For our last few nights in Death Valley, we decided to leave the parking lots of Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells and go to one of the more remote campgrounds in the northern end of the park--about an hour's drive. Mesquite Springs is a very primitive campground with no development, no stores, nothing...except some of the darkest skies in the country, and it will be a new moon (i.e. NO moon) when we are there. After we set up, we notice that our neighbors are amateur astronomers and have their telescopes set up to observe the skies. We got to look through the 16-inch reflector that Jim brought and saw some amazing views of star clusters, nebulae, Jupiter and Mars. I woke up around 4 AM the next night and got to use our binoculars on the summer constellations that contain the best deep sky objects around the center of our milky way galaxy. It was fantastic!
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| Our campsite at Mesquite Spring overlooking a wash |
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| A view of our campground from the bluff behind us. If you look real close at the center of the photo, you can see our trailer with it's dark rear window. This place was truly in the middle of nowhere. |
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