Dark skies in Northern Missouri

On Friday after work, I decided to drive 2 hours, a bit over 100 miles, to northern Missouri which is the closest darkest skies I could find, some little place ran by the Missouri Department of Conservation called Seat Memorial Conservation Area.

Got to the area at about 8:30 and Venus was still up, although it set before I got set up. Tried to find a good place to pull off or park, but ended up just parking on one side of a triangle at the intersection of two dirt roads.

While I was setting up I heard some scampering along the road, and pointed my flashlight at two raccoons moseying down the road to a little stand of trees. I got my telescope pointed at the moon just before it set, and I think the atmospheric distortion really added to the picture.

Though the next 5 hours was spent mostly fighting with software and trying to get my telescope properly aligned, which is something I still need more practice doing. While I was fighting with the telescope, I had my camera set up on a tripod doing long exposures with a wide angle lens (A manual focus Meike 2.8/12 I got off Amazon for $170), and those came out well. It's been years since I've been somewhere dark enough to see the milky way.

About 1:30 I packed up and made the long drive back home, getting back at like 3:30. I realized the next day that one of the big reasons I was having so many software problems with the scope is I forgot to attach the little wifi antenna to the controller box for it, so the tablet I use could barely get signal from it right next to it, and if I wandered off too far, it would drop connection.

I'm still pondering if I want to go through the hassle of driving the scope with something like KStars on a raspberry pi or similar small computer. Doing plate solving for alignment seems cool, but that's a lot more complexity, maybe more than what I need.