Great stuff Brian .
Yes its certainaly a diffiucult one for me, I went really close just once
from home . The flame nebula was stunning that evening.
I didn't have a filter (2" h beta arrived the following week) or a
really dark sky.. I could follow easily the pronounced dark edge along
IC434 ,but the further I moved away from Alnitak it seemed to
fade away, there were the odd possible dark patch out there but I just couldn't put any shape at all to it.
The rest of summer didn't throw up a night like that again and the next one it mostly rained.