08/06/2012 – Ephemeris – The Perseid Meteor Shower this weekend
Aug 6. This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Monday, August 6th. The sun rises at 6:35. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 25 minutes, setting at 9:00. The moon, 3 days before last quarter, will rise at 10:52 this evening.
Saturday night through Sunday morning will be the period of the maximum number of meteors in the Perseid meteor shower. There are many meteor showers but a few very active ones. Of these the Perseids are the most famous. Meteor showers occur the same dates during the year because meteoroid streams are debris left near the orbits of comets. If a comet passes near the earth’s orbit the debris it sheds when close to the sun will end up in orbits similar to the comet and when the earth passes the spot we experience a meteor shower. Thus in late July through mid August we pass through the meteoroid stream of debris of Comet Swift-Tuttle, whose sand to pea sized particles hit the atmosphere at 40 miles per second providing us a celestial show.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 
My family will be camping this up coming weekend into next week and we were wondering if you could recommend a good spot near TC to watch the meteor shower.
My Friday program lists two events for viewing the meteor shower. Or visit http://www.gtastro.org for a preview. The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has some good spots. On the gtastro.org main page is a map to the Thoreson farm site at Sleeping Bear.
Wishing you clear skies.
Bob