M81 and 82 should be easy to find under dark skies. You HAVE to have one or you will not be able to find anything. I am going to email you separately a text file I have on eradicating street lights temporarily. Maybe you can use this method, it works great for me. My area is currently surburban, but I did live in a rural area and could pick out fainter clusters and galaxies quite easily.
Galaxies have low surface brightness and except for the brightest and biggest, can be easy to miss.
The summer sky has a wealth of star clouds, nebulae, and bright globular clusters as well as some of the most beautiful open clusters in the universe.