We got up at 4:00AM this morning so we could watch the supposedly spectacular new meteor shower, the Camelopardalids. Some folks were predicting that the sky would look like the star streaks that most SciFi shows use to signify transitioning to faster than light travel. We drove 6 or 7 miles north of town to a big dark field. I looked up right after parking and saw a streak that moved through about 15° of sky and then nothing. We sat for about 15 minutes and not another meteor trail appeared. We moved the car a few more miles north to get past I-20 and the only moving lights I saw there were the green eyes of a couple of deer crossing the road as we came to stop in the new spot. Now they are saying that some astronomers were not surprised by the lack of a spectacular show, it might be because the parent comet is rather dim or they might have miscalculated and the big show will be tonight. Ha, fool me once…
After the sun came up and breakfast was finished we decide to spend the day filled some holes in our Motoring Challenge list with some local places. We managed to grab 2 cities; an A & a J, 2 counties; an E & a L, and a National Park. We’ve already scored the only National Park in the state, Congaree, but National Park Service run sites count too, so we went to the Ninety Six National Historic Site. After parking the car and taking our challenge photo we took a walk around the site on their 1 mile loop trail and that is where we saw the above critter. Kind of hard to tell size from the photo, but if he was stretched straight out I bet he would have been about 3 feet long.
This evening I washed the last 1500 miles of Texas Road Trip grime off the Emperor, but he won’t stay clean long though as we are planning on taking a day trip tomorrow to Savannah…
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1360