In March of 2011, Fred and I took off to Lake San Antonio for some imaging. It's located about a two-hour drive south of Watsonville. Not all that far from the Big Sur site that Rick Nolthenius uses for field trips.

Fred got an RV slip and I just set up with him.

Fred has a very nice Sprinter that he travels around in.

The weather was perfect during the day and we spent the time reading our manuals for the SBIG cameras and Losmandy mount. We were just learning how to operate all this equipment. It's like drinking from a fire hose.

Fred is a radio aficionado and he set up a wireless hotspot so we could get online as well. Cool!

One day we were able to watch a small group of deer sleeping and wandering around the area.

The deer were really fun to watch. They wandered around like they owned the place.

After taking a nap in the shade, they meandered up through our camp toward us.

The deer are protected in the park so they aren't too afraid of people. I think they were a bit curious about us.

One took an interest in Fred.

This one saw whatever Fred was working on on his computer and decided to swing by and take a look.

One very brave deer.

Maybe this one was really just smelling the cookies we were nibbling on.

I think Fred made a new friend that day.

Considering that Fred used to be a big game hunter, this deer should be thankful she got just cookies :)

Here's Fred getting ready for a night of imaging.

That's me at about 2:00 A.M. and about 28 degrees. We finally couldn't take the cold anymore and decided to pack it in for the night. This is the trip where I imaged the Crab Nebula (Messier 1). A pretty successful and fun trip.

Here's my version of Messier 1 (the Crab Nebula).

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