The Great American Eclipse!!!

Kristie and I were 90 percent sure we were going to travel for the eclipse...we had a good idea of possibly going to central Wyoming.

On Sunday the 20th we woke up and packed the FJ
...we didn't need much for an over night.  Sleeping gear, guitar, a couple of backpack meals, chairs and Eclipse Glasses.  We left Salt Lake by noon for the start of what would become a 710 mile trip.

There was so much build up for this thing...bring extra gas, extra water, food, the Idaho grocery stores were bare, Cell phones won't work, credit cards won't work, traffic will be grid locked in a state of emergency....pretty Much Y2K all over again.  We didn't do any more than we normally do for camping and I scoffed at the warnings which seemed all good until we got to Kemmerer.

We cruised through Evanston in no time on schedule to re-fuel in Kemmerer.  There was a little more traffic than normal, it was exciting, it felt like we were part of something, like some great movement.  We cruise on.  When we got to Kemmerer there were open gas pumps at the first station...sweet right? so I cruise through town to hit up the stop I like...we get there...no power....no gas....we drive back into town and start to realize all of Kemmerer is out of power and there is no gas, we have like $9 cash to our names and less than 1/2 tank of gas!!!  Now we choose to go East toward Lander because I know of a fishing convenience store that has Gas 35 miles away, I mean I get beer there when I go fishing and I'm sure I remember a gas pump.

I remember beer but that gas part of my memory is bad...Gas hasn't been available here in what looks like decades...now we are really low.   I call Farson with the cell service I have in the middle of nowhere.  There is one 4 pump gas station in town.
"Hello"
"Yes you have power, Kemmerer doesn't have power and I need gas"
"We we have power but we are running out of Gas so get here soon"

OH NO!!!!

We drive slow to conserve gas and get there.  We cannot make it to another town at this point in the FJ...I'm a little concerned.  It would be ironic to run out of gas in a state where oil is the cornerstone of the economy. We get in line four cars deep...we get gas...Kristie takes money out of the ATM...I fill up our emergency 1 Gallon gas tank and away we go!!!

We make it to Lander and smartly top off our Gas.  We cruise through Riverton and go down the Gas Hills road on a hot tip from Wyoming Bill...this is a good tip, very little traffic, one car, 4 police cars - must be their after-work booze cruise road I guess.  Kristie finds on our map a petroglyph site and the geographic center of Wyoming, we decide to head there...we start up the dirt road and start to see a lot of people....a BLM ranger advised us not to go on the turnoff road to the petroglyphs, as it is 5 miles long and there are already 700 cars up there.  She said it was incredible....usually 2 visitors a day, now thousands of people.   It is pretty much the center line of totality. 

Kristie uses her map skills and we start cruising East on some 2 tracks...literal 2 tracks across the prairie....after about 10 miles we end up at a place called Squaw Butte, us on one side and a couple from Colorado Springs on the other....not another soul as far as we can see.  We set up camp and it is perfect.  We enjoy a good sunset and go to bed, no fire, just the stars.

We wake up, have a little breakfast and pre-pack the FJ.  It is almost time for the eclipse so we climb the Butte - the only landmark around. Scrambling over the furry stones, we see little cottontails darting away. We perch ourselves at the top as the moon is starting to hide the sun.  We had to have a plan....we get two plus minutes of totality, we cannot waste it all taking photos and videos....we have to live it and experience it.  So we took some classic Yoga photos and then the sky started to dim a bit.  With 10 minutes to go the temp started to drop.  We were alone as far as we could see, 360 degree views five miles around.  This added to the ambiance of what we were about to experience.  We were whispering, it was exciting, energetic, eerie and calm all at the same time.  I'd say the temperature dropped 10 maybe 15 degrees, there was just a sliver of sun left then whoosh - Diamond Ring around the sun - No Sun - NO GLASSES NEEDED - Incredible...I could see the excitement in Kristie's eyes - The whole surrounding looked like a sunset...I took a little video...Kristie went boss photographer - manual focus to infinity all the way zoomed in and got an Amazing shot that will end up on our wall.  We put down the electronics and held hands and lived in totality for a moment, an incredible moment everyone should try to experience in their lifetime.  I could see a planet and some stars, I could stare at the sun and see the Corona which shoots out for thousands of miles, I understood all the hype.  Then WHOA DIAMOND RING AGAIN and we cheered, we could here our fellow solitude searchers cheering from the bottom of the Butte below.  As fast as it was gone it was coming back, warming up, getting lighter...the experience was over but the feeling that we were at a special time and place was not...we sat in Awe for a while on top of the Butte taking in and processing the last couple minutes of our short lives on this Earth.

Take in the thought provoking moments in life...they are special.

After a while we got back to normal and gathered a couple of eclipse butte rocks to hoard back to Salt Lake for our collection.  We climbed down and hit the road.  We tried to take a different two track back but got turned back by a really nasty wash.  We did get to see some antelope, a badger and a coyote though. As we drove along the two-track road, we got an antelope to run alongside us. It effortlessly bound across the prairie at speeds of 40 mph, then turned off into the horizon. Without a tree around for shelter or protection, wildlife here must be fast to survive.

We got back to the main road and got in the procession of cars.   This was insane...I was told this event brought in 4 years' worth of Wyoming visitors compacted into a single weekend...I believe it...the small town intersections couldn't keep up.  Every town turned into bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go for at least a half hour.  We got gas in Riverton, I managed to put an extra 2.5 gallons in the tank after it stopped filling, I guess you don't know how full you can go until you push the limit of your tank, it paid off because we didn't need gas again until Park City.  We drove home, it took eight and a half hours, two gas stops and nothing else.  This normally would have been a five and a half hour drive.

It was worth it.