We went to Kennedy Meadows this weekend to camp with the dogs and use the telescope. We drove up on Friday which wasn't bad from Riverside at 170 miles. It is up in the southern Sierras about 25 miles west of US-395 at an elevation of 6,500ft. It is pretty dry and dusty, but not as bad as Grandview (a few hours north in the White Mountains). The campground has around 25 sites, each with a picnic table, a water faucet nearby, and pit toilets for $17/night. The campround was relatively empty with only 3 other people there and they had RVs so it was nice and quite - no lights or campfires.
It is situated in a valley with a fork of the Kern River running by, which I think affected our seeing at night since it seemed that there might have been a slight inversion layer of air trapped in the valley. The weather was warmer than I expected with highs in the 90s during the day and mid-50s at night.
We hiked up river for about a half-mile and took Astro and Orion for their first swim in moving water. It is pretty shallow, with few spots that were much deeper than knee deep but they were pretty freaked out. Except for Orion slipping in, neither one wanted to get wet so I threw both of them in and let them swim to the nearest rock. The water was nice and cool, not moving too quickly, but I still don't think the doggies liked it very much.
We spent both nights using the telescope and while it was clear and dark ( SQM 21.57 ), it was not any better than Cottonwood Springs CG in Joshua Tree National Park (other than being cooler!). It was still a fun night as we just put a Astrocrumb filter slide onto the telescope and we could just click through the different filters we had installed (Broadband, UHC, and OIII) - very cool to follow along the tendrils of the Veil Nebula and switch back and forth with the UHC and OIII without having to thread and unthread filters.
We hiked up river for about a half-mile and took Astro and Orion for their first swim in moving water. It is pretty shallow, with few spots that were much deeper than knee deep but they were pretty freaked out. Except for Orion slipping in, neither one wanted to get wet so I threw both of them in and let them swim to the nearest rock. The water was nice and cool, not moving too quickly, but I still don't think the doggies liked it very much.
We spent both nights using the telescope and while it was clear and dark ( SQM 21.57 ), it was not any better than Cottonwood Springs CG in Joshua Tree National Park (other than being cooler!). It was still a fun night as we just put a Astrocrumb filter slide onto the telescope and we could just click through the different filters we had installed (Broadband, UHC, and OIII) - very cool to follow along the tendrils of the Veil Nebula and switch back and forth with the UHC and OIII without having to thread and unthread filters.
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