This summer started with a bang with a trip to West Palm Beach (I still need to blog about!) and ended with a bang watching the solar eclipse while camping.
I grew up going camping which means many of my childhood memories are of playing in the dirt, bouldering in creeks, building make believe "houses" in the forest, poking sticks in a campfire at night, jumping off rocks into river swimming holes, and innumerable adventures in the great outdoors. I desperately wanted to my kids to have some of those same experiences so with the summer dwindling down to a close when my parents asked if we wanted to join them to camp in the mountains to be in the path of "totality" to see the solar eclipse on Monday I said absolutely! Matt, on the other hand, did not want to drive to the mountains because of all the hype that the news was predicting: an influx of out of state people crowding the roads and taking all the campsites. So he stayed home, but in his defense he helped me load and unload the car and had a clean house for me upon our return. Besides a longer than normal drive home on Monday, the news was wrong about how many people there would be. While we did have quite a out of towners in our campsite from California, Montana, and Washington, there were still plenty of campsites to go around!
My parents headed up Thursday with Sawyer and they scored an awesome campsite with a trail that led down the river where they set up a sunshade and some chairs underneath. All the camping dreams I had for my kids came true this past weekend: they got extremely dirty; roasted s'mores and hotdogs; smelled like campfire smoke, bugspray, and dirt by the end of our three days; ate lots of camp junk food; played cars in the dirt; forged the river; played with pine needles; rode their bikes in endless circles around the campsite; found awesome hiking sticks; went swimming at Silver Creek Plunge hot pool. And when we were loading up to leave on Monday Sawyer asked if we could stay another night, so I'd say it was a huge success!
The eclipse in and of itself was so worth the time it spent grocery shopping, packing up the car, unloading, loading back up to leave on Monday, spending four hours in the car in stop and go traffic and doing the endless amount of laundry when got home. Viewing the eclipse WAS SPECTACULAR, as in wayyyyyyy more amazing that I had anticipated. I know Sawyer will remember seeing it, which makes me so happy that he got to witness such a once in a lifetime event here in Idaho. My parents provided us with solar eclipse glasses and my dad set up chairs on a little island in the river which proved to be an amazing place to view the eclipse. He also had a cool app on his phone that had our exact GPS coordinates and would inform us of what to observe at exact times based on our location: the temperature dropping, the lighting changing, the shadow bands you could see on a white backdrop once the sun was almost completely covered by the moon. Once the sun was completely covered we took of our glasses and it was SO dark! The flies that had been buzzing around us had been duped into thinking it was nighttime and had gone to bed. Scout got super sleepy and crawled into my lap to cuddle and was asking for her blanket that she sleeps with at night. We could see stars overhead. It was night! It was the craziest thing. I wish I could have gotten some good photos of the eclipse itself. I did take a video, but it's so dark you can't see us in it. So weird though that it looks like night, yet was in reality 11:30 in the morning. Mind blowing.
Here we are at Silver Creek Plunge. We went at 9:30 in the morning when it was still chilly so the hot pools felt amazing. I hadn't been there since I was a sophomore in high school, so 17 years ago!?
Hiking up a steep hill, that they both slid back down on their bums.
Getting ready for the eclipse.
Our spot on the river.
On the island in the river.
Sawyer walking back and not wanting to get his shorts wet. His skinny white legs were making me crack up!
On the way home in traffic, when having DVD players in the car proved to be extremely handy!
My parents pop up trailer they shared with us.
Painting rocks when Linda and John came to visit for the day on Saturday.
I love the look excitement on my dad's face in this photo! His excitement over the eclipse was catching!
Relaxing after we got home and had all showered and been bathed. They were exhausted, which to me means a weekend well spent!
