Man did it rain on Friday up in Springfield…. It’s possible that I have seen harder rain in my life, but this day was certainly up there (and I definitely can’t imagine a harder rain that I was outside for). The 4 of us (Dad, Chuck, Johnny, and myself) met up at Stellafane’s “Fern Forest” around 10am on Friday and quickly set up camp. The rain hadn’t really started yet, so we were able to set up our campsite in relative dryness… But after a few hours the sky really opened up and we spent most of the day under the canopy (which we found out was not entirely waterproof) and trying to stay dry. We are generally a pretty upbeat gaggle of guys, but rain like this can bring down Richard Simmons.

Fortunately, after a dreadful night’s sleep (for me), we woke up to a beautiful day. Saturday brought us a warm day with nice white fluffy clouds, which was a fantastic change of pace. During the day, we went up to the hill and checked out the all of the competing ‘scopes… And the craftsmanship this year seemed to be out of control… I can’t remember a year with so many ornate scopes, mounts, or devices. We retreated back to our camp, some napping was accomplished, and then we ate dinner before the evening program. This year’s evening speaker spoke about his theories of time travel that is based on Einstein’s relativity theories. The skies cleared up during the program, but as it was wrapping up everything clouded over. We had heard rumors of heavy rains after midnight before the program started, so we packed up everything but our tent and sleeping bags into the car so if it did rain we had less to pack up in the morning. Ultimately, though, the weather held out long enough for us to leave Stellafane dry.

Sometimes I wonder why I am so eager to return to Stellafane year after year, even though bad weather is so common. The real reason is family and friend. It might be discouraging, but it would take quite a bit to keep me from going.