The Coleman lanterns were starting to go out after dinner clean up, as people in the Horse campground started to settle-in for the night. I arrived at Grant Ranch County Park (on the road to Mount Hamilton) around 20:45 on Saturday, May 25th, 2001.
I quickly set up my recently acquired NexStar 5 along "Telescope Row". My plan was to show off some deep-sky showpieces to some out-of-town guests.
There were some large holes in the clouds -- enough to do a careful two-star alignment. The clouds were moving and the they looked like they might be breaking up. The near-new moon would be setting within an hour, and we anticipated that the DSOs would come out in all of their glory.
The clouds churned and covered more of the sky. We got a couple of good glimpses of the great globular cluster M13 in Hercules through one "sucker hole." Then the cloud cover increased to 100%.
I waited about 30 minutes to see if things changed, and then packed up and headed down the mountain.
As I was unloading the car at my house in northeast San Jose, I notice that the sky had almost completely cleared up again. I quickly set up with a two-star alignment and got a nice long view of Mars at 333X, swimming in the clouds on the horizon. My imagination filled-in the southern polar cap.
I brought the 'scope inside and went to bed.