1,000

They always seems so far away on those first chilly rides even before daylight savings kicks in. But today I reached one of the big milestones, 1,000 miles so far this year.

I realize that this leaves me quite a bit behind in the family still but it is a pretty good thing for me. I am only 60 miles behind last year's pace and considering the nearly a month I have spent out of town that is plenty OK with me.  Who knows, maybe the big number is still possible.

I had no Guest Rider today (not every day is a reward day) so I headed our for the full 8 lakes tour without her. I hadn't been all the way out there since our return from the desert.

One of the things I do out there is keep checking for broken car window glass in the lower Sucker Lake parking lot. Today I discovered a novel method of avoiding having your windows smashed. Just leave the top off your car.

I recognized it instantly as a Mustang, and a nice one at that. I am a little unclear on Mustang years (I do know that the very first Mustangs were the 64 and a half Mustangs, Mjelde got Mr. Rudow to let Mjelde and I out of study hall one day in the spring of 64 on the pretense that the new Mustangs had just come in down at the Ford dealership in town and it was important that he and I go down and take a look). I think it is pretty early, almost certainly pre-1970 but also very clearly not one of the VERY early years.

It is a short hop from there (about a mile) over to the Vadnais parking lot. Here is yet another LOOK at Vadnais.

I paused in a slightly different spot in the parking lot than the spot where I usually stop. I wanted to look at a different patch of gravel. I found four new small agates. I have decided that finding agates is good luck. Certainly the agates that I am finding are very small and have no value. But they ARE good luck.

Here are the nice agates that I own.

None of them are particularly lucky.

There is a large clue there, however, about our summer (as differentiated from spring) travel plans.

The exotic birds have returned to Vadnais. My theory is that last year in the period when the herons were deciding on nesting sites the water was too high on Vadnais. Consequently they chose other nesting sites and were therefore mostly absent from Vadnais last year. Today I saw a great blue and almost got a nice picture of a white.

The bird decided at the last moment that it cared not for my presence and fled. That makes the focus a bit iffy but I have decided that it is a "soft" focus and that I still like the picture anyway.

Pleasant late September day

If Monday was the first day of summer today was clearly the first day of fall. Not only did I wear a jacket today I added on leg covering. The temperature reached only about 15C.

But I had a Guest Rider today who kept proclaiming it to be a beautiful day. I have no idea what she was smoking. Her interpretation of the word beautiful was based on the near constantly visible patches of blue sky. My issue with her interpretation is that the sun, that thing that produces warmth, appeared in the patches of blue sky infrequently.

The sun had ducked out from behind the big cloud as we neared home so we stopped for a corn check. This area was under water but it looks like maybe these plants were well enough established that they are going to survive and perhaps even thrive.

Guest Rider for perspective.

We both did pretty well considering that neither one of us is really well trained at this point. I dropped her off at home (after 20 miles) and took another loop for the desired mileage (it IS near the end of the month).

Here's a marker I had never noticed before, perhaps because given that it looks quite new and that I ride past there fairly frequently it probably hasn't been there for long.  Certainly the school has only been gone for four years.

It wasn't anything very imposing, a one room frame building.  If I had known while it was still standing that it was special perhaps I would have paid it more attention, but alas. I guess the current owner of that parcel of land (looks like the University to me) tired of maintenance and had it razed.

The really most interesting thing to me is that the location of Rose Town's first school is so very clearly now in Falcon Heights.

Decorative . . . cabbage?

Yesterday was summer, today was not.

It was mostly gloomy all day but precipitation was never seriously likely. What WAS seriously likely was a blowing and gusting west wind. It was mostly straight out of the west though so I tackled the problem by trying to ride only north and south. This is, of course, not completely possible, particularly when you live, as I do, on a cul-de-sac on an east-west street.

But what I could do was try to ride all of the westerly legs on a downhill. This requires some intricate planning as well as a complete and detailed knowledge of the local topography. I ride lots and lots of miles with virtually every ride beginning in my garage. I know every detail of the near by topography.

So west off Fairview down to Lauderdale, south all the way to and across University, back north with a Fairgrounds loop (the westerly portion of which can be ridden on a downhill), over to Hamline. I spotted this decorative planting on my ride through the Fairgrounds (EG: NA, CB:60 AOWG: 66):

I recognize the yellow flower centerpiece but is that really cabbage?

Never farther east than Hamline, north to the intersection with Snelling. There's a westerly leg in there that involves a downhill on Terrace. Back with a detour over the where County Road C2 was until very recently a dead end from both directions with 20 or 30 feet of grass and brush separating the two. The new housing development over there is coming along nicely and the street now goes through.

The house there on the right with the real estate sold sign was the last house on the left of the old off Lexington cul-de-sac.  Apparently they didn't want to live on a through street.

OK, I got caught there and had to ride some into the wind and then when I got close to home I had to do some into the wind but I felt so strong on the easterly legs that I still compiled a fairly good time.

If you noticed the Fairgrounds temperatures and can do the conversion you know that today's high was less than 20C. Sleeves and a light jacket returned to the costume. Yesterday was summer, today was not.

First day of summer

The riding plan for this year calls for Monday to be a stretch day. Once a week I want to ride something longer, a chance to get beyond the boundaries of the usual rides. I haven't ridden much lately so I wasn't sure if stretch was a good idea today. However before I had even reached the end of the street I was pretty sure I was going to try to stretch. Today was the first day of summer.

As intended I rode some new pavement today.  I rode over to Minneapolis and followed the Midtown Greenway to where it merges with the Cedar Lake LRT Regional Trail.  I rode to the boundary line of Saint Louis Park, where I have been before, and determined to ride a mile further (I wasn't feeling THAT strong, one mile seemed enough) to see what I would find.  One mile into Saint Louis Park the trail comes to Highway 100.

New stuff.

Here is a LOOK at Lilac Park where the trail crosses the first Twin Cities beltway.

The dome shaped deal is a fire enclosure hand constructed in 1939 by the unemployed stone masons who contributed to the series of parks along the highway.  The picnic table is also a signature of those parks, also constructed of limestone.

That pavement in the background is an off ramp for the highway.

I also discovered that I had added another water tower to my collection.  Not all of the words are visible in this view but this is the best sun angle I was going to get and I think the message can be decoded by most.

I felt pretty good all the way home but after a bit of a sit down I am willing to admit that I haven't ridden much lately and I am a tiny bit overcooked.

It feels good.

I spent some time, I forget, was it early this season or late last season, investigating a bicycle fatality at the intersection of Franklin and West River Road without ever figuring out exactly where the accident occurred.

Today I passed a ghost bike where the path along the river crosses the parkway to climb up to the Franklin Avenue bridge.

The street is divided at that point. I was stopped on the center median to take the picture when a south bound automobile passed between me and the ghost bike in the north bound lane. Unfortunately for him, there was a north bound car using that lane at that point. The half street is narrow there and both motorists stopped before property damage or worse occurred but then something of a stand off occurred as the motorist in the right declined to back up or otherwise yield right of way to the motorist in the wrong.

I had about as much fun watching as is available to a bicyclist in such a situation.

Familiar climate, familiar miles

The plan originally was to be home on Wednesday which would have made Thursday a bicycle day.  The whole landing gear diversion to Chicago meant we were not home until Thursday.  The rain that was NOT the reason for our arrival one day after schedule ended up being epic, extending from Wednesday pretty much through the entire day Thursday.  The total rainfall was around 3.5 inches including something like 2.5 during Thursday, an all time record rainfall for that date.

In consideration of our week in the desert, then not in the desert, then in the desert again the familiar May pattern of a little rain and temperate temperatures was actually quite welcome.

The sun was out when I started today's ride, it all seemed quite familiar. The corn has made great strides in our absence but is probably going to be set back a bit by the large rainfall.

I am pretty sure there is a corollary to that knee high by the 4th of July rule for good corn that says also not under water on Memorial Day.

The first time on the bicycle in a while but I felt pretty strong. The sun went away shortly after I started and I ended up staying close, riding miles that are very familiar. Every inch of pavement covered today was pavement covered dozens of times previously, not a single unfamiliar diversion of any kind.

I did get over to the Town and Country Club where I discovered some evidence of what Wireless has reported as fairly high winds. It looks like they have lost a tree and suffered damage to the fence.

They have done the right thing by completing the clean up in an expeditious manner. Of course, as a high brow country club they have plenty of staff on hand to do the clean up.

There's no place like home.

Chicago was nice

The plane left on time and we were on it.  There was a storm brewing at our destination.  Wireless reports that while watching the progress of our flight at the Delta website she observed that we were circling over Nebraska.

On board the airplane the captain and crew characterized the delay as weather related.

Eventually we landed in Chicago.

Delta sucks.  They dumped us off the plane to a ground crew of, oh, about 3 people to deal with interrupted travel plans and lodging and feeding issues for a full plane of, oh, about 200.

After about three hours standing in four or five different lines at O'Hare we ended up with hotel and food vouchers.  Then the shuttle to the hotel where we had a voucher did not have enough room to take care of all of the people who had vouchers to get to that hotel.  Some found a cab.  We had no idea where the hotel was so a cab was a gamble.  The shuttle schedule was every 30 minutes so we hung on and with a bit of chicanery got ourselves onto the shuttle the second time.  Among our group of 21 on the shuttle that time was at least one individual who had missed two shuttles.  We got to the hotel just as the restaurant closed but while I was checking us in FT managed to use some of our vouchers to score a salad and a sandwich from their snack bar.

While having a 10:30pm sandwich I took a close look at our vouchers.  The vouchers revealed that the reason for "interruption of travel" was "mechanical".

This morning checking in the baggage check in lady asked casually if we were of the group from Las Vegas that had had our travel interrupted.  "That was the landing gear issue, right?" she said.

So Chicago was nice.  FT and I got about 1 and about 3 and a half hours of sleep respectively.  But it was a nice enough hotel and the landing gear held up just fine for the landing.

There is a cable TV show that I like to watch featuring two aging sports writers yak yak yakking about mostly nothing.  Today during a break Tony asked Michael how many pairs of shoes he has.

150

I think that provides a bit of new perspective to that whole 6 bicycle thing.

There's no place like home.  There's no place like home.

In town

We briefly considered the Cedar Breaks National Monument, the views are described as spectacular and colorful, a mini Bryce Canyon.  Bryce Canyon definitely seems too far away with only one day left.  A little session with Yahoo maps, more ever, revealed 75 miles to the monument and another spot on the internet revealed that the shortest distance highway is closed.  Cedar Breaks suddenly seemed almost as far away as Bryce Canyon.

We stayed in Saint George.  Saint George ended up being pretty interesting anyway.

This is Utah. Whilst still employed I met and got to know fairly well a guy from Salt Lake City. The company he worked for (Kennecott Exploration if you are really interested) was headquartered on again off again on again in Salt Lake City. The street address was something like 2200 North 2000 East. I asked him once about this arrangement of numbers and words which seemed confusing to me. He explained the whole center of the city at the Temple with all other addresses assigned according to a mostly numerical system measuring number of blocks from that central intersection. With this as a guide we set off down Tabernacle Street towards Main Street. I figured that in line with my usual tourist practice that I would photograph the largest church in town which we expected to find at that intersection.

Well, not exactly but close. At Tabernacle and Main in Saint George is the Tabernacle.

Right, me too. I thought a tabernacle was some sort of church. And it sort of is but it isn't the temple. Eventually we had the distinction explained to us, we now understand. If you are really interested I bet there is a Wikipedia article that will explain it all.

We were there a bit after 9 to discover that opening time was 10.  We wandered around checking out other structures in what was labeled the historic center of town by the very few interpretive signs we found.

Frame left of the photo of the tabernacle is a piece of sculpture depicting the establishment of the center of town.  We found a description of the sculpture on the other side of the intersection.

We also located the winter home of Brigham Young.  Tours there also began at 10am.  We found this out when a car stopped, a young woman got out and approached the fence beyond which a well dressed older gentleman was busy raising a flag.

She said, "Elder, the sign says you open at 10am yet the gates are still closed."

He replied that he had gone to temple this morning and was a little behind schedule as a result.

We decided tabernacle first, winter home second.

At the tabernacle Elder and Sister Raymond were most cordial and informative in giving us lots of information about the tabernacle.  The Raymonds started a chain of interesting coincidences by asking where we were from and immediately establishing a connection by informing us that their son had obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Minnesota and that they had visited often.  Elder Raymond immediately asked us if we knew Swen and Ollie.  I didn't find it necessary to inform him that we know lots of Sven and Oles and that we have heard most of the jokes.  He was trying to be nice.

The tabernacle is used for some church functions but formal rituals including sealings occur at the temple.  Still the tabernacle is an important historical structure, the building of which was overseen by then Prophet Brigham Young himself.

For example, this free standing spiral staircase (one of two in the building) was hand built by master craftsman Miles Romney (Mitt's great grandfather).  It leads to a balcony.

The stairway is a beautiful piece of work but also revealed an odd idiosyncrasy that kept repeating itself throughout the tours we took.  All of the wood objects are made of Ponderosa pine, a soft wood, which is the only wood they had available in southern Utah.  Brigham Young was originally a Vermonter.  He preferred that the wooden things around him resemble the wood types, hard woods such as maple and oak, familiar to him from Vermont.  He directed that the pine be painted with a grain and color resembling hard woods.  It is all pine but it looks like maple and oak until you look closely.  Still, it is very beautiful wood working.

Here is a view of the interior of the tabernacle from that balcony.

Apparently one day during construction Young was sitting in the balcony assessing progress to that point.  He summoned Romney and informed him that five feet needed to be cut off the staircases as he found that he was not satisfied with the view from up there.  The balcony was too high.  Romney replied that cutting five feet off the stairway was not possible because to do so would leave the staircase leading into a wall instead of onto the balcony.

Eventually a compromise was reached.  There is a small area at the top of the staircase.  From there you take a short flight of steps DOWN to the balcony.

The balcony was already mostly completed.  It was lowered as required by Young by bringing in a crew of 200 men.  The crew stood on risers around the building under the balcony.  On a signal they lifted the balcony, another crew of workers cut five feet off the supporting structures.  The lifters then lowered the balcony down to the position where it now sits, an extremely impressive feat of teamwork and cooperation.

We toured the winter home.  Nothing terribly out of the ordinary for any building of that vintage except the wooden furniture, all pieces of pine painted to resemble oak and maple.  The tour guide there was not an elder, he identified himself as a missionary.  He was from Rochester, Minnesota, and instantly set about establishing a special affinity with his visitors from Minnesota.

At the completion of the tour we declined the offer of a free copy of the Book of Mormon, went to lunch and then headed towards the temple.  We had been allowed into the tabernacle but not even all Mormons are allowed into the temple.  You have to be "in good standing" and have a recommendation.  We entered the visitor center.

We were approached immediately by a young woman who greeted us and asked where we were from.  Upon being informed that we were from Minnesota she called to the nearby reception area where a senior Sister originally from White Bear was sitting.

Every stop a guide with Minnesota connections.

The proselytizing was consistent but almost always not oppressive.  We were offered free copies of the Book of Mormon at each stop but no one ever seemed to mind that we preferred not to take one.

This is the Temple of Saint George.  It is the first Mormon temple in the west.

The temple at Salt Lake City was begun earlier but the one in Saint George was completed first.  The building is constructed of sandstone blocks, covered with a layer of plaster and then painted white.

We were NOT invited to look inside.

We WERE given an opportunity to do a little free research on a work station in the visitor center connected to the highly touted Mormon geneology database.  It took about three clicks to locate Grosvater and all the members of his household according to the I forget which census, I think 1890, might have been 1900.  There were a couple of 20 something McDill young women living in the household is what I remember.

It was on its way outside to being way too hot again.  Getting  into the car after leaving the visitor center was unpleasant.  We decided to head back to the air conditioned motel room for a little sit down.

After a while we decided that it might be nice to get a tiny bit more outside time but that the best place to do so would be somewhere with a little shade and some greenery.  We had a really minimal chamber of commerce kind of place mat map of the city but it showed a Pioneer Park in a place that based on the places we had been to earlier in the day I was pretty sure I could locate.

It was 102F when we paused at Pioneer Park.

It was a very brief pause.  Shade and greenery seemed to be in short supply.

There was an overlook at the park which offered this view of the city illustrating the still prominent place of the temple in the profile of the city.

It's pretty here but as the FT remarked this feels more like visiting a foreign country that actually visiting a foreign country does.  The weather, the flora, the geologic setting is all so completely not what we are used to that we definitely feel displaced.

Time to go home.

Another spectacular canyon

This one you do from the bottom as opposed to that grand canyon in Arizona but the effect is the same. Every view ends up seeming routinely spectacular.

Today we visited Zion National Park. Spectacular.

The main canyon is available only by shuttle bus. The bus route originates from the visitor center just inside the western entrance to the park. On the way to the park there is a PERMANENT sign that says that the visitor parking lot is full from 10am to 3pm daily. We arrived at 9am.

Our plan was to ride the shuttle to the last available stop at the head of the canyon and then work our way back. This made our first stop the Temple of Sinawava. Most of the features in the canyon, and in fact, the canyon itself were named by persons of faith giving a certain slant to the names related strongly to the faith of those who were early enough in settlement by Europeans to be given naming rights.

The canyon is in a sandstone terrain, the remnants of what the interpretive material calls one of the largest sand dune terrains in the history of the world, similar in character to today's Sahara but probably larger.  Given enough time and enough sand eventually you get a massive sandstone terrain.  Introduce a river and eventually you are going to have a canyon.

That's what happened here.   This view is from the Temple of Sinawava shuttle stop up canyon towards the end of the main park.

We were determined to take several of the trails.  But with 100 degree temperatures looming later in the day our selection criterion for which trails we would attempt required that the  trail be rated by the park guide as "Easy" and that they be short.  Our first trail was the Riverside Walk beginning at the Temple shuttle stop.

At the end of the one mile Riverside Walk is the entrance to The Narrows.  The Narrows is described as 16 miles long, up to 2,000 feet deep and at times only 20 to 30 feet wide.  The guide goes on to say that the trip is not to be underestimated.  Hiking the Narrows means hiking in the river.  At least 60 percent of the hike is spent wading, walking, and sometimes swimming in the river.  There is no maintained trail because the route is the river.  The current is swift, the water may be cold and deep, and the rocks underfoot are slippery.  Flash flooding and hypothermia are constant dangers.

The trail begins.

We turned back towards the main park.  Here is Ms. Bend in the River at a bend in the river.

And here is today's wildlife photo.  And yes, that mule deer was as close to me as he appears in the photo.  I utilized none of the telephoto characteristics available to me with the variable lens on my camera.  I was standing on the trail, he was standing on the wall above the trail, within perhaps 15 or so feet of where I was standing.

We got back on the shuttle to head to the next down canyon stop.  The bus driver spotted yet another mule deer along the road as we rode.  He asked over his speaker system if anyone on the bus knew how many kinds of deer there were in the park.

He provided the answer:  four.

Yes, dear.
No, dear.
John Deere.
And mule deer.

As he himself added, thousands of comedians out of work and we were stuck there with him.

The next stop was Big Bend.  Here is the rock formation that creates the big bend.  The river comes from frame right and turns to follow the contour of this monolith towards frame left.

The attraction here, though is the view of The Organ, The Great White Throne, and The Angel's Landing.  That is they in the photo from left to right.

The next shuttle stop was Weeping Rock.  Here is a view of those same three monuments seen above as seen from a perspective about half a mile further down stream and slightly around the corner.  The big difference from a photography perspective is that we have significantly altered the sun angle.

The Weeping Rock Trail is described as short but steep.  It leads to a spot where the rock appears to weep.  There are hundreds of feet of sandstone layers.  Surface water at the top of the canyon percolates down into the rock and descends slowly through the layers until it reaches an impermeable layer.  At that point the water is forced laterally and emerges on the side of the canyon as if the rock were weeping.  It is an impressive effect.

The next stop was the Grotto.  This  isn't really the Grotto but it is an interesting formation visible from the Grotto shuttle stop.  The lighter colored sandstone formation has eroded into arches high up in the side of the canyon above the more reddish colored lower layers of rock.

We walked the Grotto Trail next which was an alternative to the shuttle bus down to the next stop, Zion Lodge.  The trail itself and most of the views available were unremarkable but we emerged to this view back up canyon  visible at the lodge.

We had lunch at the lodge and then ventured up Lower Emerald Pool Trail. It was starting to get hot.  These rocks are not weeping.  The impermeable layer here is enough farther up the wall of the canyon that the water courses over this ledge as a mini-waterfall, dropping into three small pools.  Picturesque.

From underneath the waterfall.

We made our way back to the shuttle and rode down to the Court of the Patriarchs.  Here we had our final hike, a trail described by the guide as another short but steep.

These peaks are named for significant figures from the Book of Mormon.  From left to right, Abraham Peak, Isaac Peak, Mount Moroni (not well known to non-Mormons but apparently a significant figure in the Book of Mormon) and Jacob Peak.

Here is a final look back up canyon from our final shuttle stop, Canyon Junction.

This evening the guide book came through with a very nice Mexican restaurant on the other side of Saint George.

We are getting a little saturated with spectacular rocks and hot days.  Tomorrow has another predicted high of at least near 100 and therefore looms as a non-desert day.  It appears that we will end up seeking whatever tourism sites we can locate in Saint George.  A sign on the freeway promises dinosaur tracks at Johnson Farms at exit 10.  We are at exit 8 so who knows?

The mother of the young family we met at the eclipse last evening asked the usual question of whether we knew when the next one would be.  This got me thinking about the last one I had seen and sure enough there is a Wikipedia article about the total eclipse of the sun visible in northwestern Wisconsin on June 30, 1954.  I have vague memories of what we could see after Aunt Marian loaded us into her car to haul us to what she deemed an appropriate viewing location.  Yesterday's events fail to even approach what I remember from 1954.  I am now inspired to try to find a total eclipse as the whole annular thing was so much less impressive.

Tri-state tour continues

Today was another travel day. It was a long, long drive.

We headed east to Flagstaff and then north along Highway 89. We were headed towards the Vermilion Cliffs Scenic Roadway. The Arizona highway maps (we have two) we were using to navigate differentiate between scenic roadways and national scenic byways. Highway 89 qualifies as neither but despite that snub we found the trip to be way scenic.

Highlights included the crossing of the Little Colorado River at Cameron, Arizona and the entire range of cliffs always present along the right side of the road and designated by one of our maps as Echo Cliffs. We were also running along something called the Hamblin Wash and later the Tanger Wash.  This isn't even one of the really scenic spots but it is a spot with a nice enough view of an Echo Cliff and of Hamblin Wash.

Close examination may result in identification of a flock of goats out there near the dirt road.

Shortly after beginning on the officially designated Vermilion Cliffs Scenic Roadway we came to Navajo Bridge, the only roadway and bridge crossing the Colorado River for nearly 600 miles.  This is a look upstream with Vermilion Cliffs National Monument looming in the background.

This shot is from the bridge towards the west bank.  The road swings south towards that range of hills.  It truly is scenic, almost unbelievably so.

Another look from near the bridge.

The road ran along Marble Canyon for a time before ascending to the Kaibab Plateau.

This is the view from the House Rock Valley Overlook.  The valley is off to the left and isn't terrifically photogenic, partly due to the persistent haze.  This is Marble Canyon.

The road climbs along Marble Canyon for a good long stretch, a significantly scenic stretch at least partly because the rocks now shift to mostly white from the reddish hues which had dominated the day to that point.

We reached Jacob Lake just in time for a late lunch but also just in time to run into a conflict at the Jacob Lake Inn and Cafe with a scheduled stop by an entire bus of tourists.

In order to be fit into the restaurant schedule we agreed to share a table with Phil and Mick, newlyweds from Pennsylvania.  Well they referred to themselves as newlyweds.  They married in 2008 in Las Vegas with the two of them seated on the seat of Phil's motorcycle.  This time they were touring by Prius.  They were headed to the North Rim and then to Mount Rushmore and then the Upper Peninsula, across into Canada, back into the USA in New York state and then home to Pennsylvania.

They seemed to have no particular destination and all the time they wanted to get there.

We crossed the state line about an hour later into Utah, making the tour a three state tour.  I just pulled off the road at any old random spot near Kanab, Utah, to take a picture of the very routine, extremely spectacular scenery.

So tonight we are in Saint George, Utah. Saint George is exactly on the path of the annular eclipse and we arrived in time to be standing out in front of the motel as the event reached its peak.

I have taken lots and lots of sunset photos and I had hoped that this deal would be enough similar to that to allow me to get some photos of the rim of fire at full  eclipse.

You cannot, of course, look directly at the sun but I could look in the general direction of the sun and open the shutter. While we were standing out there I did this several times but each time I reviewed what I had taken it really didn't seem like I was getting anything at all.

But still, at full annular eclipse I went ahead and fired off a bunch of shots. Open the shutter, later on take a look and see what you've got.

There was a young family out there who had been planning this thing long enough that they had 6 pairs of the appropriate protective lenses, one each for Mom and Dad, and one each for each of the four children. As will happen the children quickly tired of the whole eclipse thing and Mom and Dad lent us the almost always available extra lenses. We both had the lenses and were able to gaze directly at the sun at full annularity.

Was it cool?

Indeed it was.

So I came in and downloaded the memory from the camera to the computer and started clicking on the images for a closer look.  I discovered that I did, unfortunately, get pretty much nothing at all of the sun.  But then I noticed that weirdly enough there were ghost images in several of the frames.

Here's what I  got before the eclipse.

At full eclipse.

After the full annular eclipse.

We are now close enough to the airport in Las Vegas to allow us to make a run for it in time for our flight home without having to start a day and a half in advance.  We do seem to have a couple of more days before we have to make that run and there does seem to be a national park in the more or less immediate vicinity.

Monuments

We love the big canyon but three days in a row would probably be overdoing it, particularly when there are other attractions around.

This morning we headed into Flagstaff and then north to the loop road through Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument and Wupatki National Monument.  My national parks access pass gained us admission to both national monuments.

We mini-paused at the visitor center of Sunset Crater Volcano and then proceeded on down the road.  And pretty much instantly went "Whoa!!!!"  This is the Bonito Lava Flow, remnant of the most recent eruption of Sunset Crater Volcano some time between 1040 and 1100.

We don't have anything like this in Minnesota.

Cinders from the Sunset Crater eruption blanketed older volcanos creating cinder dunes.

This is the volcano itself.  The interpretive literature says that the volcanic process is still active here, that 1,000 years without an eruption is not that unusual in the history of this area.  It does say that the next eruption is not likely to be Sunset Crater, that the eruption will be nearby but not here.

The road we were on is a closed loop which leaves Sunset Crater and then provides scenic vistas of a painted desert before entering Wupatki.  The haze defeated attempts to capture the desert in photos but in person the views were spectacular.

The road then swings back towards the main highway to enter the Wupatki National Monument.  The monument incorporates about 2,700 historic sites inhabited by ancestors of the Hopi people in a period beginning at about the time of the eruption of Sunset Crater Volcano.  Volcanic ash from the eruption had made the soil more fertile and favorable for farming.

This is the Wukoki Pueblo.  It was a multi-story multi-family dwelling built directly on and appearing to rise from the bed rock.

This is largest ruin in the area, the Wupatki Pueblo.

This structure had more than 100 rooms and was a center for cultural and social life for its residents and other members of the community who lived nearby.

The people were farmers.  This is the Citadel Ruins, on top of a low hill but visible for great distances in all directions.

There was farming here as well.  The people successfully cultivated corn, cotton, beans and squash.

Our last stop at the monument brought us to the Lomaki Pueblo.

This pueblo is located on a box canyon.  Nearby residences can be seen from Lomaki.  Those other pueblos are also located on another part of the box canyon.

This is through a doorway at Lomaki.  Visible frame right is the Citadel Ruin.  Visible frame left is a snow covered mountain.  These pueblos are located at approximately 8,000 feet above sea level.

Here's a look into the box canyon where the other group of pueblos is located.

The FT says she has to go home and watch a bunch of old cowboy movies now to bring her vocabulary up to speed for understanding this environment.  There are lots of mesas and buttes and dry washes and ponderosa pine and . . . box canyons.

We had late lunch back in Williams at Twister's Route 66 Diner, a venue dedicated to recreating the heyday of the fabled highway, the 1950s.  The food was OK but the atmosphere was better.

As we left we noticed this really nice 56 Ford (there was also a restored 57 Chevy parked out front) and that we had once again obeyed an imperative in making our choice of dining spots.  It does seem to require that one eat there.

Last night in Williams.  Tomorrow we will be changing locations again but hoping to be at our destination in time for the big solar eclipse which should be quite near to sunset where we are going.