Mark Wagner had mentioned in a message to TAC that he might be going to the Fiddletown site to observe Saturday. I expressed an interest in going because it is a lot closer to me in Elk Grove, than the more frequented TAC observing sites. Even though Mark's plans changed he was kind enough to mention to Steve Gottlieb that Randy Muller and I were interested in observing there.

Saturday morning the Sacramento valley was still fogged in but we three decided to proceed and hope for the best. While packing my truck I managed to bang up my right hand so that it was swollen, throbbing, and pretty much useless. But no way was I going to miss this trip.

We met at the Sloughhouse Restaurant parking lot about 3:15 and headed up the hill together. In Plymouth we left the fog and saw the Sun and scattered high cirrus clouds. It didn't look promising.

After a short drive through the foothills we arrived at the observing site and Steve showed us around. The site is not huge but there was plenty of room for the three of us, our vehicles, and our equipment.

After setting up I borrowed Randy's sight tube to check the collimation of my scope and found that the diagonal had twisted a bit on the bolt that attaches it to the spider. I was unable to tighten the nut holding it in place and keep the secondary pointed in the right direction. We were able to get it back into position and with the help of Steve's laser we got the collimation fairly close. I will soon be ordering a set of Tectron's collimation tools and will then collimate the scope the right way. As it was the views were pretty good.

At dusk the clouds looked to be thinning. Then it got dark! Steve said that there is usually some glow to the west from Sacramento but it was absent that night, probably due to the fog covering the valley.

During the night I logged 32 objects and I was able to check 12 more off of my Messier list for a total of 59. Unfortunately I was unable to note anything more than the object names in my log book because I had to write with my left hand. My notes looked like they were written by a young child.

While running through my list Randy mentioned that he saw something new in M42. He showed me a large luminous band that arched from one side of the Nebula to the other. Neither of us had seen this before. After pointing it out to me I had to see it in my scope.

Later on Randy had the Flame Nebula, NGC 2024 in Orion and we checked it out in both of our scopes. Steve also showed me the Rosette Neb, first in his scope and then pointed out that we could see it "naked eye".

Around 1:00 the Moon raised it's head and wiped out the sky. I was pretty "wiped out" myself so I decided to quit for the night. Randy and Steve were apparently thinking the same thing. Steve and I stayed and slept in our vehicles but Randy decided to drive home.

Sunday morning I packed up my stuff and talked to Steve about his DSCs. After a pleasant drive down the hill I re-entered the dreadful valley fog.