M74 and some really dark skies

We've been traveling through the western states the last couple of months and I took my ETX70 along, expecting to do some viewing in dark skies. Ha! I took it out exactly three times. The first was an impromptu star party at 'the ranch' in Montana with my brother in laws and their wives. The moon was pretty bright so we didn't get to see a lot. The skies are clear, no humidity to speak of, but aren't really all that dark. There's lots of light polution from the nearby town and neighbors. One other time, I couldn't get the thing leveled but the skies were really dark at Great Basin NP. The third time was at Mesa Verde with very good luck. I used the ETX's guided tour and was actually able to see several of the Messier galaxies. The best though was at Doc Hudler's cabin in the Wet Mountains of Colorado. The skies were so dark I saw a black cloud. Yup, with no light polution, clouds at night are actually black. Very startling. The Perseids were wonderful that dark night. I tried for M74 but just couldn't quite pull it out with my 7x50's. When I got back to Rolla, last night, I tried again after the moon had set about 3:00 am. Thin clouds (white this time) were rolling through but I managed to get in a quick peek at M74 with my 8" dob. The star field was right on and M74 was rather large with my 27mm ep but fairly dim. It would be nice to revisit this when the seeing conditions were better. I might be able to see some detail in this face on spiral galaxy.
With M74 gone, that only leaves 3 more Messiers.