I was joined by John Kagey as well as Marcie and Curtis Greer.

I arrived at 8 PM. Th combination had changed. It was not 1317 or
and combo of 131 preceeded or followed an any other digit.
Frustrated, I walked the mile up to camp to see if anyone had gotten
in and new the combination.

After my uphill trek I found no one in camp. After a search for
combination clues I headed back to the gate. There I met Marcie and
Curtis Greer. As they had a trailor in tow it was decided that I'd
go back to the ranger station. When I got there it was closed and
locked.

I arrived back at the gate. Curtis and I traded turns playing code
cracker. Then it occured to me - "today's date" - 0703. We were in.

I left a cup with a hint to the code written on it in the hole in
the post where the lock lives.

We headed into camp. After making camp we started to set up our
scopes. by this time John K had arrived. As we waited for the moon
to go down John examined my Sky Commander. he hooked it up to his
scope and got it to work. He attached it to mine. As always it
was "off". John patiently changed settings and we'd realign it.
Nothing would work until he asked me "what type of encoders do you
have?" I'd always assumed 4K as that is what is in the manual for
the sky commander (but I'd forgotten that I had JMI encoders
purchased separate form the sky commander). We looked and in small
print we discovered that they were 8K encoders. Armed with this
info, John got the sky commander to work with the scope. Something
that has not happened since I got the scope in 11/00! I found a few
objects with it before the clouds closed in.

We battled clouds and sucker holes until about 12:30 PM. John and I
got up at 3AM and observed Mars for a bit until the clouds returned.
We went to bed and Curtis gave it a go but was shut down by clouds.

I awoke at 4AM, it looked clear but in the time it took to get from
my tent to the meadow - the clouds had returned. I gave up and went
to bed.

John was gone when I awoke. The Greers and I visited for part of
the AM and then both broke camp.

Little observing was done but we got to see Mars and john "fixed"
my Sky Commander - Thanks! This made the trip worth while. The
company was great too.