Actually, No, I can't see the Milky Way no way, from my home site! Really lots of light pollution where I'm currently living. For many years I lived way up on coastal property of Lake Huron (one of the Great Lakes). Absolutely black skies always,but this was many years ago. Then, for about 23 years I lived in Massachusetts, some of that time spent in the western part of the state. I remember wonderful nights,,with no street lights, in western, northern Massachusetts near the Vermont border. Skies as black as black can be, and the Milky Way clearly visible, in both of these northern locations. Here, I usually have to concentrate to see a 5th magnitude star. On some evenings I've got to really look hard just to make out 4th mag stars.

With that said, I can make out globs, so far, only down to mag 7.7. Dimmest galaxy only to about mag 8.4 or 8.5. This really limits the DSOs that I can view. However, many planetary nebulae seem so far to present little problem. They're small,,so concentrated points, easily seen.