Holy Clear Skies Batman!!!

This past weekend, Paco's friends wanted to celebrate one of their birthdays by having the "family" (group of friends) spend the weekend at his Hunting Lodge Cabin near Alpena, MI.

I'm very glad we went. I had a great time hanging out, drinking, eating, playing with the fish. Yes I said fish. There is a trout pond there. They have fish food pellets there by the 20lb bag. Toss some in and it was a feeding frenzy. They'd splash you, each other, smack the bottom of the dock, whatever it took just to get at those damn pellets. :) I know it sounds kinda dull, but it was a lot of fun.

The best part was the night sky. Living in the suburbs of Detroit, I RARELY get to see REALLY clear/dark skies anymore. This weekend, 2 nights in a row, I saw the stars through the clearest skies I've ever seen! It was simply amazing. It was so clear and black up there that it was very easy to see the plane of the Milky Way. I haven't seen this since I was a child. The stars of various sizes, brightness and colors were strewn across the sky, all very 3D like bright rocks pitched upward and then captured in a Matrix-Style, 3D camera shot and frozen in place. It was breathtaking. It was also fun to see 2 meteors streak across the star-lit blackness. I really miss this kind of view. The only thing I had detracting from this view was the UNBELIEVABLE number of ANTS at this place.

No joke, stand in 1 place for a minute or two and the big black ants were crawling straight up your leg to places where you would probably prefer insects never visited. EEK! If you kept moving, you were fine, but if you stopped, ickyness ensued. Fortunately this wasn't as much an issue at 2:00am while stargazing.

Poor Paco was sick all day Saturday and All day Sunday. On the 3+Hour drive home we had to stop a number of times for him to use a bathroom or Projectile Vomit (my apologies to the McDonalds just off of I-75 in Saginaw). He was miserable and there was nothing any of us could to for him.

The whole thing just made me want a SkyCar even more. I'll tell ya...when I finally hit that Lottery Jackpot, I'm going to have some cool toys!! Oh it would be nice to get there in 45 Minutes vs 3 hours! (that's traveling at an average speed of 300 MPG, a distance of 229 miles). Or 4.5 hours (vs the 24 hours it would take to drive and boat) to travel the 1500 miles to the $10,000,000 Island I want to buy...someday.

Well, either way I truly missed having beautiful night skies to look at. Having that satisfied so completely was just amazing and I highly recommend it to anyone. (although not "getting your heart trampled on" a-la Alanis)

"They say money can't buy happiness. Well, it can buy you everything else, and that sure makes happiness easier to achieve." -- (paraphrase)

--Iton