I arrived at the park on Thursday evening around six o'clock. It was still drizzling, by 7 it stopped. I found a high spot on the field to setup. There was standing water everywhere - a parks employee said his rain gauge measured two inches for the last 24 hours. With the weather looking bad, I thought for sure I'd be the only one there for Thursday night but I was soon joined by Gary Honis and a couple from Delaware (Jerry and Dottie).

After setting up camp, Gary convinced me to set my scope up because "the sky's going to clear at 3am and I'll miss it". Well Gary was wrong! It cleared at 11:30 but clouded up again around 3am. We managed to get some good views of the usual suspects and detected some challenge objects including IC4617, a faint galaxy practically on top of M13, and IC1296, a faint galaxy in the same field as the Ring Nebula(M57). They were seen in Gary's 20" Starmaster, but I couldn't detect them in my 16" Dob. We were also treated to an unbelievably bright mag -7 Iridium Flare just before 3am. Then, just after the flare fizzled out, the clouds started rolling in.

Friday brought out the sun and many more observers. By nightfall, the skies were punctuated with puffy cumulus clouds that quickly dissipated. By midnight, the Summer Milky Way was climbing quite high across the sky and a good bit of time was spent looking at all the showpiece objects buried within its glow. Later, I tried for Pease 1, a planetary in M15, but the seeing was not steady enough to get high powers - all the stars in the globular looked like little planetaries! Oh well, maybe next time.

I did some viewing through Ken Schmidt's fine Starmaster 14.5" dob. I found it odd that on this occasion, I couldn't quite reach the eyepiece when pointed at zenith. I need to spend some time on Uncle Fester's rack! I had some great views through Wendy and Les Baker's scopes too. Les ground his own optics - excellent work.

On Saturday, Ken and I helped Alan and Fran collimate Alan's 25" Obsession. It provided great views that night, giving up a gravitationally lensed double-quasar in the Big Bear. It was easily split during moments of steady seeing. At 8 billion light years, it is the most distant object I've ever viewed - too cool. I managed to check off a gaggle of Hershel objects before some thin clouds killed the transparency around 2am. At dawn, Wendy Tordoff treated Gary, Gary, and me to some fresh chamomile tea.

We had another great new moon outing, and hopefully will have a lot more to come. Even if the skies weren't quite up to that CSSP standard, getting out and observing with good friends makes the trip worth it.

Hope to see you all again in July.