see a truly dark sky

If my plans work out, then I may be travelling more in the future… and then I’ll see a dark sky by accident. So I’ll drop the goal, but keep the dream…

There were some awfully dark miles on the way from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon, ten years ago. Makes me think of the 10,000 Maniacs line: “The stars were so many there, they seemed to overlap.”

I’ve been close – in the middle of Hampshire on a winter night-time, it was possible to see lots of stars and even pick out the Milky Way, but there was still some light-pollution around. I would love, just once, to see a truly dark sky from the middle of nowhere (or from a built-up area with no lighting, of course)

I need to find a large sparsely-populated area where all the lights go off at a certain time of night. I suppose I could use this map to find somewhere suitable!