Last night I decided we should go see if we could see Mars. I really had no idea what we were looking for, or where we should go to get a good view. My initial thought was somewhere away from the lights and up high. Where that might be, I was much less certain. At about 9pm, in spite of Katrina saying she was tired, (I'm so mean, dragging the children out when they want to go to bed!) we hopped in the car and took off.
We tried the baseball field where Abby played first. It has plenty of open sky, and is up on Education Hill, but when we arrived, there was a game going on in the field nearby, and all the lights were on, so it was too bright to really see anything.
Then I had a brainstorm. Carnation! A while back we went on a girl scout event to a park in Carnation, and it seems like it is kind of on a hill there. So we went out to Carnation. The girls seemed impressed at being out late, and made many comments wondering what people in other cars were doing out so late, too. We got to the park, and I didn't even get lost getting there, which impressed me, as it was dark, and I'd only been there once before.
We parked and got out, but almost right away, the park ranger showed up and said she was locking up the gate, so if we weren't camping, we'd have to leave. I asked where a good place might be to go, and she said we could just park outside the gate if we wanted to, and walk back in. The gate was close, so that was all good.
Once we were settled in the big field, Abby spotted Mars almost right away. It was low in the sky, and definitely had a reddish glow to it. We saw one falling star -- me only out of the corner of my eye. The moon wasn't up yet, so the stars were fully visible. We looked for falling stars for a while, but didn't see any more. As we drove out of town, the moon started to come up.
In spite of Katrina saying she was tired earlier, she didn't fall asleep on the way home, and she wanted to stay up to watch the last half of Stargate, which I suppose was an appropriate ending to the evening.
I still have pictures to post from the weekend in Leavenworth and Monroe, but haven't even looked at them yet. Maybe tonight!
Posted by Rachel at August 15, 2003 05:29 PM