Another month is history as time marches onward. August wasn’t very eventful here – it’s the hottest month of the year and this year we had very little monsoon activity. I spent an inordinate amount of time indoors, enjoying the cool air conditioning.

Donna gets out to golf at least once a week and also plays tennis three times a week in the early morning hours. When she golfs the nine-hole course, I usually sit on the back deck with a cup of coffee about 45 or 50 minutes after her tee time. I use an old pair of cheap Bushnell binoculars and pick her up on the fourth hole green, then watch as she hits the fifth hole right behind our place.

After doing that one morning, I had a wild idea about upgrading to a decent pair of binoculars. I looked online for a couple of days, then decided I needed to have a hands-on comparison. So I drove over to Bass Pro Shop near Dobson Road and the Loop 202 in northwest Mesa. Mesa is a big city – nearly 140 square miles and it’s the third largest in Arizona by population after Phoenix and Tucson. I’m getting off track – I meant to say it’s about an 18-mile drive from Viewpoint in east Mesa to Bass Pro in northwest Mesa.

The optics department in the Bass Pro Shop is on the second floor on the east side. I was able to handle and look through a number of binoculars. On the upper west wall of the store are a series of windows – the clerk told me it’s 91 yards from the optics counter to the west wall. That’s right – you could fit a football field inside of the store! He then told me I should look through the second window from the left and find a large white house with a red tile roof on Camelback Mountain. That house was just over eight miles away.

I was astounded! With all of the binoculars I sampled, I could focus through a window 91 yards away and get detail on the house eight miles away! I was mainly interested in 8X (eight power – the views appear eight times closer than the actual distance). I also tried 10X. For me, 10X is pushing it. Although it makes objects appear closer than 8X and can provide more detail, this is offset by my inability to hold the larger binocular steady enough to take advantage of any detail improvement.

I tried a few different brands and price ranges. I was tempted to break the bank on a high-end set, but kept my sanity. I found that once I reached a certain quality level, any improvements were incremental. Spending twice as much didn’t make the view twice as good to my eye. I ended up buying 8X42 Vortex binoculars that are light years ahead of the Bushnell binoculars I was using.

I took the binoculars out at night and could see surprising detail on the moon. Not on the same level as my telescopes, but better than I expected.

We had a housesit scheduled at the end of the month in Cortez, Colorado. It’s about a 400-mile drive from Mesa. The homeowner wanted us to arrive around 10:30 or 11:00 am on Thursday, August 31st. That would mean a dark-thirty departure, so we opted to leave on Wednesday and stop halfway in Gallup, New Mexico. I loaded the Jeep Compass with my astronomy gear – I took my Astro-Tech AT115EDT telescope and Losmandy mount. I had a target in mind for the dark skies we anticipated at the property outside of town. I also brought my binoculars.

We left around 9:15 am and made it to the Royal Holiday Motel in Gallup around 3 pm – we’d lost an hour crossing into Mountain Daylight Time at the New Mexico border. Gallup can be a rough-and-tumble town. We were on the west side along Route 66, a boulevard lined with motels. We drove downtown and had dinner at a diner with traditional New Mexico cuisine. After dinner, we went to the historic Hotel el Rancho for a cocktail.

The Hotel el Rancho has been in Gallup since the 1940s and many film stars have hung their hat there while making movies in locations nearby. Hollywood stars including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck and Suzanna Pleschette have stayed there. More recently Emilio Estevez, Lou Diamond Phillips and Kiefer Sutherland and others were there to film Young Guns II. They had many framed photographs and memorabilia on display. The lobby was classic with twin curving staircases on the left and right leading up to a second floor landing. The wood work is grand.

The Royal Holiday Motel where we stayed advertised free continental breakfast – it’s a lie. Unless you call Cheerios and white bread and a toaster continental breakfast. We passed and headed out before 8am and grabbed a quick bite at McDonald’s in Walmart. I also needed to pick up eye drops and Flonase for pollen allergies which I forgot to pack.

We arrived at the home outside of Cortez right at 11am. Diane, the homeowner gave us a tour and instructions on the care of her two dogs, Charlie and Zuni. The dogs were adorable – well-mannered and a joy to take care of. The property was on four acres in a sparsly populated area northwest of town. The nearest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away. Once we settled in, I set up my telescope.

I had the telescope protected from dust or rain under a cover that also reflects sunlight off of it. I made a couple of changes to my set-up. This isn’t the best way to go – I usually try to only change one thing at a time in case I have problems and need to troubleshoot. If you change multiple pieces in the set-up, it can lead to confusing results. I was using a new camera – a Player One Poseidon C. This has an APS-C size sensor which is larger than what I used previously. I also changed the field flattener from a TS 1.0x to an Astro-Tech 0.8x. The 0.8x means it’s a focal length reducer, resulting in a wider field of view. The wide field along with the larger sensor would allow me to frame my target to best advantage. I was targeting the Eastern Veil Nebula.

I got things rolling after dark and completed the calibration process fairly quickly. Then I had to find focus with the new set-up. I ran into a snag. I couldn’t get a focused image of the stars. I was perplexed and started putting in spacers to increase the back-focus length. I couldn’t get it. I finally discovered the problem was a light leak in the Player One filter drawer creating reflections – another new piece of equipment.

Once I fixed the light leak, I decided it would be easier if I focused on the bright, full moon. Then I could fine-focus on stars. I slewed to the moon and took a test shot. It was so far from focus I was lost again. Then I looked up at the moon. It was obscured by clouds! Clouds had rolled in while I was fiddling with my equipment and I didn’t even notice. I covered the ‘scope and called it a night.

I’ve always said astrophotography teaches you patience. I had to be patient and try again the next night. Friday had partly cloudy skies all day and it was worse after dark. The next lesson I’ve learned from astrophotography is acceptance – accept the things that are out of your control and cannot be changed. So I waited for Saturday night. Clouds again. My telescope never came out from under the cover and I took it down on Sunday night and packed it in the Jeep for Monday’s departure.

The house had two hummingbird feeders on the upper deck. It also had two bird feeders in the back garden area. I enjoyed sitting on the lower deck area and puffing on a cigar while I used my binoculars to bird watch. With the clear detailed views provided by the binoculars, I could easily distinguish the markings and positively identify a Woodson’s Jay. It was easy to tell it apart from the Pinon Jays that also came to feeders. The sparrows were harder to identify. Not only are there many similar species, there are also many variations of color and to a degree, markings on what is called the same bird. House sparrows are a case in point. I really enjoyed the bird watching.

Donna enjoyed daily morning walks with the dogs. Charlie was super-easy and would approach me wherever I was and put his head on my knee waiting for me to scratch his head and ears. Zuni took a couple of days to warm up to me, but then she would lay at my feet wherever I was sitting.

On Saturday, Donna and I drove into town for the Farmers’ Market. We also went to the grand opening of the Pueblo Seed Company store where Donna purchased a few items.

We departed from Cortez on Monday, September 4th – Labor Day. I anticipated about a six-hour drive time. We retraced our route down US491 through the Navajo Nation to Gallup, then west on I-40 to Holbrook where we exited onto AZ377. I blinked and missed the gas station in Holbrook and decided to continue on to Heber-Overgaard. This went against my grain – I don’t like to run below a quarter tank of fuel, I like to keep about 100-mile reserve. We went below a quarter tank before we reached Heber-Overgaard.

We found a Subway sandwich shop in Heber-Overgaard and I also filled our gas tank there. We gained an hour crossing into Arizona which maintains Mountain Standard Time year-round. We went west on AZ260 toward Payson. The traffic was heavier than usual, due to the holiday long weekend. Donna saw a traffic alert on her phone.

AZ260 goes from four lanes (two in each direction) to two lanes a couple of miles east of Star Valley. This constriction was a choke point that brought traffic to a standstill. We crept along, bumper-to-bumper from there until we made it through Payson. It took two hours to cover about 10 miles! Remember what I said about learning acceptance. I kept my cool as we crept along. Once we were past Payson on Highway 87, I lost my patience along with everyone else as we sped along in excess of 80mph. My six-hour drive turned into nine hours.

A few days ago, I was thinking about how much I enjoyed the bird watching. When I was a kid, my late brother Ricky and I often went bird watching in the woods by Lake Whitehurst in Norfolk, Virginia. We also did it when we lived in Waukeegan, Illinois. I could identify many more birds then than I can remember now.

I also thought about how much photography I used to do. I took a semester of Photography at Palomar College in San Marcos, California in 1981. In the late ’90s, I transitioned to digital photography and invested a lot in camera bodies, lenses and lighting equipment. I did high school sports photography when my daughters were in school and a local paper published many of my photos. I’ve maintained photos on a web host called Pbase.com since then.

My photography gear is long outdated as I’ve only used cell phone pictures for the last decade. I decided to take up the hobby again. When I’m not doing astrophotography at night, I intend to try bird and wildlife photography during the day. After a bit of research, I went for a mirrorless digital camera body from Canon. I had a bit of serendipity. I phoned B&H Photo in New York where I used to buy much of my gear. They had an unadvertised special on the camera and lenses that I wanted. Canon sets a minimum advertised price (MAP) on its retailers. But for B&H’s 50th anniversary, they had a special event called Bild50 and applied additional discounts when I placed my order. I saved $550 over the online price and had free overnight shipping to boot! Now I’m on another learning curve as I wade through the menus on my Canon R7 and try to optimize the set-up.

I’ll close this long post with a couple of dinner plates. First is a pan-seared pork chop with garlic and spices, served with roasted baby potatoes and asparagus.

Next we have Donna’s crab cake served with a corn, tomato, onion and avocado salad.

On the 18th of this month, we’ll be heading out for another house sit. This time we’ll be in San Diego in the neighborhood where I went to junior high and high school – Clairemont. We have a nine-day housesit and I’m looking forward to photographing shore birds at the beach. I won’t take astrophotography gear as we’ll be in the middle of the San Diego metro light-dome.