Cherry Springs Report

Last Friday we left for Cherry Springs State Park, which supposedly has the darkest sky east east of the Mississippi.  Why did we do this?  Because we are nerds.  What does being a nerd have to do with going camping?  Well, on the particular weekend that we journeyed to Cherry Springs there was a star party being held, which all of the astro-nerds on the east coast flock to to enjoy the darkened sky during the new moon (and enviously eye each-others telescopes I'm sure).  If you think I'm being over-dramatic about the nerd thing, allow me to further describe the general nature of the persons that attended.  Although I consider myself a nerd, some of the people there were way out of my league.  For instance, there were a number of telescopes there that people had made themselves.  That's impressive enough, but what if I told you that some of them were at least a story high?  I even heard of one person who made a machine with which to grind the lenses for their telescope.  Not to mention, of course, that all the people there chose to spend one of the last weekends of summer star-gazing and losing sleep.  Of course, I was one of those, but I'm a nerd to, so that doesn't detract from my argument.  Anyway, as if this vacation wasn't nerdy enough, we went to the Corning Museum of Glass before getting to the campground.  Although the museum was actually rather art oriented, there were parts of it that were all about materials science, which was really sweet.  While we were driving through New York state I thought I saw two Black Bears, but it was a a long distance, so it could have been anything really.  When we got to the campsite we met up with my Dads astronomy teacher friend and set up camp.  Since we'd spent about five hours at the Museum, we didn't have to wait too long for sunset.  I hate to say it, but I'd actually seen better skies while camping in other places, because we were there a a pretty mediocre day for cherry springs.  Nevertheless, I got to look through some other peoples telescopes and saw things like the Swan Nebula, the Wild Duck Cluster, Andromeda Galaxy (which I could see easily through my binoculars), Ring Nebula, and lots of other cool stuff I can't remember.  (The pictures I included are not strikingly good images, I just picked them because they looked most like what I could see.  If you want to see them in all their glory, go search them and you should come up with all kinds of cool-looking pictures.)  Anyway, Saturday morning we got up (very late), packed up, and left.  On our way back, we stopped at the PA Grand Canyon, which is a really pretty spot that my Mom and sister had never seen before.

I also saw I butterfly that I thought was cool.  Unfortunately I'm too lazy to go look up what kind it is.

Overall, I have to say that that was absolutely the nerdiest camping trip I've ever been on.  (And therefore the best, of course.)