I went to the Torrance Barrens Dark-Sky Preserve yesterday to watch the Perseids meteor shower. Oh man, what a drive it was!
Everything was going smoothly until we got a couple of kilometres away from the destination. The area was absolutely jam-packed with cars. I must have seen at least 500 cars along that stretch of road, with people parking on half the road and squeezing traffic down to a single lane.
The worst part was that many people seemed to have no awareness of what a Dark-Sky Preserve is. They had their car headlights on at full brightness and were flashing powerful torches directly into people’s faces. Not exactly ideal conditions for stargazing!
We reached there around 11:00 p.m., and luckily, our friends had already found us a parking spot. The number of cars started to decrease around 2:00 a.m. Between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m. was the best time, and we saw lots of shooting stars. Our kids even woke up from their sleep at just the right moment to witness some beautiful streaks across the sky.
We decided to leave around 3:15 a.m., thinking we’d be back home by around 4:45 a.m. But, oh man, the traffic was completely blocked on one side of the road. I barely moved 100 metres in more than 20 minutes. Eventually, I had to make a U-turn and take a much longer route. We finally made it home around 5:30 a.m.
Despite all the chaos, we did get to witness some beautiful shooting stars. We couldn’t capture anything particularly good on our phones, but seeing them in person was absolutely beautiful.