Planning For The Eclipse

I/we missed the last one. We'd been camping in Wyoming close to 9,000 feet high in the Bridger-Teton National Forest for a what was to have been a week, which already had been an unexpected problem due to the cold nights in a tent. I wound up sleeping in the car with the heat on. Back that up: I had to erect the tent since Steve couldn't do more than minimal work, and with my knees that meant bending over from the waist to the ground to pound in stakes. I wound up in a Utah hospital after breathing issues bad enough that we totally abandoned the camp and its larger contents to the park service and high-tailed it out of there. A group of kayakers helped with the flurry of stuffing personal stuff into the car as fast as possible while I stood by the car and gave directions between gasps.  So on the day itself we "saw" the eclipse from  Sun City. Meaning that the best we got was 2/3 of the sun left. Nothing near like totality. In fact hardly noticeable unless you knew to look for it.

Later medical workups discovered a ruptured diaphragm, not altitude sickness nor Valley Fever, was the culprit for my breathing issues. They do not repair those. They just tell you not to completely fill the stomach, since that pushes sideways into the liver which pushes the liver up through that hole and into the lung space. Whee! I will always wonder if staking the tent that way was the cause.

This one won't be totality either. It's an annular eclipse. This time the moon is farther away from the earth and only blocks most of the sun, so if you're in the right place at the right 4-minute window you'll have a black center with a white ring around it. Still pretty cool, but not instant night. It happens October 14th. Yes, that's this fall.

One of the places on its path this time is Four Corners. For those unfamiliar, that's where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico join, the only spot in the US where four states meet in one spot. We've stopped there before, both Steve and I, at various times in our lives. He still has a photo of himself spanking his little brother in four states at once. Together, we sometimes stop there on our treks north. It's paid admission now, a Navajo park so our National Parks Pass doesn't get us in. But the made-on-the-spot fry bread sold there is worth it.

Nice as that is, we presume that space will be absolutely packed. So our aim is to get to Red Mesa, AZ. We'll have to get up by 5AM and get in the car in a half hour. We're not leaving from Sun City to do it, since it's a morning eclipse. We'll head up as far as Tuba City the night before, two hours away from Red Mesa. That's the closest place that still had reservations open this far ahead. Normally it's still two hours away but I'm planning on a whole lot of others trying to do the same thing, likely starting either from Page or Flagstaff, so I'm adding in an extra hour for travel and locating a spot to park and set up chairs.

The hotel room I've reserved has 2 queen beds. Either we'll have separate beds, or share one and the other can hold two more. I'm hoping for somebody to come with us. Invitations have gone out but we'll have to see what's going on at the time. The place offers breakfast, but waiting for that would make us miss the eclipse, so pack food and/or eat later. If we arrive early enough in the afternoon we can see the Navajo Code Talkers Museum about a block away. I might even head through a pair of favorite spots on the drive up, Sunset Crater and Wupatki, free for us like all National Parks and Monuments. We each bought the seniors' passes while they were still $10. (Last I saw they were $80.)

The path of the eclipse runs through Utah, and down through Albuquerque, one of the few large cities actually on the path of the eclipse. It also is a day's drive from here, and we have a favorite motel there. But it's more miles and less scenery, and I have no idea where fry bread might be found, one of the additional perks of our chosen route. 

Like all eclipses, we'll need eye protection as well as camera protection. I didn't even know that was a "thing" for cameras. I still have one set of the paper "glasses" from our first attempt in Wyoming, unused. I also have some sets of those black plastic sunglasses for inside your regular glasses the eye doctors hand out after the eye drops to open them wide so they can see to the back. I have all summer to check whether those work for an eclipse, or locate more of the paper kind with their black windows. I'm pretty sure they'd work for the camera lens since they're much larger. Fastening them in place there, well, again there's time to figure that out. We'll probably try to remember to pack tape. And fresh batteries! And of course, tripods!