It was very satisfying for me to spend last night observing at Fremont Peak last night. I was accompanied by Derek and Suzanne. We all arrived by 5pm and leisurely set up our scopes while enjoying the balmy 70's temperatures as if it was summer already. The fog lay below covering thhe entire coast to the west but up at 2,000 elev. we had nice warm sunny weather. This was reminescent of our past early summers we all remember well at the Peak. As sunset came, we enjoyed the two colorful sundogs that appeared, but this was a warning of what was to come. I had the A-P 10" Mak-Cass set up and decided to catch a peek of the 2-day old moon partially hiding behind the approaching cirrus. I always enjoy getting a close look at thee young waxing moon a few days after new. My Powerbook's "Sky" program showed Jupiter to be only 5 degrees up (east) of the moon, so there I went next. Great! Jupiter had an Io transit going with its shadow just following the pink GRS at mid disk. Seeing was very good in the calm air around us. At 370x, I was seeing a lot of belt and zone detail on Jupiter and an amount of detail within the GRS. Jupiter was only 25 degrees up from the western horizon and fading behild a lot of incoming cirrus. I watched this transit for awhile and then slewed west and lower under the moon to Saturn. Saturn also showed much fine detail at 370x, and it was only 12 degrees above the horizon. I was very surprised to be able to see so much detail on these two giants so low in the sky behind the increasing cirrus clouds.
I was becoming increasingly clear as dusk wore on that we would not get to observe any fainter DSO's as more cirrus gathered over us. It came down to looking through holes in the cirrus for the next three hours of our observing until by 11pm all the sky was covered. The temperature remained warm at 64 degrees by that time. So, I decided on observing a few close doubles to see what the Mak could do with such a still night. I ended up easily splitting a few mag 6, 0.7 doubles in Coma B. and Leo but ran out of clear sky before I could find a closer 0.6 arcsec double to try. I was able to jack up my power to 925x on zeta Bootes (pretty gold and blue pair) for an easy split with very nice even diffraction around the two stars, reminding me of past views through Rich N's 180 EDT.
This trip was only an easy hour for me to drive from Monterey. It was well worth it to get up to the Peak again. I will try to do this monthly during the week when it is quiet up there.
I did see an official park notice on the bulletin board at the SW lot's pay stand stating that the park does accommmodate, and welcome, any daytime and evening amateur observing with telescopes. There is no ranger there yet nor any fees being collected, but all observers are welcome to come up with their scopes and enjoy the view observing in the parking lots at the Peak.