Road Trip 2017 - the Analemma

[muon2]

My road trip this year is divided into two segments - an eastern trip in Jun and a western trip in Aug. I leave this Fri on the eastern trip. Here's a map of my overnight destinations and updated travels between them. My usual travelogue will appear in mostly daily posts.


Red: overnight stay
Magenta: multiple night stay (including home)
Blue: intentional visit
Yellow: stop for a quilt shop
Cyan: stop for gas, food, etc.
Green: drive through

The analemma is the path of the Sun seen by an observer on the Earth taken at the same time on different days of the year. It looks like this.


The highlight of the trip will be a view of the total solar eclipse in ID. Given this year's connection to the Sun, and the general shape of the overnight stays, I thought of the analemma. For the record my previous road trip threads can be found here: 2015, 2011, 2008, and 2005. As always, I'm open to meet ups with other posters as time permits.

[muon2]

What county is that in Virginia? It seems to be next door to Mathews County, from which the Dunn clan sprang. Dan I stayed at this home there right on the water, and the couple, even though it was not part of the program (it was labeled an AirBnb for legal reasons), served us breakfast. We all became good friends. And the county is stunningly beautiful and unspoiled.

York county. I'm presenting at a conference in Williamsburg. I had another conference in Williamsburg last Dec and since I got an early flight so I drove up to visit Mathews county then. I got a nice picture of the historic courthouse and added it to my county count. Lovely area.

[muon2]

What you going to see in KY, muon?  Cool state.

My wife's aunt lives in Berea so we'll visit her. I want to see the Kentucky Coal Museum on our way to Wise VA. I was inspired by this thread.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=262576.0

[muon2]

East Day 1

The first day out on a road trip is usually one of the less interesting ones. We can visit lots of interesting places near home without making it part of the trip, and the point is to get to places we don't visit. In addition to the usual destinations one might seek, my wife and I have personal interests we like to satisfy on our road trips. She's a quilter and I try to see America by tracking all the counties I have visited. This is also our first road trip in the bright red BMW X-3 my wife got this spring.

We did a half day of work before leaving, and then there was a auto wreck on I-80 between IL and IN so we detoured south through Peotone. There wasn't much to see there other than a Subway for lunch. I-65 was very much in the height of road repair season, so there were lots of slow spots. We left the interstate at Columbus IN to catch a quilt shop. The big summer quilting contest called row-by-row experience doesn't start until Jun 21, but the stores are already preparing with displays of their row for the competition.

Our destination for day 1 was family in Berea KY. Google will tell you that to get there from Indy you either go south Louisville then east to Lexington, or east to Cincinnati then south to Lexington. Either way it's all interstate. For an extra hour drive you can split those two paths: go south from Columbus and cross the Ohio river at Madison IN. The scenery is lovely and Madison has a quaint historic district that is now on our list of potential destinations for an overnight stay. That scenic route also took me through four new counties: Jennings and Jefferson IN, and Trimble and Henry KY.

[muon2]

East Day 2

Berea is a town well worth a visit. Berea College spawned a vibrant arts and crafts community and any given Sat in the summer is full of activities. We couldn't spend more than the morning so we had a pancake breakfast at an urban garden. The owners grow a lot of veggies on an adjacent lot for sale to restaurants, shops, and farmer's markets as well as provide community garden space. They were getting ready to put herb and flower planters throughout the town that afternoon. After that brunch we checked out the exhibit at the Kentucky Artisan Center right off of I-75. It's where the tourists go, but the exhibits are much better than average for a touristy place.

From Berea we made our way to the Kentucky Coal Museum in Benham, Harlan county. On the way we spotted signed for a couple of quilt shops that weren't on out initial map, and one had some KY-themed fabric that my wife could integrate into this year's project. The Coal Museum is pretty good and captures a lot of the history and camp life for the corporate mines that dominated the area for much of the 20th century. The museum itself is in the commissary for the International Harvester mine. My grandfather worked in the IH factory in Chicago, but I didn't realize the IH mined their own coal to turn into coke to make steel. It's a 3-story building and the public can't get to the roof, so I couldn't see the solar panels. The receptionist said there are 80 panels up there now with more to come, but they weren't consulted by the local community college which runs the museum, so they pass the CC's phone # on to anyone inquiring about the irony.

Finally we took the bimmer over the Black mountain pass to get to VA. We passed a stilling working coal mine (there's only a handful left from dozens a few decades ago), then though Norton (a tiny  independent city that counts as a county in VA), to get to Wise. We grabbed a sandwich at the pub and watched Tapwrit make a great surge in stretch at the Belmont Stakes to win.

SE KY was a new are to me so I made a first visit to Jackson, Clay, Leslie, Perry, Letcher and Harlan KY, as well as Wise and Norton City VA.

[muon2]

East Day 3

There are days that start with fair skies and smooth sailing, but then it looks like a storm is about to catch you in the middle of the water, only to find that the storm turned out to be no more than a few dark clouds. Yep, that was today.

We left today with grand plans to hike a small bit of the Appalachian Trail, Drive part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and see Appomattox Court House before getting to Williamsburg for the evening. Sundays in western VA feature little that is open on Sunday except for church. So, we used the Keurig in our hotel room and some some granola bars to make our breakfast. We got out the door before 7 am, so we were very optimistic about our aggressive schedule.

We stopped at the visitors center where the Appalachian Trail crosses through the Mount Rogers NRA. We took a very short hike and met some friendly hikers including a fellow who started at the southern end and was looking to get to ME by Oct. However, we also noticed that my cell phone was nowhere to be found. Yikes! We searched the bags that had gone into the hotel and the side pockets in the car. What if it was two hours back at the hotel in Wise? Yikes again! There was no cell service at that stop, so we couldn't call the hotel for them to check.

Once we got back to the valley we started checking for cell service. We figured that by having one of us on AT&T and the other on Verizon we'd be about as well covered as one could hope. The bad news was that my Verizon tablet had bars but my wife's AT&T iPhone had nothing. Even in Galax where everything (including the gas station) was closed Sun morning, it was Verizon 1, AT&T 0. At least a sympathetic BBQ waitress saw us wandering about and had us come in to the restaurant for a cup of coffee. At last as we passed under I-77 there was enough of a signal for my wife to call the hotel and alert them as to the missing phone. Then the signal was gone.

The next stop was at Mabry Mill where we were going to get on the Blue Ridge Parkway for 25 miles. The Mill is in surprisingly good working order and the demos make it worth a stop. But by then we had a new idea to search for the phone. My wife could just try to call it. She did and the BMW said it wasn't answering. That would imply that the missing phone was still in the car. We tried again with her well out of Bluetooth range and the car politely said that my phone (but not hers) was still connected. Aha, another even more thorough search located the phone, not under a seat, but in a door pocket that proved to be wider than we suspected when we rummaged through it back at Mt Rogers. Relief at last.

We made to to Appomattox after finding perhaps the only quilt shop open on Sun in central VA. Yes, Appomattox should be required for any of us political junkies. It's that important to the nation's history and especially how the respect for the vanquished avoided a slew of treason trials after the Civil War. After all that, we even got to our resort before 7 pm.

This was a banner day for new VA counties for me: Russell, Grayson, Galax (IC), Floyd, Patrick, Franklin, Bedford, Campbell, Lynchburg (IC), Appomattox, Prince Edward, Nottoway, and Amelia.

[muon2]

East Day 4

On my ideal road trip there's a multi-day drive to some destination where we can stay for a week, followed by a multi-day (usually shorter) drive back. On the first day at the target destination we relax for a day, and then at some point during the week we take off for an overnight trip to some interesting place near our "base camp".

The twist on this trip is a conference I'm attending on Wed-Fri, so that doesn't leave many options for an overnight trip. So we arrived at Williamsburg (technically in James City county) on Sun, but the only reasonable overnight trip would be Mon night into Tue. From trips over the last two years we had enough points to stay someplace nice, so we are spending tonight on the beach at the Kitty Hawk Hilton Garden Inn.

Of course we had seafood at a local eatery and finished with a stroll along the beach. On our way to Kitty Hawk we took the long way around with stops for a bit of hiking in the Great Dismal Swamp, and at colonial sites at Edenton NC and Fort Raleigh. A nightcap at a beachside bar is likely still to come as we watch game 5 of the NBA finals.

NE NC is a new area for me and I was in Gates, Chowan, Perquimans, Washington, Tyrell, and Dare.

[muon2]

East Day 5

Flexibility can be a very good thing on a road trip. For example, this morning I woke myself up at 5 am, in time to walk on the beach to catch the sunrise for a half hour,



and then have time to go back to bed before getting on with the day.

We thought we would drive up the beach to climb the Currituck Lighthouse then come back to the Wright Brothers memorial before heading off the OBX. Again, let's let flexibility have its say. WE already had this great view on the beach, so for breakfast we thought we'd try Duck Donuts in Duck, NC. The line was 20 minutes long to order, and 20 minutes wait as they had prepared your special combination like lemon dip with oreo topping. The cake donuts are scrumptuously warm, sweet and of course have exactly the flavors I crave - why not, it's what I put on my order sheet.

The two-lane road to the lighthouse was only as fast as the slowest car, and after the long (but well worth it) wait for the donuts there was now a half hour wait just to start the climb and the temp was over 80 with at least a 67 degree dewpoint. So we just took some pics and drove back to Duck. This time we stopped at Tommy's Market and Wine shop to pick up some snacks and a bottle of Saintsbury 2015 Vin Gris of Pinot Noir. It's a very tasty, dry Rose that we have just finished as I write this.

We did get to the Wright Brothers memorial and used my annual pass that I bought at Dismal Swamp yesterday (no line there). If you are going to a few national parks, memorials or wildlife centers in the course of a year these passes are a good value at $80. As a science and tech nerd, Kitty Hawk is just one of those places one must visit at least once. Just down the road from Wright Bros was a local artists coop which is a far more meaningful way to get souvenirs, IMO, so we did.

All that morning flexibility meant that lunch in Elizabeth City wasn't until 3 pm, though the donuts were still keeping us going. It also meant we couldn't spend time poking around E City or take in the Norfolk Botanical Garden. But given the great morning, we didn't feel like we missed a thing. I also didn't miss three more counties in NC: Currituck, Camden, and Pasquotank.

[muon2]

East Day 6 and 7

This is the business part of the trip for me. Yeah, this one isn't just vacation.

Day 6 started with laundry in the morning and a presentation from the resort about why we should buy time at their place. We've been hearing the pitch for almost 30 years, but we recognize it's part of the time-share resort business and for a couple hours of time we get a $75 dollar gift card (or a choice of other compensation).

In the evening I went over to the conference for the opening reception and dinner with other presenters. The conference is titled "The Future of Elections", and includes law makers and election officers from around the US. Day 7 was a full day of talks on topics ranging from election data security and technological innovations to funding challenges to meet changing needs.

Because it was Williamsburg the lunch speakers were T. Jefferson, P. Henry, and G. Washington, and they answered questions after their presentations - in character! Particulary interesting were the answers to what they thought about Hamilton, and whether the Constitution should allow for a President not supported by the majority of voters (George was definitely against the popular vote for President). Then we had another reception for dinner. My wife avoided all the talks and spent the day in Colonial Williamsburg and was meeting Martha while I heard from George.

This evening I finished my talk to present tomorrow morning.

[muon2]

East Day 8

This is our last day in Williamsburg, so it was mostly chill. I spent the morning at the last session of the conference and gave my presentation. From there it was easy time. A walk, a Hawaiian pizza, a bottle of Educated Guess cabernet, and back to back viewings of Despicable Me and DM2.

Tomorrow morning it's back on the road.

[muon2]

East Day 9

We got off to a good start, which in this case included getting the car packed before any rain came in. It poured the night before, so I couldn't do any loading then and driving around with we stuff in the back gets unpleasant on a long drive. We've been on I-64 between Williamburg and I-81 before, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it cuts through corners of both Fluvanna and Nelson counties, which I won't claim for this trip, but will add to my total.

We had three planned stops. Two were in the cities of Staunton VA and Elkins WV which were on the quilt shop list. I had visited Staunton a couple of decades ago, and the popularity of historic downtowns has done a lot for it. I will be worth a return visit. I hadn't been to Elkins before, but it too was certainly benefiting from historic properties and scenic rail tours from there. The most substantial stop was to tour the Seneca Caverns in WV. The caves were worth the visit and every stop had interesting formations compared to some where there is a lot of man-made tunneling to get to the interesting parts. The only downside was a young tour guide, probably doing it for summer work, who raced through the script at each stop and didn't connect the stories well.

From Elkins to Athens we avoided the fast and well traveled US-50 for the windy US-33. The scenery was great even though it took about an hour longer. All told, the route found me in 9 first-time counties: Highland VA; Pocahontas, Pendleton, Randolph, Barbour, Upshur, Gilmer, and Calhoun WV; Meigs OH.

[muon2]

East Day 10

Since we were starting the day in Athens, OH I knew we'd be passing through Badger's home turf and I had hoped to meet him. Unfortunately our schedules didn't work out, so we will have to try another time. I say this as a reminder that I've met many posters as part of my road trip, so please feel free to reach out if you think I'll be in your area.

We didn't want to get in late since I have work to do to get ready for tomorrow. We found a cute coffee house in Urbana, OH built in the old train depot. What a surprise, it's called the Depot Coffee House. The only planned stop was to do Fathers Day shopping in Ft Wayne. The planned gift from my wife was really a joint present to us where I got to pick the style (in fairness I bought a joint gift for Mothers Day). However, we bought from a store where I had birthday gift discounts this month, so I had to pay for it. Then it turned out that some of my wife's cosmetics had a special as well, so I bought those with my discount, too. Hmm ... Fathers Day?.

Nonetheless, it was an excellent day on the county front. Midwest counties are harder and harder to come by, yet I got 8 new ones today: Hocking, Fairfield, Champaign, Shelby and Mercer OH; Adams, Wells, and Huntington IN. That makes 51 new counties this trip plus 2 previously traveled, but unnoticed counties. Ahh ... Fathers Day!

Now the road trip takes a break until the western section starts in Aug.

[muon2]

West Day 1

Bed and Breakfasts are more than just quaint alternatives to the usual hotel on a road trip, particularly for just a couple. The proprietor can usually tell you a whole lot more about what's worth doing locally than the evening attendant at a chain. There's also the advantage of sometimes being the only guest.

B&B's often have no staff other than the proprietor and family, and since this was in a small IA town I definitely expected that to be true. We wanted to make an early start on Sat, I called ahead last Mon to find out the schedule at Pryor House in Shelby IA. When I asked what time breakfast would be, she asked when I would like it since we were the only booked guests that night. Perfect. I could ask for 7 am which would keep us on schedule for Sat. I also asked about dinner options and she said that the Corn Crib was the place to go, and there was live music Fri nights until they close at 9.

As with the east day 1, we worked a half day then headed out with only a couple of quilt shops that coincided with gas or meal stops. The Pryor House is a beautifully restored Victorian with 3 guest rooms, each with their own bath. We dropped off our luggage and headed back towards I-80 for dinner at the Corn Crib.

The Corn Crib is a restaurant in a BP gas station with mini-mart, so it would be pretty easy to pass it by. But the advice from the Pryor House was spot on. I had an excellent breaded pork cutlet sandwich with pickles and sweet BBQ sauce, while my wife enjoyed some chicken pot pie poured over biscuits. And yes there was live music. Old timers (I was a young by comparison and I was born when Ike was president) were gathered around equally old timer musicians playing country and gospel tunes. There were three guitars, a banjo, harmonica, wood blocks/cow bell, a spoon player, and a musical saw. It was my first time hearing a live performance of a saw and it was very melodic and sounded surprisingly like some of the early synthesizer music of the 1960's.

[muon2]

Do you think you'll ever drive up to Alaska? For a nomad like you that seems like the ultimate prize

If want to get to every county or equivalent driving AK is a must. I'm contemplating taking the Alaska Highway to get there and then return by ferry to Bellingham WA. Now I just have to determine when.

[muon2]

West Day 2

Sometimes we just like to get our nerd on. During the planning stages I'll typically put together a rough route with a number of potential sights to see. One of those potential stops was the Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historic Park. They have a nice covered dig site for prehistoric mammal bones, but when my wife found out that today happened to be a day when they were bringing in guest paleontologists and archaeologists to identify fossils brought by visitors it was a lock on our itinerary. I brought a nice leaf fossil from our 2011 road trp through Nevada. The expert was stumped (he was more into paleozoology than paleobotany) but we had a great chat, and also enjoyed chatting with a couple of interns finishing up their summer work.

The other lock on the itinerary was Carhenge, a model of Stonehenge faithfully recreated with old cars, mostly stuck up on end out of the ground. With the eclipse coming up the theme of a solar observatory built from old cars was too perfect to pass by. Speaking of the eclipse NE is definitely gearing up. Bakeries have hats with their name and an eclipse logo for sale, and our evening waiter, who is a city parks employee by day, is fretting about the crazy levels of crowd control needed in Scottsbluff.

In between, it's almost 300 miles from Ashfall to Carhenge, and today was the X-3's baptism not by fire, but by ice. There was a line of storms moving across NE and we could go through it on either US-20 or NE-2. The forecasts showed more storms along the northern US-20 path so we opted for the central scenic Sand Hills highway NE-2. Indeed we only encountered about 10 min of rain that way, but it included 5 min of nickel-sized hail that put a lot of dings into the car body, but no broken glass. Ouch.

[muon2]

West Day 3

This was more about people than places. We did spend a nice hour at the Fort Laramie National Historic Park before the visitors center opened. That meant a nice stroll among the buildings and grounds of the most important fort in the west during the great emigrations along the Oregon and Mormon Trails. It was easy to see that they were getting ready for the eclipse, too.

But this is about people living, not dead. We traveled to the small town of Centennial on the east slope of the Medicine Bow mountains. One of my colleagues from IL is getting married there on Tues so she invited us to chat over a mimosa. Then we had to get to Rock Springs to pick up my son at the airport, so he could join us for the eclipse. Rock Springs airport does have passenger service, but currently only by United and only twice a day from Denver. The flight was delayed and due to the small size of the airport there were only a couple of vending machines to get any food or drink.

One last eclipse observation. As we drove I-80 from the airport to our hotel in nearby Green River I saw a sign announcing weight and size restrictions for trucks on I-80 for Aug 20-22. It looks like WY-DOT is trying to anticipate the heavy traffic to and from CA through UT and wants to minimize congestion from slower trucks.

[muon2]

West Day 4

If yesterday was about people, today was for places. The morning started driving south along the west bank of the Flaming Gorge. It's nice enough, and clearly fun for boating, but once you cross into UT the scenery jumps up a notch. Sheep Bay has some marvelous overlooks. The Red Canyon at the south end of the gorge is worth a trip by itself, and if you want to make a day of it you can rent kayaks and paddle boats at the lodge to cruise the canyon. The special twist for the science nerds is that UT has road signs describing the rock formations and associated facts along the gorge road. The best had to be the Park City formation with "bizarre sharks and phosphate". Sure enough there was a big phosphate mine past the gorge on our way into Vernal.

The other place of interest was Dinosaur National Monument. It lived up to its reputation as a top attraction in the National Park system. A shuttle takes visitors up to the covered quarry site where they have preserved a huge wall chock full of dinosaur bones from the larger quarry that has fed many museums. There are interactive electronic displays to help identify bones in the wall. The scenery outside is pretty good, too.

The rest of the day took us across the Uintah and Ouray Reservation on US-40 to arrive at Park City for two nights. Tomorrow morning we'll get one of those standard presentations on membership in their vacation club, and the afternoon will be quilt shop hopping for my wife. She has to at least try to keep some semblance of pace with my number of new counties, which is 25 these first 4 days. We've stopped at 6 quilt shops so far with maybe 5 more tomorrow.

Addendum: West Day 5
There was a morning sales presentation and afternoon quilting shop hop. The one interesting item worth adding was at the last quilt stop in Midway UT. There were signs there to a place called Homestead Crater. The crater is a 55' mineral dome built up around a hot spring that is 65' deep. The water inside is Caribbean blue and 97 F. There are some bathers, but it is especially popular as a spot for warm water scuba dives. We didn't have time today, but we'll keep it in mind in the future.

[muon2]

West Day 6

I'll admit I'm a bit of a sucker for things relating to trains. I live in a town founded by a railroad, and it's annual festival is named Railroad Days. The main freight tracks and commuter line are only a couple of blocks from my house so I've grown used to the sound of switching freight cars and train horns. So how could I not take a couple hours detour on my drive from UT to ID to see Promontory UT and the Golden Spike National Historic Site. When we see today's interaction between highly info on competitive corporations and Congress, we can forget that it has a long and storied history in the US. The Transcontinental Railroad was a venture between two rival railroads and their ability to get Congress and various states to help them make their project profitable. Sound familiar?

ID is the base of our vacation for the next week and half so most of the stops were designed towards planning the next few days. Hagerman Fossil Beds sounds very interesting and there's a nice small museum in Hagerman proper, but it's also the place to pick up info on the Minidoka Internment Camp NHS which we'd like to visit on Sunday. Boise is the site of a hotel that we can use to spread our party in advance of eclipse day. Garden Valley has a quilt shop, but it's also the home of a whitewater rafting company we have reservations with on Tuesday, so I could get a preview of the set up there.

Anyway we got to McCall by 7:30 and picked up a load of groceries. The nicest thing about a timeshare resort is the kitchen, and the ability to eat in as often as eat out. For example, I was able to put together some tasty roast beef wraps (cheese, green onion, lettuce and dressing) with some chips and a smooth Ferrari-Carano merlot for far less than what we'd pay in a restaurant. It also makes breakfast a breeze, especially if we want to have a day trip away from the resort.

[muon2]

West Day 7 and 8

There's a classic logic problem called the missionaries and the cannibals. There are three missionaries, three cannibals and one boat that can hold two people on a bank of the river. All six need to get across the river, but if at any time on either side there are more cannibals than missionaries, then the outnumbered missionaries become dinner. How does one arrange travel safely for all six?

I had the same sort of logistical problem leading up to the eclipse. We are a party of five including 2 couples. A year ago I booked a 2-bedroom condo that sleeps 6 in McCall starting Mon the 21st. Bookings only run Mon to Mon, and the eclipse falls on a Mon so I needed to cover the weekend before the eclipse, too. I was able to secure a king-bedroom suite that sleeps 3 or 4 at a Hampton Inn in Boise for Sat and Sun before they realized there was an eclipse and raised the rates. Six months ago I was able to get a 1-bedroom condo that sleeps 4 at the same McCall resort for the week leading up to the eclipse. The rooms in Boise and McCall are 109 mi apart on either side of the path of totality. On Sat and Sun we will be meeting with other friends from out-of-state to do some sightseeing. How do I arrange for everyone to get around on Sat and Sun?

The first part of the problem was to have my daughter and her boyfriend not arrive until Sat, since the 1-bdr in McCall doesn't easily fit all 5. Next I arranged a one week car rental in Lewiston 165 mi north of McCall, it was cheaper than Boise and could coincide to end with my son's flight out next Thu to college. So on Day 7 my wife and I drove up to Lewiston by way of the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway and 4 quilt shops to pick up the second car. On the way back a truck 4 vehicles ahead of us decided to catch fire just past the summit of White Bird Hill blocking all traffic. The guy ahead of us said we could backtrack a little and take old US-95 down the mountain instead. We did so on the old road with so many switchbacks without shoulders or guardrails that "The arcs, if combined, would form 37 full 360° circles, an average of 950° per mile (590° per km). (Wikipedia)" dropping almost 3000 ft in 12 mi.

The second part was to figure out how we got our stuff shifted from one unit and the hotel to the larger unit on the same day we would be out viewing the eclipse in Weiser, 70 mi from the Boise hotel and 90 mi from the McCall resort. On Day 8 we were doing our laundry and got good news. The resort manager found another 2-br condo with no reservation next week and the current tenants leaving a day early. So we'll shift our gear Sun to the larger unit and be free to drive as needed on eclipse day Mon. The rest of Day 8 was spent checking out the Weiser HS, meeting the superintendent, principal and science teachers, and figuring out other eclipse-day details. It also meant a side trip into Or along the Snake river with our other friends to find a viewing spot. They have a tight schedule to catch a Mon afternoon flight and need to avoid eclipse traffic as much as possible. We think we found them a good one just south of an exit ramp to Huntington OR.

Now we'll test if our logistical plans hold up the next three days.

[muon2]

West Day 9 and 10

Day 9 started by picking up my daughter and her boyfriend at the Boise Airport, checking them into the Boise hotel I had reserved, and getting some lunch. Now that we were all here w could do some sightseeing, but with tired travelers in tow we spent the afternoon at the World Center for Birds of Prey, run by the Peregrine Foundation. They have a dozen or so birds available for viewing, and many come out with their handlers to meet the visitors. If you are in Boise with a couple hours to spare, it's well worth the trip to the south end of town.

Day 9 ended when my wife and I got back to our McCall unit at about 9 pm with a note on the door from the manager. They were able to get our two bedroom unit for next week ready that night, and could we move in before housecleaning in the morning. By doing so we no longer needed the second night in Boise and some calls got the hotel to give us a refund. Of course that also meant they could rerent to some desperate eclipse chaser at a rate far higher than what we paid. Fine by us.

Day 10 was more sightseeing. We went to Silver City ID, an almost inhabited ghost town 70 mi from Boise, but about two hours to reach since the last 13 miles are on unpaved mountain roads. I say almost inhabited because it was probably the busiest ghost town I've been in. There are no year-round residents, but there are quite a few homes that are still lived in part of the year. The hotel was open for lunch and had weekend rooms available. The Catholic church had mass that afternoon. The biggest population were the ATVers who cruised the streets and took advantage of the many off-road trails available in that part of the Owyhee mountains. I suspect the easiest way to be a ghost in town these days would be to not watch out for the ATVs.

We ended the day with a stop in Idaho wine country west of Nampa. Tastings came with the usual charge ($5 here) that was refundable with purchase. We did find a couple of battles we liked to take back to McCall. And now with our whole party of five together we can set alarms for an early start to eclipse day.

[muon2]

West Day 11

Total eclipse of the sun. It was my fifth totality (sixth if you count annular eclipses). The drive to Weiser from McCall was easy and we got there by 8:30 MDT in under two hours including a significant coffee stop. There were lots of campers and cars with chairs at a lot of points along US-95. It was the kind of scene one might see at 8:30 am on a 4th of July parade route.

I was hanging out in the science team section, but I wasn't working any of the controls. The roped-off area had four scientific groups: two associated with the citizen CATE project collecting identical data from over 60 spots along totality tow assemble a neary continuous 90 minute+ observation of the corona, and two from MIT and NASA Goddard precisely measuring the Sun's diameter in infrared, since it is known to be different than the visible diameter. My job was to answer questions from the media and other members of the public when the scientists inside the roped off area were too busy. One fellow was so pleased with the time I gave him and his buddy that he spotted me a ten afterwards and said he wanted to buy me a beer, but was going in a different direction.

I was extremely glad I was staying north of Weiser away from the populated Boise metro. The traffic going south was a 50 minute delay within a half hour after totality ended. Think about a big football game.people will come in hours early to tailgate and watch the warm ups, and some will even arrive the night before. But after the game is over, boom, everyone just wants to go home and the roads are jammed. My friends who watched from the OR side so they could quickly get on the highway got to the airport on time. However, because of the traffic delaying most of the passengers the flight was delayed an hour, they missed their connection, and had to spend a night in Salt Lake City.

Anyway the rest of the day was chilling in McCall, checking out photos, and working towards completion of the quilting patterns. As you can see one photo I could edit to a small enough size made my signature.

[muon2]

West Day 12

Every state treats liquor differently - it's a feature of the amendment that ended Prohibition. In ID that feature is manifest in that liquor stores don't sell wine or beer. You can buy wine at a grocery store, but that can be just as generic as some of the staples in the cereal aisle. I did find that one of the grocery stores in McCall had a markedly better selection than the other, but a shop owner also mentioned a bistro in town.

I took a walk with my daughter after lunch to check out some of the shops in McCall's downtown and stopped at the bistro. Indeed they had a wall of good wine by the bottle for sale. If you wanted to drink it there they charged a $5 corkage fee which seemed reasonable, so I bought one with thought that if we were back later and anted a late snack we'd bring the bottle along. The wine was a cabernet sauvignon from a winery we stopped at in Walla Walla on the 2015 road trip and one that we didn't see at retail in Chicagoland.

Later that afternoon we took a 90 min drive down the Payette river to a rafting company I had scoped out online when planning the road trip. We got a nice 2 hour whitewater raft excursion though a canyon during sunset - super. There was even a stop at a hot spring originally used by Chinese immigrant miners for showers, and the hot spring felt good on cold feet from my encounters with splashes from the Payette.

We got back to McCall at 10:20 pm, and that was just before the bistro's kitchen closed so they were cool with us coming in even as they were mopping the floor. Some of us had dessert, some worked on cheese plates and I went for a salad as Blink-182 played on the speakers inside. And yes, the Walla Walla cab was as smooth and warm as I remembered it from 2015.

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West Day 13 and 14

If the eclipse was going to happen this week, I'm sure glad it happened Mon. On Tues the smoke from wildfire to the west put as haze in the air that would have made for a much less exciting view of the sun at totality. I've seen them through thin haze before, and it's not quite the same. On Wed clouds started to appear and by Thurs they thickened enough to produce a little rain, the first since we arrived in ID.

As I said at the beginning quilting is a major hobby for my wife, and my daughter enjoys it, too. Two years ago they completed a quilting challenge while on the road using a 1961 Singer Featherweight that fit easily in the car. The goal was to repeat that feat and be the first to turn in a quilt at a shop with patterns from at least eight different shops to win a prize. Neither shop in McCall had a winner yet, so the hope was to complete it by 5 pm on Tues (Day 13) when the shops in town closed. It was clear by 4 that it would not be ready until the shops opened on Thurs, and that proved successful.

However, Thurs was also the day we had to shuttle my son 3 hours up to Lewiston airport and return the second car, so that left the Mccall crew on foot. On a side note, we passed the burned-out hulk of the truck I talked about a week ago. I guess it takes a while to move it off the cliff face, so they just put a few cones around it until they can move it. Someone who came a little later than us during the detour put up a video of their descent.

This our last night in ID, and we leave early for our mountain drive into MT.

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West Day 15

The return trip has a very different feel than the legs going out, even though both involve a number of long days on the road. The first day out has all the excitement of an adventure about to begin. The first day heading back has the mixed emotions of a vacation coming to a close and the welcome thoughts of a return home.

This day had an early start and no long scheduled stops along the way. I did pick a route notable for scenic drives, and a good portion appears in National Geographic's 375 best scenic drives. Indeed the route from Lowman ID to Stanley to Salmon and up to Lost Trail Pass had some great vistas. Other than coffee, gas, or food, the only pure photo stop was at Sunbeam Hot Springs. The water was streaming as it came from the ground and part was piped to a cove on the Salmon river below. As at many roadside hot springs in ID there were a couple of bathers taking advantage of the hot mineral water, in this case brought to a reasonable temperature as it mixed with the river.

I was hoping for more scenic vistas from Lost Trail Pass on the ID-MT border, but the cloudy skies left me with nothing more than a toilet stop at the rest area. However, just 20 mi down slope on ID/MT 43 is the Big Hole Battlefield National Monument with a sweeping view of grassy valleys and mountains as well as a very instructive visitors center. From a quilt shop outside of Whitehall we saw billowing smoke to the north. The wildfire had started only yesterday from a lightning strike and already had consumed over 2000 acres. We had seen large helicopters with water slings underneath earlier and now we know where they were working.

The day ended in Bozeman at an ale house built in the old Northern Pacific freight depot. It's still a small world when it turns out the waitress grew up less than 10 miles from where we live outside of Chicago. Even if you don't find a waitress from your home town, the presence of Montana State in Bozeman gives it a lot of choices for food and drink.

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West Day 16

The general impression of the High Plains is that it makes for a boring drive, devoid of scenery, just fields of wheat. Two years ago my road trip took me across the northernmost parts of the country from nw MN to Glacier NP in MT, and until we got to the foot hills of Glacier, it was pretty much as stereotyped. This Day we traveled from Bozeman to Bismarck on I=90/94, a route that was at times less than 100 mi south of US-2. The landscape was nothing like the more northerly route, and had some fantastic vistas.

After crossing the Bozeman pass the route mostly follows the Yellowstone river, which is generally flat in its valley. However, that valley is cut into rocks that create extensive badlands. Individual views are not as dramatic as those in Badlands NP in SD, but the length of terrain running for over 400 miles east-west provides for a drive that can keep one interested. The drive also drops a couple thousand feet so the types of badlands change over the drive from rusty volcanic rocks to intensely carved sandstones and mudstones at Theodore Roosevelt NP in western ND. The terrain in TRNP rivals that in Badlands NP one state to the south.

Besides a stop at TRNP we found a real gem for those who like art. In Miles City there is an art gallery in the old water works on the Yellowstone. The art is much better than one might expect so far from a major city or university and they have both fixed and rotating exhibits. Miles City was also the location of one of those inevitable travel disasters, the one where a coke bottle explosively decompresses upon opening, even when care was taken. That caused 10 min of wiping coke off of upholstery as well as my person to keep things from getting too sticky. As it was I rode the second half of the journey with slightly sticky legs.

But travel has a way of balancing out. We got to Bismarck a little after 8:30 CDT, losing an hour from the MDT we had been in most of the trip. The Radisson we checked had reserved had overbooked the  rooms with a king bed, so they upgraded us to a larger suite with a king bed. Well it turns out it also has a jacuzzi, full size living room, kitchen and dining area - bigger overall than a lot of one bedroom apartments. They even threw in two free drinks at the bar. It probably helped that my wife had business a few years ago that had her staying in a Radisson in La Crosse WI a few days most months. It certainly helped us decide where to sit down for supper that night (that would be the bar with free drinks), and how to relax afterward (an in-room whirlpool easily beats the hotel hot tub).