Adam, a couple more pointers to help you with seeing.
Try to avoid viewing objects close to the horizon if you can avoid it. This is where the greatest amount of atmosphere is that light needs to travel through, and closest to the warm Earth. Not always is seeing poor at the horizon, but more consistently so than elsewhere.
Summer normally has worse seeing conditions than the cooler months.
Early evening is warmer than later at night, so better to be patient for the end of twilight for things to cool off.
Of course, much of this has the caveat
"it depends...". You have to be practical about things too. Some objects are horizon grazers, sometimes they are only visible early evening (many comets), other times you have no choice for other reasons. And sometimes the atmosphere just doesn't want to play nice... for months on end...
Alex.