Star Party 2013

The best meteor shower of the year is the Perseid Meteor shower in August.  This is Sara's second meteor shower/ star party.  We camped out in Diamond Fork last year and watched it along with my club members.  I was really amazed last year how much she was into it and how well she did at spotting meteors. 

This year we found a fantastic spot up on top of West Mountain to view and camp along with the club.  Sara was so excited to be going camping and I think she realized that it was special that she and I got to go without Brennan and Daddy.   As we were driving up the long and steep narrow road to the top of West Mountain, the view down to the valley and surrounding lake is unbelievable.  She kept saying, "Wow Mom, I can see the whole world from up here."   It was pretty cute and she kept talking about how excited she was to be going camping and she kept thanking me over and over.  It made me feel like we needed to do things like this a lot more often.

It was right at sunset when we went to go put our tent up at the viewing area and I got her picture with the mountains in the backdrop, Provo, Utah Lake, and Mt. Timp.

We set up the tent and then went back down to Lincoln Beach below to meet the rest of the group and Grandpa and Grandma.  Sara was really excited to be camping with them too.

Later that night the clouds finally cleared away and we had a fantastic view of the Milky Way, as well as the whole of Utah Valley, and we saw TONS of meteorites, even huge fireball-like ones with long tails.  Sara saw at least 15 or 20 of them. 

Finally around 1 a.m., she was so tired she couldn't stay awake anymore.  I had sent the tent up and even staked it about 25 feet away so that it would be out of the way of the star party.  However she was afraid to go lay in it by herself and I wasn't ready to give up viewing meteorites yet.  So I unstaked it and dragged the tent over right behind where we were sitting and then she crawled in and went to sleep.

I stayed up watching meteorites with Dad until 3 a.m. before we finally crashed too.  When I came to bed I noticed that the tent was hanging really low around us and was mostly covering Sara's body.  I was cursing that the tent was old and obviously falling apart and just hoping there weren't any storms coming that night.  Thankfully we didn't have any storms, however when I woke up the next morning I realized what happened.  I had forgotten to put a pole in, duh, no wonder it was sagging. 

Anyway, it was a great Mother/Daughter night and one that I really look forward to again next year!