2014 Astronomy Festival at Great Basin National Park

 In September Great Basin National Park held its annual Astronomy Festival. We went up Thursday evening for the talent show. It's always so much fun to see what talent people have lurking.

Desert Boy was enthralled.

Soon it was our turn. I had volunteered to play Home on the Range on the accordion as a sing-along. Fortunately the kids and a friend came up with me and helped lead the crowd. I don't play the accordion very much, so I had to practice quite a long time to make it sound decent. (Hopefully it sounded decent!). Thanks to Clint who snapped this photo of us.

When it was over, we quickly departed the outdoor stage, fortunately to applause and not to boos.

We let the more talented take over, like Bryan on guitar and Isaac on drums.

When it was time for a guitar trio, the kids couldn't resist dancing. It was really cute.

Aileen shared her sweet voice with us. It is the voice of an angel.

Carolyn's violin piece was way too short, I wanted to hear more!

It was a good crowd. Afterwards, we went down to the telescopes so the kids could earn their Junior Astronomer certificates--and most important to them, a Milky Way candy bar.  We hope as they get older we'll be able to stay longer and see even more things through the telescopes.

Great Basin National Park's last astronomy program for the season is tonight, Saturday October 25 at 6 pm. The big advantage of the early start time is that you can go to bed early too!