Observing amongst the salt thieves
I drove out to what Google maps said was a park and then saw a sign saying “state property no trespassing” and a second sign saying “don’t steal road salt or gravel from here, if we catch you you’ll be prosecuted”. I guess that’s what some silly rural fellows get up to in their free time? So I parked right in front of the entrance off the side of the road, since it was pretty dark. Eventually someone did drive up in a truck and ask if I was lost before driving in and then out a few minutes later (to I imagine check for salt thieves)!
Astronomy: it was so dark. I could see mountains and trees silhouetted against the sky once my dark vision adapted. I could see a naked eye slight fuzzy patch, point my scope, and it was M44! Lots of stars in one place. Everything had a slight bloom to it, like the sky some haze, and eventually a high cloud came in and reduced visibility to “only” a bortle 6 or so. Wow.
I also saw a dim fuzzy near Auriga - maybe M37? Pleiades looked as good as ever. Jupiter had four nice moons.
The pifinder didn’t get a GPS lock, and then shut down from lack of battery pretty quickly. I think the battery pack might be having more issues from when the scope fell off the mount a week ago?