pollution? I have been researching quite a bit about telescopes and getting started in amateur astronomy. After reading a lot of reviews of various products and reading countless questions and answers here, I think I've settled on the Orion XT8 Dobsonian Telescope. Now that I've figured that part out, the problem seems to be where the heck do I use this thing? I've discovered that the night sky in my location is about a 4.5 to 5 on the Bortle Scale which factors light pollution. I tried driving around tonight looking for good spots further out from town, but that's frustrating as there is a lot of private property and a lot of trees when you get out in the country.

With all things considered, is it going to be worth the money to get a telescope at all if I live in a place with that magnitude of light pollution? Will I be able to see anything other than the moon with any clarity? I completely understand things don't look in telescopes as they do in books and magazines and I'm fine with that. I really want to be able to get a great look at the moon, I'd like to be able to see the rings of Saturn and the bands of Jupiter, and it would be great to get into looking at the Messier objects. Will Andromeda be just a nondescript washed out smudge in my telescope with my polluted sky or will I be able to tell what I'm looking at? Does a light pollution filter on the eye piece actually work?

I know there are a lot of questions here, but I would hate to spend $350 - $500 on a nice telescope set-up only to find out I can't realistically find a dark sky and to find out the sky over my apartment complex is too washed out to see anything.

*Note: if you aren't familiar with the Bortle Scale, basically my sky is as follows - tonight, with the moon pretty bright, I can see three sword stars of the Orion constellation after my eyes have adjusted for about a minute or two along with 6 stars of the Pleiades. Also I only have access to the eastern and and some of the southern part of the sky as the apartment building itself blocks the northern half of the sky and the trees across the parking area block a lot of the south/western sky. Again, this is getting frustrating. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.
**Thanks GeoffG, your answer was one of the ones I hoped to receive!