Last fall, when I was on the journey chasing the sun with the Girl Camper Raffle R-Pod, one of the first places I stayed was Calhoun County Park. This is a 200 acre park with a renovated Historic Village, a campground with only eight sites, and a designated “dark sky stargazing area”. That means, there are no streetlights or floodlights in the park and the surrounding area is very rural. When it gets dark, it’s “can’t see your hands in front of your face” dark. 

When I heard there was a comet in the area, I told Mr. FixIt I wanted to go for a drive over there to look for it. The sky was clear and the Milky Way splashed its cotton candy cloud of stars and noble gases across the indigo dome above us. We watched the sun set and the stars pop out one by one. I saw something but decided it was just a cloud. We didn’t even know which direction to look. So, we turned our chairs to see the darker side of the sky. 

We saw the International Space Station go over. And satellites. We heard frogs and a whippoorwill and something rattling around in the woods. There were lightning bugs and the occasional whine of a mosquito in our ears. But, alas…no comet. By 10:30, we called it quits. The park is nearly an hour from home and it had been a long day. We gathered our chairs and as I was folding them, the man parked nearby asked us if we saw the comet. When we said no, he and his wife showed us where it was and handed us a pair of binoculars. And, sure enough…there it was! 

Comet Neowise. 

I gasped when I saw it. I saw the Hale-Bopp Comet when I was in Salt Lake City. This one was so much bigger. A little harder to see with the naked eye…but that thing I thought was a cloud was actually the comet. If you look straight at it, it’s hard to see. But if you look just to one side, you can easily see it. And you can definitely see it with a pair of good binoculars. We thanked the couple profusely and headed back home.

It was a really great day all the way around. I made a scratch pizza. Cleaned the pool. Watered the garden. And saw a comet that won’t be back around for 6,800 years. Not something you get to do everyday.

❤️

“He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.”

Psalms 147:3 NIV