Eclipse 2017

Flash back to August 2015

Me: Hey I found something for us to do in Casper, Wyoming in 2017, wanna go?
Mark: *the look*
Me: No seriously.
Mark: 2017...Casper...
Me: Yup!

 

Seems that I wasn't a complete goof-ball afterall .  Turns out that me and approximately 20 million others had the same idea...GO SEE THE TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE!  Now a little back story to this.  I read that the total eclipse was going to be over the whole US and that the closest prime viewing places were going to be in Wyoming and Nebraska. I pulled out my trusty laptop and started searching for places to stay for the night before the eclipse. The first place I looked, Alliance, Nebraska: No vacancy in ANY hotel, motel, rest stop, parking lot, etc.  Second place: Ogallala,NB: No Vacancy. Third place: North Platte: No Vacancy and so on and so forth for ALL of Nebraska and Wyoming.  I mean there was nada.  Nothing.  Zippo.  As I quickly learned, a whole bunch of people had already heard about this eclipse and had reserved their hotel stay about 6 years ago because they are nerds. 

But did that dissuade us from going?  Nope not hardly.  Oh and before I go any farther, Mark was totally on board for this little road trip once I told him what we were going to do :) So we decided to drive up to either Wyoming or Nebraska early in the morning of August 21st and drive back to Denver after the eclipse had finished.  Guess what?  That's what approximately 1 million other people from the Denver area had decided to do too.  Who would have thought that there were that many other smart people (such as myself) around here...

We had told Mom and Dad about our plans and they said that they had wanted to go see the eclipse too so we had invited them to come up here and we could all travel together.  Good plan but unfortunately Mom was hospitalized on Sunday morning and they were unable to join us on our sojourn north. 

We got up early and were on the road by 5 am hoping to avoid the heavy traffic that they were predicting.  Uh guess what.  You know those other 1 million people from the Denver area that I mentioned?  They heard the same reports about heavy traffic too and they were on the road right along with us. 

Morning Sunrise

Warnings every few miles about the heavy traffic.

Somewhere on I-25

We drove in bumper to bumper traffic for about 5 hours until we were about 15 miles from Casper, Wyoming and pulled off on one of the access roads to watch the event with about 500 other people who had the same plan as us.  Mark got all set up with his camera so that he could get some pics of the eclipse and I was in charge of catching it on video and taking selfies. 

Some of our 500 new friends we made while watching the eclipse.

My Co-Nerd

Right before total darkness

Let me say: The eclipse was certainly worth the drive and the traffic.  Even if it took us 5 hours to get to a place where we could sit in darkness for a mere 2.5 minutes and then turn around and drive home for another 5 hours.  Totally worth it.

                This is a time-lapse of the eclipse

We headed back to Denver right after the sun reappeared and fortunately we were at the head of the pack for the trip back home.  Those people who were behind us were stuck in heavy, heavy traffic and the news reported that it took most people over 11 hours to make the trip from Casper to Denver.  Boy were we happy to have avoided that.

We've heard that there is another total eclipse that is happening in Austin on April 8, 2024, and guess who is trying to make hotel reservations already? Yup...this nerd!

Sunset

The "B" Trip: Breckenridge, Bugs, Booze and Broncs

Beautiful River walk in Breckenridge

You know some weekends we just wake up and decide that we are going to just head to the mountains and find something to do.  This weekend was one of those.  We ended up calling this our “B” trip: Breckenridge, Bugs, Booze and Broncs.

We knew that we were going to start off going to Breckenridge.  Why? Because we really, really love this ski town and all it has to offer: great food, beautiful scenery and there’s usually something fun to do while we are there.  It had been about 4 months since we had been there so I looked up what was going on in town and the surrounding areas.  Seems that there was a weeks-long Arts Festival that was in full swing for the weekend in Breck so that’s where we started off.

An "ART" display

Another "Art" thing. (The Bike-el Tower?)

We got up to Breck about noon so the first thing we did was found a place to eat.  We had heard that a good place to grab a bite to eat is The Blue Elk.  We tried to eat there for dinner in February but we hit the restaurant about the same time that the skiers were coming off the mountain and there was a 2 hour wait to get in.  So we opted to pass that night.  Fortunately for us, there wasn’t a wait to get in and we had a pretty good meal with the highlight of the meal being Bacon Wrapped Pretzel Bites with Cheddar Beer dip.  Oh my…that may be our new favorite appetizer! (Sorry chips and queso...)

After lunch we went to see the Bugs (Ants).  This was some artsy-fartsy thing that was part of the Arts Festival.  Ants is a tour group called Polyglot Theater and showcases three people dressed in ant costumes. According to their website, “Ants is a work that brings human-sized ants into a public site for a mix of roving performance and large scale interaction with children and their adults”.  Didn’t I say it was an artsy-fartsy thing?  We watched it for about 5 minutes and then realized we had just wasted 5 minutes of our lives watching this lunacy.  Basically what the ants do is walk around carrying bread crumbs from one pile to other piles and the kids that are watching start helping them move the bread crumbs.  Go ahead.  Call me uncultured.  Call me unenlightened.  I don’t care.  Oh and for those of you who want to see what we saw- you can waste 3:45 minutes of your life watching this video!

Up next: Breckenridge Distillery.  We have been to the Breckenridge Brewery but had never been to the distillery.  We did the tour and the booze tasting and thoroughly enjoyed the booze.  The tour was less impressive. Breckenridge Distillery is winning lots and lots of international awards these days and we can see why.  While we were there a huge afternoon thunderstorm hit so we had to stay for a little while until the storm passed.  Needless to say we sampled just a little more of the libations while we waited! 

 

 

The last stop on our “B” trip was a rodeo in Fraser.  (If you’re keeping up with the theme, this is the Broncs part) We came here last summer and really enjoyed it so we looked online to see if the rodeo was still going on and fortunately for us, it was the final performance of the season. After a quick BBQ sandwich from the snack bar we watched the rodeo.  Unfortunately, at the very beginning of the rodeo, one of the horses that the pickup riders were on dropped dead of a heart attack right in middle of the arena in front of everyone. I’ve never seen anything like that and neither had most of the people in the audience judging from the reactions everyone had.  But other than that it was a fun evening watching the cowboys and cowgirls in the cool pines. 

 

Herman Gulch

Okay so here's a little brag...I just completed my first hike to 12K feet!  I know, I know...it's not a 14er but still pretty good for this ol' flat-lander! My friend Christine and I got up to the trail early to get make sure we were up to the top of the trail by noon. This time of year there are lightening storms (especially above the tree line) that pop up every afternoon and the recommendation is that all hikers need to be off the top of any mountain no later 1 pm to avoid these deadly storms.  

It was a beautiful hike tho.  On the first part of the trail we came across a momma moose and her calf, which was really cool, but also really dangerous. Especially with four dogs that could have easily spooked her.  Fortunately Christine's dogs are very well trained and they stayed right by us and didn't bark or make any "aggressive" sounds when they saw them. They say that a mother moose is actually more aggressive when people are around their calves than mother bears are.  There have been 3 moose attacks so far this summer on hikers that have startled them. Here's the one picture I was able to take of the mom. Can you see her?

I will have to admit- The hike itself was pretty hard.  It was only a 3.5 mile one-way route to a gorgeous Alpine lake at the end of the trail but I swear it felt like we hiked a LOT farther than that.  Mainly because the trail went straight up with very few switchbacks. 

Yup that's a steep hike ahead of us

Snow melt still coming down

 

Lower peaks that we passed on the way up

Yup we ended all the way up to the basin of this peak.

Half-way there

View back down the mountain valley

On the way up (and down) we passed beautiful fields of wildflowers, including thousands of blue Columbines (Colorado State Flower).

Lupine and daisy

Columbine

Loads of wildflowers everywhere

We hiked up high enough on the mountain that we were above the tree line.  We had to walk through lots of unmelted snow from last year's snowfall. They say it's called Apache snow:  A patch here and a patch there...

So this was what we hiked up the mountain to see.  Yes, you can surely see that it was totally worth the effort!

Hike back down the mountain

And wouldn't you know it...about a mile from the parking lot the sky opened up and it started pouring on us like crazy.  You can just imagine what the car smelled like traveling back to Denver with four wet dogs and two wet gals!


So now that I've conquered a 12Ker I think a 14er is on my bucket list now!

Colorado Irish Festival

Mark: What is going on this weekend?  
Me:  Seo tá tú an féile na hÉireann i Littleton.
Mark:  Are you off your meds again?
Me: *Grin*

So basically what I told him was that there is an Irish Festival in Littleton in my best Irish brogue nonetheless.  (I'm kinda fancy that way!)

And with that we made our way to the festival.  Obviously it had a lot of the things that you find at these kind of things...food trucks, activities for the kids, music, and vendors and such.  But they also had a few cool things that were unique to this festival: Dogs shepherding DUCKS, hurling tournaments, Irish Whiskey tastings, and bagpipe and Highland dance competitions.  We really enjoyed all of the activities that they had and we will definitely go again next year!

Dog herding ducks

Mark trying on a kilt!

These Irish Whiskey tastings had a full shot of whiskey in each of the cups!  Usually they give you a few sips worth but the bartender was definitely generous in his pours.  Needless to say after Mark finished his "tastings" I had to drive home!

 

Notice that it says "yesterday" in small print haha