Back in February, our astronomy club had an event that looked like it was going to be rained out, but the skies ended up clearing out and the atmosphere was so clear our laser pointers hardly worked. (Due to so little atmospheric "junk".) Even then, it wasn't as clear here as you should get at Bear Lake.
We had a couple of camera mounts on large aperture telescopes and took some photos of the Orion Nebula, and a couple of others. Collecting light through time-exposures allowed us to see so much that we couldn't see otherwise, it was incredible. I recommend that everyone try this at some time.