Star gazing in New Mexico

I have never considered myself a "star gazer" nor have I paid much attention before to the stars and constellations.  However, since we started this journey, we find ourselves surrounded by these beautiful deep dark nights, with millions of amazing bright stars showing off.  It's hard to ignore the magnificence of the galaxy and avoid start getting all cheesy, wondering about those deep questions of our own nature we seldomly ask ourselves.  But I went ahead and ignore the anyway.

Air is so dry, the fire will keep burning without having to mess with it at all.  Thanks Mr. Mac for the wood!!

Tonight, after a nice fire and a s'mores session with some neighbors we met, (plus their 5 kiddos), I decided to fully immerse myself into a star gazing session.  We don't have any telescopes, just the advantage of total darkness and a clear moonless sky.  I pulled out the picnic blanket and set it close to the nice fire (it was chilly out) , laid out some sleeping bags on top, grabbed some comfy pillows, and proceeded the fetch the rest of the family to get all cozy in the our "star gazing pad"

Our star gazing setup

After the girls stopped moving like little worms and settled down, it was really fun.  We saw a satellite cruising along, recognized some constellations, and started our shooting stars contest.  Amy came out punching with 2 sightings to nothing.  Then, it was the girl's turn, they saw their first shooting star at the same time.  They got so excited, they couldn't stop giggling and squeezing each other.  I was the big looser with 0 shootings stars! nada!

Girls got tired, and they started heading to bed. I was determined, for Pete's sake, that I was gonna see at least one darned shooting star, or I was gonna spend the rest of the night out there with the little mice running around and whatever other critter was out there making noise and lurking in the night. Well, after another 10 or 15 minutes, my efforts paid off.  I saw 6 shooting stars by the time my back started to get stiff from laying on the ill-padded star gazing setup we had.  That was really cool.  2 or 3 of them were those that you barely catch them of the corner of your eye. But the rest of them, were awesome.  It seemed as if you are looking at a star that suddenly decides to split and whoosh! there it goes.  How cool is that!

Maybe we continue to geek out with stars and end up getting a telescope, who knows, but at least we'll repeat our star gazing session for the fun of it.  Next time though, I'll get the inflatable pads out!