Have you hugged a national park? It's National Park Week!

Hi everyone, we're still up on cloud nine after last weekend's awesome star party at Mojave National Preserve! It was so great to see many of you over the weekend. There were at least 4 families from our astronomy list who joined us, in addition to the 4 families worth of astronomers. There were over 50 people there, and another 15 on Friday night for our first night impromptu star party. Many staff and friends of the Mojave National Preserve. http://www.preservethemojave.org/index.php Here is a set of pictures I took. Each of us took lots of pictures on the hikes, and Mojo has some spectacular panoramas that will make their way to a blog soon. I'm busy writing up a story about the Chuckwalla lizards of Amboy Cratrer and other tales myself. One park visit, so much to learn and share! http://photo.whiteoaks.com/2010-04-11-mojavejane/index.html. We're heading to our no-frills observing site off the I-10 Red Cloud Road between Chiriaco Summit and Desert Center in a few hours. But first we'll head up into Joshua Tree National Park from the south to check out the Colorado Desert wildflowers, and to hug one of our very favorite national parks. This week is National Park Week (in addition to Earth Week and National Astronomy Week) But this means there is free admission to every one of the nations National Parks April 17-25th. http://www.nationalparks.org/explore/?fa=national-park-week I hope you make it to one of our local parks this week! Find your closest ones on this link - there are 4 national parks within 100 miles of my zip code, and we're heading to one of them! Next weekend we'll be out on the sidewalks once again. We'll be in Pasadena Friday night and Monrovia Saturday night to share moon, Venus, Saturn and Mars (and maybe Mercury) with all of you who stop by! See you under the stars!! Jane -- Jane Houston Jones Monrovia, CA Website: www.whiteoaks.com Old Town Astronomers: http://www.otastro.org What's Up March 2010? Saturn & 21Lutetia! http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/whatsup.cfm What's Up Podcast on YouTube: http://bit.ly/bBUANa Twitter: http://twitter.com/jhjones http://twitter.com/CassiniSaturn Blog: http://jane.whiteoaks.com/