got some nice views of Saturn and Mars, but my son was getting impatient and over tired, so we packed it in and went to bed after that.
My biggest problem with observing on these trips, is that we like to do a lot of stuff during the day and then I am too tired to stay up late observing.
This spring, we went to Prophets Town State Park near West Lafayette, Indiana. It has reasonably dark skies without too much light coming from the nearby town. It also has some wide open space to view from. On that trip, the skies tended to cloud over in the evenings spoiling any observing.
Last month we went to Lake Le-Aqua-Na state park near Lena, IL. This state park doesn't have many open areas to observe from and again the early night sky was cloudy. The first night, I woke around 3:00. I went outside and looked up at the sky and it was really dark. I was standing there just looking up at the stars when something growled at me from the darkness. I had heard coyotes earlier that night, but this sounded too deep, more like a large dog, but as far as I could recall, I hadn't seen any large dogs at any of the campsites in that direction. I decided I didn't want to find out what it was and went back to sleep. If it was a dog, I didn't want it to start barking and wake up the camp. If it was something else, it was best to leave it alone.
This weekend, we were at Blue Mound State Park in Wisconsin. This place had potential! The top of the mound has a huge open space with nothing higher than 10 degrees of azimuth except for a microwave tower at one end. The skies were dark and there were no clouds, but humidity was a bit high. We had gone up on the mound before sun set because there was sing-a-long at the picnic shelter. Shortly before dark, two guys walked through the field. I was close enough to them to here them make some derisive comments about my setup as they went by. When they got to their car near the other end of the mound, they started pulling out equipment at that end of the field. Based on their comments, I decided to ignore them and didn't go over to see what they had. I set up the Ares 5 and we got some nice views of Saturn and Mars, but my son was getting impatient and over tired, so we packed it in and went to bed after that.
My biggest problem with observing on these trips, is that we like to do a lot of stuff during the day and then I am too tired to stay up late observing.
