Bonfire! Summer is Over.

Labor Day is officially over, and I am now going back to start another school year.  And while the technical calendar terms may disagree, summer is officially dead.  Fall now begins.  To celebrate this mournful passing, I started a tradition last year of building an End-Summer-Bonfire.  Here is this year, built and lit this past Saturday night.

After the fire tamed to a dull roar, we feasted on campfire food.  Parker and Carter also got a kick of using the star finder ap on Mom's new cell phone. I then slept in the tent with Carter (it had been Parker's turn the previous night) and we played a game of chess together and then fell asleep with the rain-fly off looking up at the stars again.  It was fantastic.  Oh June 2014, I have my eye on you!

The Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 6217  Image Courtesy of the Hubble Telescope, unfortunately, not Dad's and Carter's camping tent this time around. 

Impressively, this galaxy is over 67 million let years away.  It's located in Ursa Minor, so if Carter and I did have a powerful enough telescope, we might have been able to see it from our tent.  But it would probably would have been tricky to find it anyway, and we probably would have just played more chess instead.