Sunday was a lazy day....I spent the morning cleaning out the van getting ready for our return trip. I also moved the kids car seats....except Zeke's from Pa's car back to the van. Pa dealt with Zeke's....it's definitely more difficult! Later in the afternoon my Mom and I went to Wal-Mart sans kids so we could buy snacks. Of course we found all sorts of fun stuff like more clothes for Ella and the boys! :)
Come Monday morning we were on the road by 8:30am headed to Thermopolis, Wyoming to view the solar eclipse!!!! My Dad had been planning for this for months!!!! At first our plan was to go further south than Thermopolis because we'd get to experience the totality a little longer, but when we were talking to Uncle Lee he told us that you actually had to have passes to get into the state park and that they were sold out. That's when things shifted a little...Uncle Lee's parents live in Thermopolis so we decided to go to their house and experience the event with them.
We got to Thermopolis an hour before the eclipse was going to start. I had seen a park when we drove in and thought it would be nice to take the kids there for a bit so they could run around.
It was a gorgeous day...thankfully! We had been experiencing a lot of smoke in Cody from all the fires in MT so we were worried that it might obscure the eclipse when the time came. Nothing you can do about that though! So happy it wasn't an issue at all!!!
Ga-Ga & I set up a couple of chairs in the shade and the kids had the picnic blanket.
There were a few different toys for he kids to choose from!
This four person teeter totter was funny!
Of course Zeke doesn't weight anything so he barely made his side go down!
It was really hot so the kids didn't want to play for long!
Snack time! Right about this time I put on my eclipse glasses and looked up and it had started!!! The moon was just showing up in the upper right corner of the sun. We hurried up and packed up our stuff to head back to the house. I'm sure people thought we were weird. Here all these people were coming to the park to watch and we were packing up and it had just started!!!
We hung out in the backyard of Darrell and Dorothy's house.
Speaking of glasses these were legit! Dad had ordered them months ago so we didn't have to go through the fiasco of trying to get them at the last minute. Plus he purchased them from the government site so they were certified. It was so crazy to me how absolutely ZERO light shown through them except the sun light.
We put the fear of God into the kids about wearing them and they were SO good!
I was really surprised how Jack and Owen were actually really into the whole thing.
Of course Zeke and Ella weren't as excited about it. They just wanted to play Pokemon on the porch where it was shady!
I kept trying to get a good picture of the moon covering part of the sun, but it just didn't work!
Later I found out from Michael that I could have downloaded an app that would have made it so I could take pictures. They really do have an app for everything!
This picture is so cool to me! The gleaming area that's shooting out from the sun on the left. That's the only section that isn't covered by the moon!!!
When it got about 3/4 of the way covered we called the kids over so they could sit and watch it. I had gotten Ella's outfit the day before at Wal-Mart. The front of her shirt says Sunshine so it thought it was quite appropriate for her to wear it that day!
The older boys said it was SO cool! I really hope this is something that they remember from their childhood!
Dad was so happy that we could all be there to experience this amazing event together!
This was the shot I took during the totality! It was so crazy how cold it got! See the yellow glow on the bottom of the picture. That's how it looked all around. It was like the sunrise from all directions. An owl even started hooting. Pictures don't even come close to doing it justice...even those fancy professional ones! The glow was so beyond this world really. On the upper left side it glowed purple it was so beautiful! Of course it was over way too quickly....probably less than a minute, but it is most definitely something that I won't ever forget!
The kids and I didn't stay around very long after the sun started to peak back through...maybe 30 minutes. I wanted to get back to Cody before traffic got bad. Later on that day I was watching the news and I saw how awful the traffic was going home to Washington from Oregon and I was glad that we didn't experience any of that!
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