A perk of being a traveling astronomer? Clouds. Because when it’s cloudy, I run away on micro-adventures.
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Last night was my 96th sidewalk astronomy session of 2026. Everywhere I go, a lot of people ask how I choose which towns and cities to visit as I travel around the country. Some people suspect it’s weather, some think the foot traffic, some say “maybe it’s just a good spot?”
The answer is somewhere in the middle of all that. Yes, I choose Florida for winter because it has some of the most robust clear skies during that season. Sedona is best in the spring and autumn. San Diego just tends to be good skies despite it having slower traffic than other bigger cities, and I’m still collecting data to figure out the best time of year for San Diego overall.
Other parts of the country tend to be less reliable on a day-to-day basis, and because I only spend 2-3 weeks in any given area, I need to make sure I either bulk up financially before visiting, or that I can reliably stargaze with decent foot traffic while I’m in those places.
But even with all factors considered, local daily weather still plays a role. Last year, Arizona got two tropical storms in the span of a month that pushed me away from Sedona. During the first in September 2025, I ran away to San Diego for the first time ever (which hooked me on this city) and then Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks after, and during the second in mid-October 2025, I ran north on a true micro-adventure for six days that was incredibly refreshing.
Such it was this past weekend when clouds and rain took over San Diego on Friday and Saturday. On Friday afternoon, I was at Seaport Village scouting out the cloud situation, but decided at 4:30pm sidewalk astronomy would be a no-go.
And so I ran away from San Diego.
I drove about 1.5 hours northeast to Palomar Mountain and camped for the night with a view of Lake Henshaw to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. As night settled, a fog rolled in over the mountains, leaving only the Moon visible through the thinner layers.
Come morning, I drove up to the Palomar Observatory, stopping off at the general store where I met the owners, Kay and Pascal, and chatted a while about astronomy, our lives in different parts of the country, and Kay’s children who left living in cities to run small businesses in rural Utah to be surrounded by the quieter natural world.
Then I moved on the actual Palomar Observatory another few miles up the mountain, and let me tell you, I was not prepared for how HUGE this was. Admittedly, I don’t visit observatories often because of hosting sidewalk astronomy as a full-time thing. I’ve done Lowell, Griffith, and some smaller ones (ps. RIP Sunspot in Alamogordo that I never got to visit before closure and now demolition). But I’ve never visited an observatory at night to see one in action, including Palomar.
The single-room visitor center was well worth spending time in, with a history of discoveries made from the observatory and a range of astronomers who worked there through the decades, plus real images each observatory on the site has taken.
Then you keep walking down the pathway to the 200-inch Hale Telescope…and WOW. Absolutely gigantic. I know these observatories can be big, but I don’t know that I was expecting such a huge structure, especially given the smaller sizes of others I’ve visited.
Which just means I need to visit more.
From Palomar Observatory, I headed back down the mountain and had lunch at the 4-acre Palomar County Park, a nice little stop-off with about a dozen picnic tables. Clouds rolled through the trees, saturating the forest with patchy fog, the temperature sitting in the low 50s.
At this point it was about 4pm, so I continued my way down to the base of the mountain and drove onward, searching for another place to stay over for the night. I found a spot I *really* wanted to reach, but halfway down the road, determined my little 2WD van was not getting over some of the ruts, and had to throw it in reverse and drive backward for about half-a-mile before reaching a wider clearing to pull a…4…5…6? point turn and get going again.
In all honesty, this was one of the first times I’ve ever bailed on reaching a camping spot. I wasn’t keen on it, but I accepted my limits and moved on.
I drove further, wandering deeper into the mountains and eventually to an overlook: far, far below laid the desert town of Borrego Springs, home of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. It’s a desert oddity, with rusted statues of horses and animals lining the highway as you swing through the town. It truly looks like a movie set: low-lying buildings, quirky landmarks, a sprawling desert wrapped around it with nothing else in sight for miles on end.
I found a place to camp for the night amidst the desert, with Borrego Springs miles behind me, sunlight reflecting off cars and windows being the only hint of a town among the desert.
It was…windy. The kind of wind that constantly slams doors shut (or holds them open, and you have to fight back to close them!) and, in my case, kept rocking my van back and forth all night, the wind howling. I can sleep through a lot, and this was no different, but it was certainly among the windiest spots I’ve ever camped out in all my adventures.
Sunset was a stunner, with clouds crawling over the mountains, and rays of sunlight beaming through them. Ocotillo were EVERYWHERE, not dozens nor hundreds, but thousands for as far as the eye could see, making for some spectacular photography against the golden light.
Morning came and after watching sunrise cast its red light upon the western mountains, I packed up and began the journey back to San Diego, driving up some of the windiest roads I’ve driven in California thus far as I passed through Julian and other mountain towns. Rain spattered my windshield, cleaning some of the dust I’ve accumulated these past few months in New Mexico, Arizona, and California, but I could still use a good wash.
The farther I drove, the more society returned, a sobering reminder to appreciate the quiet, the stillness, the desolation of the remote wilderness. As buildings dotted mountainsides, my mind kept flashing back to the open desert beyond the mountains behind me.
I’m now in my final three days hosting sidewalk astronomy in San Diego. Tonight, Thursday the 30th, will be either the last or second to last at Seaport Village. Tomorrow I have a partnered event in National City, and Saturday looks like I have a private event with some families. Then my sister comes to town on Monday, so I’ll spend a few days with her before driving north to explore Oregon for two weeks.
Keep an eye out on my socials to see if I’ll return to San Diego on June 8-10th for the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus. If I don’t, I do plan to return later in the year for more astronomy–especially after Saturn returns in October–so keep an eye out!
This world is beautiful.
Alex
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