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I will argue that there are only a dozen nights of the year that are possible to get a proper view of the milky way. The Galactic core is only visible during during the summer. Then you either have to have a new moon or wait until right before dawn to see the moon set. Then the weather has to absolutely perfect and when you add all of those up, you still have to be somewhere with low light pollution
I was at home with no plans for the day when I checked the weather and had no clue Id be frantically packing up for a journey out. the weather was supposed to be clear all night, the moon was supposed to set around 1am, and there was a state park nearby that had much lower light pollution than Raleigh. It was a long hike to my campsite and I managed to take a few photos along the way before I got my tent set and dinner cooked up
I waited patiently until nightfall. my campsite was cool and secluded by a river. I read an old poetry book until about midnight.
Everything was going great until I had my camera and all set up and clouds started creeping in. I thought to myself how poetic it was how I had gone through this trouble of renting a lens and driving and hiking a few hours to get here. it took till about 2am when the clouds finally left for the most part and a group of about 10 deer came around me while i got my shots. i left my camera on a timer to get plenty of shots to stack for noise reduction in post when i got hungry and the only thing I had in my camera bag was a few kit kats.
I had just bought a new camera, a 5dmk3 and felt like this was the perfect test to put it through its paces. after seeing the final results, i found it apt to name both the camera and my final image, Kit-kat, to always remember this night