My God, it's full of stars...

I went camping this past weekend, three fun filled, relaxing days. My only complaint, my air mattress continues to deflate. This in turn causes me to wake up with a sore back, which is still hurting as I sit here and type this blog post.

On Saturday, early on, the rains came and they came. Most of us decided that we would drive over to the beach house and get out of the coming rain. Seconds after we got into the beach house the rain started falling, sideways! Even though the rain only lasted 20 minutes we stayed for in place for an hour.

While I was there, I ate something, and to this very moment I can’t remember what it was I ate but it was probably sweet and I know I had some coffee. Now that I think about it, I remember that the cup wasn’t clean and there was some strange looking crud at the bottom of the cup which I didn’t notice until I finished the coffee. I have the feeling the guy who brought his coffee maker never cleaned out.

Around the time it started getting dark the group all got together and we started a fire and we sat around drinking beer and wine. Someone then pulled out some cheese and crackers, which I needed to counter the effects of the beer.

I noticed the clouds were beginning to clear and the stars came out, but it was still bright out, basically because of the quarter Moon.  Mars and Jupiter were very clear and bright, I should have gotten up and gotten my binoculars but the beer was having a slight effect on me.  Anyway, the big dipper and a bunch of stars came out, but nothing amazing. It was like being at home sitting in the back yard looking up at the stars in the sky. Then the clouds filled the sky again.

I got my first telescope when I was about 11 years old. Not knowing a lot about astronomy the only thing I could see was the moon. I don’t ever remember seeing stars or planets, way back then, and I don’t remember what happened, to this day I think my brother broke my telescope knocking the secondary mirror out. I spent hours and days trying to glue the mirror but it just wouldn’t stay in place. This was way before Super Glue.

In my life time I have had three telescope, two reflectors and one refractor.

All of them were cheap and I could never see any of the planets, though, the moon came in clear, big and bright. A few years ago my brother came into town and he brought with him his telescope. He had a cheap telescope, one he purchased at a pawn shop. But, he had purchased expensive, but not too expensive lenses, and that made the difference.

With his telescope and lenses I, for the first time in my life, saw the rings of Saturn, heck; I even had a clear view of Mars! All this did was get me salivating whenever I saw a telescope. I have a page on Pinterest with all of the telescopes that I could ever wish for or dream about. The one I want, though, is $14,000! Hey, I can dream can’t I?

Back at the campground, I decided to go to bed about 10:30. I figured that I had enough to drink and I was hoping the alcohol was enough to help me sleep. For whatever reason I cannot sleep in a tent, considering someone in the next tent was snoring so loud and for just about all night, but I digress…

Around 2 am, my stomach started talking to me, loudly. Not only that I had a sharp pain in my lower abdomen and it got sharper as I laid in my tent. I stayed there for about a half an hour before I decided to get up and walk a 100 meters to the camp restroom/showers.

Even though I was in pain I happened to look into the sky. I have, in my lifetime never seen that many stars! Some were so bright; they looked as big as flickering baseballs in the sky. I even saw the Milky Way, the center of our galaxy. It wasn’t as bright as I have seen in pictures but I could see the entire outline. If it weren’t for the pain and those pesky mosquitoes I would have pulled out my chair and sat and watch the stars, as I was, in awe and wonderment.

I made it to the restroom, did my thing, 15 minutes later I slowly made it back to my tent, but I didn’t go in, not right away. I stood there and just viewed the stars as long as I could. The two things I lacked that night, a telescope and a real camera, I have a point shoot right now. I could have gotten my binoculars but, I would have had to get back into my tent to get my car keys and If I went back in I was going to try and go to sleep.

From what I understand, Michigan has four Dark Sky sites and I just happened to be in one of them, Tawas State Park, Michigan. I didn’t know that at the time and felt I like a kid in a candy store looking at millions and millions of stars glowing and flickering the night away.