Monday was eclipse day. We'd all been reading about the eclipse and all the cool stuff we'd see for months. Everyone was excited. We headed up the hill to Aunt Heather and Uncle Alan's house. They have a lovely home with a big yard up on a hill. We could see the valley below, it was perfect.
We set up chairs and started peeking at the sun through our protective glasses. Soon a little tiny sliver was missing. Like someone took a nibble out of the sun.
It was so cool to watch the light change. The temperature dropped in a wildly noticeable way. I was so cold I had to borrow a coat. My blood is too thin (or that's what someone from Maine would have told me).
After about an hour of watching the sun slowly disappear it finally happened. The moon covered the sun and we could look directly at it without glasses. It was amazing! My favorite part was watching all of our people freak out about seeing it. It was wild.
This is a crappy cell phone picture so the sun still looks like a whole bright spot but it was just a ring. We could see a star or two and the planet Venus.
We could see the sunset 360 degrees around us. It was spectacular.
I could totally understand how things might have gone many ages ago when an eclipse happened. The light slowly gets very weird. It is like being under stadium lights, you can see but it feels artificial. Then, all of a sudden you can look up at the sun and it isn't there...just a ring of fire. I can see how people would start lining up the virgins for slaughtering just to make it stop. And then, with a handful of dead virgins the sun would come back. It would seem like a legitimate way to operate. Thankfully, we know better now. Virgins were safe this time around.
We documented the shadow of the sun on things like cardboard boxes, table tops and through the leaves of trees.
And slowly the light returned to normal. I think totality was a minute and 30 seconds or so. The whole eclipse was a couple of hours long. It was fantastic and worth the drive and trip.
After the eclipse we tried to go out to the reservoir to go boating. But we were stopped before we could get into the reservoir. there had been a terrible accident. A boat had been speeding across the lake and tossed all of the occupants out. The boat then went out of control spinning speedy circles unmanned. They had to wait for the boat to run out of fuel to climb aboard. Some of the tossed occupants had been run over by the boat. There were likely fatalities. It was sad and scary. We saw a life-flight helicopter leave while we were stuck in line. So, we didn't go boating...
When we got back to Grandma's house I got a call from my dad. His cancer is back and things are not looking good. Grandma Judy generously offered to keep the kids with her so Will and I could make our way down to Utah to see my Dad. We frantically got on the road for the normally 3 hour drive down. Unfortunately, everyone and their cat were trying to leave Idaho after the eclipse. Will was able to route us etch-a-sketch style through farm land to the freeway. That saved us a bit of time but we still had to sit in a lot of traffic. When Will could, he got off on surface roads. As we were driving through Blackfoot, Idaho (stuck in traffic) we passed a bunch of little boys. Most of them were sitting in the back of a pick up truck parked in the drive way. One was sitting beside a utility wire spool (we had one of those when I was a kid) with a cardboard sign that read "Traffic advise 25 cents. Kittens free if you can catch them" We thought it was worth a quarter to ask. I rolled down the window and inquired. The boy sitting by the spool came over to collect the quarter. He was nervous but he told us two roads to take to avoid some of the traffic. It sounded like good advice so I gave him an extra dollar. As we drove off I head the pick up truck full of boys exclaim "You got a whole dollar!" in shock and awe. I wish we gave him 10 bucks. We like to support entrepreneurs and his advice was sound. We avoided a lot of traffic with every turn.
The drive ended up taking over five hours. We rolled into Salt Lake in the middle of the night and ended up staying in hotel so Chris and Annette wouldn't have to wait up for us. In the morning we went over to Centerville and spent some time talking with my Dad. He isn't taking the news very well...no one would. We decided to head over to see my sister, Jennifer. She was setting up her classroom for school. My Dad needed a project for a little distraction and working for Jennifer seemed to help.
After putting a little work in the classroom we went to lunch with my Dad. We talked a little more and tried to be cheerful. Then it was time for Will and I to head back up to Idaho.
It was one apocalyptic Monday. Eclipse in the morning, boating accident in the afternoon, cancer in the evening. The eclipse was cool...I could do with out all the rest...
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