I have a decent 4.5 inch telescope, not much use around here, and there is no way to get it on a plane (safely). I think about taking it up into the mountains some time.
It's not easy to aim, equatorial mount etc. In Hawaii, the tour operators provide an 11" Celestron, but it's not as impressive, to me, as just looking up into the dark night sky.
I've been in Wyoming where we could see the Milky Way, but in Hawaii at 9,000 feet is pretty spectacular. The cities there use reddish street lights to avoid light pollution for the scopes up nearly 14,000 feet.
We once had Jupiter next to the moon and after some finagling I got Jupiter on the scope, it was pretty neat, the four major moons were pin pricks. If you want a scope, I'd suggest staying with a "normal" mount, the smaller scopes do about as well as the more complex ones, in my experience. And the tripod is important if you use a long secondary (eye piece). A good solid tripod. Mine wiggles if you just brush it.
