Well, after living in the Bay area for 5 mos. now I decided to make the trek up to the infamous Fremont Peak (I usually just go to Coe).

Exactly 64 miles from the Fair Oaks exit on 101 it took me about 75 minutes to reach the area. Not a bad drive. The road is actually less treacherous than the road to Coe.

I arrived at about 7:30 PM to find the SW parking lot packed. I decided to setup in the Coulter lot (big mistake). There were a dozen or so scopes in that area (including a monstrous DOB...my 8" Meade looked like a toy). The skies were in a word, terrible. I could live with that. What I can't live with is the constant barrage of cars coming up the hill and into the campsites. At one point there was a caravan of about 6 cars, all with high beams glaring and radios blaring. Nothing like having your vision destroyed every 15-20 minutes.  I guess I just have to get there earlier next time.

I've been "into" astronomy for about 2 years now but I've never actually "found" anything on my own. Usually I'll poke around in the proper area for a couple of minutes and then ask someone to help me find what I'm looking for.

Not tonight, not again. I made the decision to learn the skies on my own.

After some fumbling around; I decided to stay in and around the Ursa Major area of the world.  After some struggle,  I managed to find M81 and M82 (on my own for the first time...yeah for me). I also managed to get OK views of; M51; M101/102; M106 and M40; I think I got a look at M97 but I couldn't see it too clearly (I won't check it off of the list yet); M64 looked very nice and I think I got a view of M85 when I accidentally bumped into my scope and then looked through the eyepiece (It was right in the middle!).

I also managed to find a few objects in Leo but I have no idea what they were.  I must say; the thing that amazed me was that once I found an object on my own; it was mine to keep; I could come back to that object again and again without too much (if any) difficulty. I was thinking about buying a Magellan 1 or something like that but no,  a computer would take the fun out of it and definitely make actually learning the skies near impossible (my opinion as it relates to me).

All in all, I guess the peak is OK but I could do without the traffic and dozens of people shining megawatt flashlights in your face all of the time. I'll probably go back though because the company and conversation were excellent.