John, I haven't looked at scopes for a long time but I do recall recently reading that one call Solomark is a good one.
While I have a reflector I was always partial to refractors, I couldn't even give you a good reason why.
As I recall, my first telescope had a Barlow lens so that terrestrial images would not be inverted. I forget which type telescope that would be, but I recall that the more the light gets bounced around on mirrors, the more light gets lost (and the dimmer objects will not be seen.)
That's true reflectors don't give you the same light intensity as a refractor of equivalent size. Once I had an object centered in the scope, I would start increasing power by changing lenses or rotating the turret. Eventually it would be time to put the Barlow lens in, by this time the image was darker and accidentally hitting the scope would lose the image. At times it could be frustrating but it was fun.
My cheap scope has the sighting tube on the side with an LED center dot. You put the dot over the object and hopefully it was within the field of view of the telescope. Telescopes should come with Swear Jars: "In case of bump, insert quarter." But as you said, it can be fun. The next scope I get is going to have a right angle eyepiece, even if it does lose some light. The most frustrating thing for me when losing an object is having to find it again while being crouched in that uncomfortable position with the eyepiece 6" above the ground and the scope pointing nearly straight up.
When I was getting Sky & telescope magazine, I would drool over the ads for observatories, that would have made life easy especially on those 20-degree nights.
I got interested in astronomy several years ago after buying a 50 mm refractor at a yard sale. My first look at the magnified moon hooked me so I bought a better 60 mm refractor on an alt/az mount and later a 4 in. reflector on an equatorial mount. The equatorial mount was a pain to learn and use, so I made an alt/az mount on a different tripod just for the reflector. After the moon, Saturn, Jupiter and the Orion Nebula, there's not much else to see easily here with our light polluted skies so my interest gradually tapered off, plus it’s a choice between going out at night and freezing in the winter or dealing with mosquitoes in the summer or bed.
One can only imagine what the night sky must have looked like before electricity became wide spread. There is so much to modern life that truly shuts us off from our connection to the world and to the universe.
I hope new photos are here by this time next year. They say in six months it will be taking photos if all goes well. https://www.iflscience.com/space/hubbles-successor-jwst-successfully-launched-into-space/