No Mosquito Camping

I am returning to active duty after a long awaited camping trip with my now extended family of 10. We are tent campers and we went to a rustic camping place down in Iowa named The Yellow River Campground of the Iowa state parks system. It was a lovely little place about 4 hours from the Twin Cities.

How nice it is to spend time around the campfire with your wife, kids, and new son-in-law, daughter-in-law, and future son-in-law. I brought my new green laser pointer to point to the stars and along with a star program that shows you the night skies at your exact location and time running dimly on my PowerBook, we were able to see and identify everything that was visible. And everything was visible because there was zero light pollution and crystal clear skies.

Jupiter was very bright but the other planets were too close to the horizon for us to see down in the trout steam valley. We could clearly see the little dipper for the first time in years. And there were many meteors and satellites to look at for hours.

This was an amazing campsite in other respects also. There were no mosquito's. None! And there were a zillion lightning bugs. There was a bald eagle who made his nest up high on the top of a bluff overlooking the trout stream and we saw him dive for fish. That along with whippoorwill's, owl's, indigo buntings, and coyote's made for a splended quiet Fouth of July.