Final Observing Time

On our last day at the observatory, we went over to Summerhaven at about 13:30. It was a nice little town amongst the mountains. Apparently they had a bad forest fire some years back that burnt much of the town. Nonetheless it is a nice tourist attraction. We took a hike up a mountain from the town; it was on a snow-dirt mixture path. I liked this hike, because it was a little more challenging than the others; it was also pretty warm for being up on the mountain. Afterword we stopped at a couple gift shops in town, ordered some pizza from the local pizza place, and almost everyone got some fudge from the fudge shop (how could you not).
We went back to the observatory to prepare for our last observing night around 16:30. It was a decent night for viewing, very good to start. We used the 55mm lens for our last day so that Saturn could fit better on our computer screen. As usual, the sky was beautiful for Jupiter viewing and we got some nice images. The remainder of the people (including me) who had not yet taken pictures of a nebula did so. I imaged The Orion Nebula (NGC 1976). It looked crazy, it was like a bondfire that was being blown in one direction by the wind. After spending some time stacking images of Jupiter, I went to help out with Saturn imaging. There were some images of Saturn that looked better than those of the previous day, but as time went on the sky became less clear and the images got blurier.
The next day we got up, packed up, and left the observatory a little after 13:00. The view on the trip down the mountain seemed even better than the one on the way up. We stopped once at a sight where we could see a series of waterfalls; this was interesting, because there is not a ton of precipitation in the area. Later that night we went to dinner with Mrs. Staubitz, a generous donor to the physics department (helps pay for the trip). She was very nice, and we had a great time and ate some great food.