Sunday, May 20, 2012

Eclipse

Last night we drove to Beaver to see the annular solar eclipse. I got Natalie to leave church a five minutes early (better than 15 minutes late, as usual), and we had a lunch all packed and ready. We drove to Beaver, about two and a half hours. The eclipse was just beginning, and we quickly found a park using Natalie's new iPhone (Happy Mother's Day!).



Everything was perfect. We found a picnic table that was half in the shade of a large pine tree and half sunny for the eclipse. There was even a little playground within 20 feet for the kids. The eclipse was to last for nearly 2 hours, so we wouldn't be staring at it the whole time, obviously.




We ate and watched the eclipse progress for the first hour. Then a cheer went up as it reached totality. Because we'd driven south, we were able to see the "ring of fire" which means the moon was in front of the sun with just a sliver of the edge of the sun peeking out. (For more pictures and a fuller explanation see our other blog eclipse entry).

After totality, as the moon moved off the sun, the eclipse seemed pretty anti-climactic. We watched for a few more minutes, but it was almost 8 o'clock, and we still had a long drive ahead. Luckily, our kids are great in the car and other than Mark's mild complaints that dad kept beating him in the name-the-50s-artist game, and a minor break down from Dax as we left the freeway in Lehi just 5 minutes from home, it was a great trip.

2 comments:

  1. That sounds so fun! Carl wanted to do that too, but that was before he remembered Nate was graduating from seminary at 5:00. So we headed out to the backyard but the clouds covered everything. It was pretty disappointing.
    Sandy

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  2. So cool that you guys traveled down south to see it! I had no idea when you left church early... How are you going to explain that one to the Primary?

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