As glenc will attest, a good reclining lawn chair can also be an option for binocular viewing.
My 15x70's will do a good job on a lot of objects, including Jupiter & its moons, but of course won't go further than that. If you want cheap / compact, I would second the idea of a small Maksutov on an alt-az or even camera tripod. The video camera style tripods with the arm for aiming are very useful in this case, if not necessarily extremely steady.
I used to have
a 90mm Maksutov which made a good grab'n go in a compact size.
Regards,
Eric