People who live in the western US, and other arid places with a high percentage of clear nights, are lucky, as you yourself say, Jerry. I am really envious, being a UK resident...if I won the UK Lottery or the Euromillions, I'd definitely emigrate, especially as the UK is so overcrowded these days with all the light pollution you'd expect. Probably to West Texas, I have been there three times to date - with my fourth visit in a couple of weeks - so I know how good the skies are there.
But I have to make the best of what I have, and I have to say that the UK's reputation as a very wet and windy place isn't entirely justified, unless you live in the north west (I live in the south east and, as I type, the temperatures are in the 70s, the sun is shining and we've had nearly a month of clear and partly-clear skies)...I can't complain as I have good skies at home (the naked eye limiting mag is often 6.0 to 6.1 - and in a remote spot on the south coast of the island I live on, just south of the English mainland, the NELM can get to 6.6) and I do live in the clearest part of the UK, with an average of 33% totally clear nights over the course of a year affording a reasonable number of observing opportunities, even if some of them inevitably coincide with a bright Moon or a work night...

Galaxies are my favourites; I spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights under mag 6.3 skies (but with dodgy transparency on Friday and Saturday and good transparency on Sunday), looking through the galaxies of Virgo with my 18". I spent a few hours in and around Markarian's Chain and the amount of galaxies there was just fantastic, including very faint ones that weren't on my charts. I also got a few galaxies down in Crater and Corvus, too, although, I had to sit or kneel on the ground to look through my telescope!