The weather was beautiful all week.... until Friday.  We arrived to clouds and snow flurries.  It did not look promising for observing, but you never know in Michigan.  Folks gathered to make acquaintance, chatted, played with gizmos (or zap them as the case may be).  Still, all made the best of the wintery conditions and enjoyed the time together.  Friday night was a washout, but maybe Saturday would fair better.  No one was hopelessly lost on Kevin Dehne's nature hike, thank goodness! (We love you, Kevin!)  And the rocket launches were, shall we say, exciting - a failed shute here, a misfire there, a core sample retrieved. Then more clouds, tempered by a wonderful turkey dinner with all the fixings and an informative talk by Clayton Kessler on astrophotography.  Jack Underwood made story telling history, too... 90 minutes on video tape!   Before midnight, the weather maps still showed total overcast.  Then the call came, "hey, it's clear out!"  Boy, was it - steady skies, fine transparency.  We enjoyed a few hours of galaxy and globular viewing with a host of hastily set up scopes.  Kevin's "Delta Dob", sporting a sweet new focuser and 32mm Panoptic, gave beautiful views of multiple galaxies.  Jay, Scott, and Pat among others swung their Newts to a host of objects.  Norb and Jack aimed their Celestron SCT's to a variety of objects as well - a flurry of observing activity, so to speak.  Kevin's Delta College class was busy sweeping up observing points while trying to keep writing fingers warm.  Jack picked out Mars low in the SE in Ophiuchus with his C8 just as a fresh batch of clouds returned by 3:30am.  Given the weather outlook, we were quite pleased to get the views we did!  By Sunday morning breakfast, a dusting of fresh snow had blanketed the site.

Dave D'Onofrio	Kevin Dehne and baby
Jack Underwood	Bob, Jack, Dave

Clayton's talk	Jon, Tom, and Jeff ponder energy
Homework time	Alumni meet

Game time	Guess who?
Linda serves her delicious pies	Kevin finds Tweenkies (of course)

Cold afternoon on Fish Lake	The dock on Fish Lake
Pat and Ann chat	Tom and Candice selling club T-shirts