Of course using binoculars requires warm clothes, lounge chair, bug repellant and of course those star charts. In a sense binoculars are a telescope. What you really want is something more powerful than binoculars. If your an seasoned sky watcher and have some of the major star names under your belt, then you may be ready for the expense of a telescope. However even if you have money to burn I still recommend discovering the sky with binoculars first.
Telescopes are cumbersome and hard to use.
Many scope owners spend up to an hour setting them up, and some never stop fiddling with them throughout the night. If you join your local club you need not own a scope to use a scope. Everyone else will gladly let you look through theirs. This way, when your ready to buy you'll have some experience and knowledge to go shopping with. Once set up, high tech scopes will do everything for you , hey, you don't even have to go out in the cold anymore.