Total Eclipse of the Sun

Since last week's post was only a short post to keep up my thirteen-year streak of never missing a Sunday, this week will cover two weeks. I will divide it into sections so you can navigate to the part(s) you are more interested in.

Leaving on a Trip

On Monday, April 1, as I was doing laundry, our dryer made a weird buzzing sound. My dad immediately heard it and couldn't get it to work. So my parents opted to just buy a brand-new drier, since my dad worried about lint hazards in the old drier, which I believe we got around the turn of the millennium. Does that count as an April Fool's prank from our house? My dad was not happy to have to replace the drier right before our big trip.

On Wednesday, April 3, I joined my parents on our road trip down south. We stopped for lunch at a diner in Kingman, Arizona, before we made our first destination in Phoenix, the first time I had been that far south in Arizona. I loved how they had saguaro cacti just growing freely. Saguaro are so iconic of the desert, yet they only grow in Arizona, Sonora, and a little bit of California. 

We stayed the night at the home of Susan and Bill. Susan was my mom's best friend back in our old neighborhood. We moved out of that house back when I was two, so I have only fleeting memories of that house/neighborhood, but we did visit Susan's family sometimes when I was a little older. (I have a memory of their kids bursting into our old house, and the son Brett went into the kitchen and started chugging a bottle of vanilla. I'm 99 percent certain this was a dream. Also, I always thought Brett was named Bread.)

Susan is losing her short-term memory, so I think that was sad for my mom. But they had a cat named Willy, so that was the highlight for me! (They also had a rambunctious dog named Buddy, but I don't care about that.)

National Parks

On Thursday, April 4, we arrived at the western side of Saguaro National Park. I loved seeing all the saguaro! We went on a short nature walk. I never realized saguaro were so big. 

That night, we stayed at a hotel in Tucson. There was a greenway right next to our hotel, so I went on a walk. I even saw a roadrunner! It was a perfect evening, and I had some envy for Tucson. But I probably would be less envious in August than in April.

On Friday, we went to the eastern portion of Saguaro National Park and did another nature walk and a short scenic drive. I just adore this desert. (Since I work in Utah history, my muscle memory wants to type Deseret instead of desert.) Cartoons tend to portray the desert as big expanses of sand with a few saguaro, but the Sonoran Desert is not like that at all. There are all kinds of prickly pear cacti, barrel cacti, cholla cacti, and other plants. I'm sad we didn't get to spend more time there.

Then we headed into New Mexico, which is Arizona's twin, but it's like the twin that didn't graduate from high school and still lives in Mom's basement. It doesn't have the Sonoran Desert, so it will never be as cool. But it still has some cool things. We went to White Sands National Park. Most sand is made from quartz, because it takes longer to erode than other minerals. But at White Sands, the sand is made from gypsum, the same material used in drywall. We stopped at the dunes, and the texture of the sand reminded me of cornmeal. I got down on the sand, and the wind was blowing the sand against me, which was uncomfortable. Just lots of white all around.

We stayed the night in Alamogordo, NM.

On Saturday, we headed out. It was snowing as we drove through Cloudcroft, NM, a village at more than eight thousand feet in elevation. 

We went to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. There is an elevator that goes down into the cave, but my dad and I opted to hike down (and took the elevator back up). The process for going down was really confusing, and the rangers gave us conflicting information. I could tell that one ranger really did not like her job. 

It was an amazing place to be. But I have been in other caves before (Lehman, Minnetonka, Timpanogos). Carlsbad was like the other caves, just on a bigger scale. It was really busy inside. 

Every time I go to a cave, they make a big deal about the difference between stalactites and stalagmites, and that was something I learned in elementary school. But first of all, why are there different words for them? And second, why is it important for me to know the difference? Like, why did I learn the mnemonics to remember the difference in fifth grade, yet I never learned about the Chinese Exclusion Act until grad school?

Then we went into Texas to go to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We went on a small walk but did very little here. It's my understanding that there's not a lot to do in this park.

There is a little pool of springwater

There were some homes there from the early twentieth century

And then we were done with the national parks. We spent the night in Carlsbad, NM, in a hotel with a vintage kitchen.

An egg carton built into the fridge!

Solar Eclipse

On Sunday, we drove to the home of my cousin Shane and his wife, Sarah, in Keller, TX, outside of Dallas.

On Monday, we drove to a park about thirty minutes away, and Shane's family also came. Lots of people came to the park, but it was less busy than I expected. We put on our eclipse glasses and watched partiality. There were spotty clouds, so we worried whether we would see totality.

But! Just before totality, the clouds parted, and we got to see the whole show. As totality began, people cheered. We got to see the corona around the black shadow of the moon. It was as dim as twilight, even though it was the middle of the day, and a few planets were visible. It was just as I remember in 2017. And then as totality ended, everyone cheered. I really feel happy that I've been able to see two total eclipses in my adult life. And in 2045, another eclipse will go directly through Utah, and I expect to still be in Utah at that point. But that is a long time from now!

I didn't try, expect, or plan to get a good picture of the eclipse. This is just proof that I saw it.

I wanted to stop at Krispy Kreme to get eclipse doughnuts to share with Shane's family.

And that was really the end of my trip.

Coming Home

On Tuesday morning, my parents dropped me off at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport while they continued their road trip. I had a long time in the airports, so I got to do lots of reading: a couple of books for work, and two whole chapters of Benjamin Parks's American Zion. 

I had a layover in Phoenix, and on the way home, I enjoyed looking over the land. I saw several grand canyons, and I suspect one of them was the Grand Canyon. I'm pretty certain I saw Lake Powell, and I think I saw the San Rafael Swell. 

Now, I don't like to talk about gross things, and you probably don't like to read them, so you might want to move to the next section. When I got home, Reggie had had diarrhea all over the house and himself. So much of my free time for the last several days has been spent cleaning the floor and his fur. And I will still have to do a deep clean. That has been a significant frustration.

NCPH

Part of why I came home when I did is that the Utah Historical Society (my employer) was cohosting a conference with the National Council on Public History. So on Wednesday evening, I attended the plenary session and got my conference badge. The badges came with different colors of lanyards to indicate how comfortable I am with physical interaction. I got yellow to indicate that I'm fine with fistbumps but not hugging and would rather not shake hands. It's so nice to have a socially acceptable way to say I don't like hugging! 

I attended sessions Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It can be exhausting to attend that many sessions. But of course I was being paid to be there. I was able to introduce myself to several historians whose work I have admired, and I talked to a few of my classmates from grad school. I think the networking was more beneficial to me than the sessions themselves, though I liked those as well. I think my job with the Utah Historical Society will have me attending many more conferences in my career. We lucked out that this NCPH conference was in SLC this year.

Whew! Good job if you made it through the whole post this week.