Friday, August 18, 2017

a relaxing day

"It's got everything you need."

6:45 AM MDT. I woke to noises around camp. People (not acclimated to the local time) were up especially early, talking, laughing, making breakfast.

The Sun was out. That made me happy.

I had a big breakfast. Enjoyed my good coffee.

10:09 AM. Chilled with the whole gang. Some read. Some checked the weather. We discussed where to do our dark sky observing. People were leaning to the Snake River spot.

Helped Tony a bit as he copied photos from his DSLR onto his ASUS transportable. As he was directly managing the files via Windows, I cautioned him about deleting items. Let the camera do it. Or EOS Utility.

Blue skies everywhere. But it was windy.

dried wood at the Merritt Reservoir

1:32. I wandered the beach and shot some photos with my old long lens. Very interesting landscapes.

I fixed my phone time again. I realised it was off after I had changed the time zone but had not adjusted the time manually.

3:21. The pub opened. We enjoyed beverages overlooking the water.

I considered items to pack for the evening's observing. Made a list.

When someone noted heavy traffic in Oregon, a discussion launched on the merits of moving to Glendo sooner, Saturday versus Sunday. Apparently there were 14 mile-long traffic jams.

the whole gang together at Merritt

4:00. We had a team meeting. Greg (our Colorado friend) was recommending we arrive on Saturday. That meant we would have to break camp tomorrow morning. Ugh. I was not exactly in the mood to pack up the tent again. After a thumbs-up from our host Eric, we reached a consensus. Go early. To give us lots of time to get into the Glendo state park. We agreed to begin packing the common things after dinner...

Enjoyed a nice group dinner. We took down the dining tent among other things. We prepared the campfire for the non-astronomers and then readied for some observing.

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