Hi, Matt
In the winter they often lock the gates to either Lone Rock or Grey
Pine (or both) around sunset, so if possible it's best to call the
office in the afternoon at (707) 433-9483. The extension *27 will get
you the visitor's center and you may be able to talk to someone who
will leave a message with a ranger or I've just left a message directly
with a park ranger. Whenever I've talked to someone in the past, they
have been friendly and helpful about leaving the gate open.
Steve Gottileb
On Mar 6, 2005, at 11:23 AM, Matthew wrote:
> I got to Lake Sonoma and found new, locked gates at Lone Rock and Gray
> Pine!
> What's going on here??
> Is this just for the off-season, however that's defined? Does anyone
> have
> contact info for whoever would
> know? Fortunately, this isn't a !OR because Little Flat was open.
> This is
> the first area you get to after the bridge
> when coming in, and it's on the right. It's a bit lower than our usual
> sites, and brighter because of all-night lights at
> the boat dock (all thieves are photophobes, right??), and it doesn't
> have as
> good a S horizon. However, it
> is better protected from car headlights.
>
> There was one other person there (sorry, can't remember your name!),
> who had
> a homebuilt 13" ball-mount scope.
> It was his first scope. We had a good time trading views. I got to
> use my
> new Persistent Thread Generator for its
> intended purpose for the first time. If you don't know what that is, a
> hint: it creates green light in the hand and heat on TAC :-)
>
> The CSC's predicted little cloud cover and moderate seeing. What we
> got was
> considerable clouds and crappy
> seeing. When I looked at Jupiter at 10:30PM, I could barely see belts.
> Cassini's division was barely visible on Saturn,
> even when it transited.
>
> All that aside, I had fun doing Messiers in preparation for the
> Marathon,
> adding some notes to Machholtz's guide
> with better ways to find stuff than "13deg E and 5deg N of the previous
> object" as he likes to do. I hadn't
> observed in so long I'd forgotten how good it feels! All the stress
> of a
> hard work-week went away. It's
> better than yoga.
>
> See you at Coe for the Marathon - I hope!
> mam
>
Received on Mon Mar 7 20:29:30 2005