The night sky

We were coming across Colorado the other night and got near the little town of Sargents (on the side of Monarch Pass) and pulled off into a wide spot on the road to sleep for the night. DH took the hound out for her nightly ritual, and started calling to me to come out and see the stars. They were amazing. When you aren't in a town and don't have the distraction of the lights, you can see an amazing amount of the lights in the sky. Several months ago, on a trip to one of the sports/camping stores, we picked up a star chart for DS. When his Dad started calling us out to see the stars, he asked to take the chart out to see what we could see. We were able to pick out the big and little dippers, orion's belt, and several other constellations. It was pretty cool to be able to set the date and time and see all of the different constellations that should be visible between the 40th and 50th parallels. As we were looking at the stars, the moon started to come up over the mountain. We were able to actually see it moving up into the sky.
Have you ever been to the Smithsonian and see the clock that is a pendulum that swings in a circle and knocks down the little cones? You feel like you can almost see the world turning by the way that the pendulum moves from cone or mark to the next. That's how it was with the moon coming up over the mountain. It was kind of like tick, tick, tick and every tick brought the moon just a little higher into the sky until it was almost full and we could see it with all of the craters and everything.

DH decided to get the binoculars out to see the stars better, and then we got the camera out to try and take some moon pictures. He then decided to combine the two and see if we could get some closeup pictures of the moon that showed the definition of the craters and such. Now I can't swear that these are the pictures taken with the binoculars or if they are just really good zoom shots. There were about 40 pictures of the moon on the card and I only was able to keep about six of them. Most of the ones taken with the binoculars on the camera were BAD!!! But I think that these might be ones where everything lined up and we got some cool shots of the moon.

The next day, we went to Canon City and met my parents for lunch and then took off south to cut across New Mexico and into Texas. As we were cutting down US64 in New Mexico we came upon a thunderstorm. We weren't in the rain and were able to see these rainbows in the sky.













Both of these were taken out the front window of the truck. They were taken as the rainbow was fading, but we had seen incredibly vibrant double rainbows and were able to see them from end to end. I couldn't get the camera quick enough to take those, but I did get these two shots. Aren't they pretty? Something that we noticed as were were looking at the double rainbows, was that the outside one was a mirror image of the inside one. The colors were reversed on it. I had never noticed that before, probably because I had never seen a set so vibrantly before.



We spent the day yesterday just chillin in the truck stop. I was able to knit a bit, and then we watched some movies. Some of the truck stops have a system called IdleAire. On that system you put this adapter in your passenger window and then you bring this contraption into the adapter and then you have air or heat (depending on the season), television, pay movies, telephone, internet, driver training programs etc., all for the low, low price of $2.18 per hour (or $1.85 per hour if you sign up for the gold membership). The biggest benefit of this service is that you don't have to idle your truck. You save the cost of the fuel, the wear and tear on your truck, and you get to have unlimited television (some channels) and then if you want the premium channels you pay a flat fee for the whole time you are hooked up. High speed internet is a flat fee, outgoing long distance is another flat fee and then they also have pay per view movies. We never pay for the telephone service, rarely for the internet, but we will pay for the extended channels on the television and sometimes will do a movie. Yesterday, the boys watched several westerns on the "free" channels and then we decided to watch a movie. We picked Catch and Release which I thought was a cute movie. It was kind of sad and funny and then everything turned out all right in the end. We then decided to watch A Good Year with Russell Crowe. Very good movie, but then again I really like Russell Crowe. Finally, DH and I decided that we would watch Amazing Grace. It was about England in the 18th century and William Wilberforce and William Pitt fighting for the abolishment of slavery. If you like historical drama's, this one was very well done and although it was very late and DH missed most of it, I enjoyed it.

We are stopping now, for brunch, and I really have run out of things to say. I am still knitting on the dishcloth, ds's socks and am trying to find the yarn that I will use for the Guernsey socks from six socks KAL. I wanted to use some of the Bearfoot that I got the other day, but it is too fuzzy and the cables don't show up well. I may have to wait until we get home and I can look through the at home stash and find something that will work. I don't think that I could talk DH into stopping at a yarn shop again...besides that, I have some stuff that I have ordered waiting at home for me...Louet Gems, that will work...oh good, got that settled. whew!!!

Catch you another day!