The Perseid Meteor Shower last night was fantastic. My niece, grand nephew and I had a wonderful time watching it, plus (eventually) Saturn and Jupiter.

 

I got to the viewing location — about six miles outside Rochester, Washington — at about 5:15 p.m. yesterday.  My relatives’ home was hot (ten degrees cooler in the basement, but still toasty) so after a brief tour of their three-story abode, we  decided to drive to Rochester to an air-conditioned restaurant to have dinner until the sun set, so we could set up for the night and sit outside when we got back.

 

We ate at Burger Claim (I think that was the name of the burger joint) next to Great Wolf Lodge. It seemed like most of the diners there were staying at the lodge because they were nearly all wearing wolf ears– yes, even the adults. I felt like we’d wandered into a  Disneyland-type theme park, which we weren’t expecting. (We felt a little “underdressed” as  a result– HA!)

 

By the time we got back to the house, it was 8:30, so the sun had set (three minutes earlier). Although the sky remained well lit for about another hour, the yard was in shadow, so we set up our outdoor viewing area with chairs, sleeping bags, red flashlights (so I could get into the house during the night to use the bathroom without breaking my neck on their concrete stairs), a bag of marshmallows, and some sodas (very few of which we consumed because we were stuffed from dinner).

 

My niece set up her new telescope because (as mentioned above) Saturn and Jupiter were going to make appearaces in the night sky, too, and we wanted to see them “up close and personal” when that happened.

 

As the sky darkened, we could see more and more stars until finally, at about 11, our eyes were fully acclimated to the skies, and we could see stars in abundance in every direction we looked. We were also able to see human-made satellites, a  few planes, and Saturn at this time.

 

Gotta back up a little  here

 

As soon as the sun set, it had cooled right off, so I had changed  into a sweatshirt and wiggled into my wearable sleeping bag. Almost right away, dew started settling on our sleeping bags and everything else that was exposed to the elements, so I put my sheepskin rug over the top of my sleeping bag (hide side out) to keep my bag dry, as I planned to stay out all night and I’m not sure how waterproof my sleeping bag is. As soon as I did that, I felt really snug, warm, and spoiled rotten.

 

We all snuggled into our sleeping bags for a while, until my niece got up to see if one of the brightest stars in the sky was Saturn (the first to come above the horizon last night). Sure enough, it was, so we were able to see it and its rings through her Newtonian (mirrored) telescope.  It was really wild to realize that we were actually looking at a far-distant planet in real-time (or what passes for real time in astronomy, since it took however long for the image to reach us).

 

Jupiter wasn’t due to rise above our horizon for a couple more hours, so we all got back into our sleeping bags and visited while we watched for meteors/shooting stars. At the height of the Perseid display (which was the night we chose) you can see shooting stars very often — up to 100 per hour. But the height last night occurred at midnight eastern time, so the sky was still light in our western skies at that time.  But by 11, our time, we still were seeing, on average, a shooting star every four or five minutes. Sometimes we’d see two or three at almost the same instant.

 

Some of the “streakers” were long and very bright — and they shot across the firmament, usually from left to right, directly overhead. Others were less bright and shorter-lived, but each was eagerly oohed and aahed as they made their brief appearances across the sky. It was a truly magical night!

 

My nephew went into the house to get some shuteye at about 1 a.m. My niece stayed out with me until about 3 a.m.  She and I got to see Jupiter just before 3 a.m. Astonishing, but not as showy. (No rings.) Very bright. It seemed to me about twice as bright as Saturn in the viewfinder.

 

By this time, I was fading fast, as I hadn’t slept great the night before. My niece went into the housee for the rest of the night (her face was cold and wet from the dew). I think I was fast asleep within five minutes and I slept like the dead until 8:38 when the sunshine began to land on my sleeping bag. I knew I had to get up, set out the sleeping bag and sheepskin to dry, and find a shady spot so I could lie in my recliner until everything was dry and ready to load back into my vehicle.

 

As the morning progressed from 8:30 to 10:30, I kept relocating myself to stay in shade. (I just finished a course of antibiotics for a UTI and was supposed to avoid direct sunlight, so that’s why I was consciously sunshine averse.)

 

At about 10:30 my niece and nephew reappeared. She baked croissants while my nephew and I played Crazy Eight on their dining room table.  He also showed me several of the compute games he created. He’s a brilliant teenager. He was on a team that won First Place recently at a high school for creating a Rube Goldberg-type machine. Several teams were given the task to do that, and his came out on top.

 

After we ate breakfast, we continued to play Crazy Eight for a couple of hours. The time flew by while we did that (we all won games) so I took them to lunch in Rochester on my way out of town.We ate at a sit down Mexican restaurant. It was yummy.

 

The trip home was uneventful except for a 30-minute slog between Olympia and Tacoma. I played the soundtrack from THE GREATEST SHOWMAN as I drove and didn’t mind the sluggishness at all.  I love those show tunes.

 

I didn’t take any pictures (sorry!), so all you get this time is a written description.

 

When I got home, I fell asleep on my bed and slept until 9 p.m. Jackie put the chickens away tonight when she noticed I was crashed out on the bed.

 

And now — at 10:39 p.m. — I will got outside, get into my tent and sleeping bag, and see if I can see any shooting starts from here. (There is a lot of light pollution from nearby Tacoma so no guarantees, but I’m hoping to see some more shooting stars tonight. I can never see too many, you know!