October 15: The eclipse

So after not finding place to camp for Sunday night at Dead Horse Point, I headed on and found a KOA campground in Green River, Utah.  Small insignificant forgotten town on the (surprise) Green river in Utah.

The beach on the Green river

Crazy erosion

Arbitrary installation art in Green river

ditto

Two notable things though - a geyser next to the river that spouts sulfurous smelling water at random times - naturally did nothing for the 10 minutes I waited there after a 20 mile cycle along really bad dirt road to get there and the other thing was an old abandoned ICBM silos - cold war relic - an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile site. In the middle of nowhere. Everything was stripped.  One of the few derelict places that I was glad to see as abandoned.  Slept over at a Pilot gas station in Green river again.

What is left of the 70's missile infrastructure - no cellphones..

Now the silo's are just death traps for the few animals that fall down them

Crazy that corrugated iron sheets were used to cover what must have been communication or electricity lines between the silo's

The non-geysering geyser

From there I decided to take the road less traveled and veered off I70 onto SR24 to Goblin Valley State Park.  The idea was to stay over a night at one of the many BLM camp areas around the park.  I have however come to realize that the Whale is not made for BLM campsites - not because it is not setup, but the $30 you save every night by staying wild you lose because to get to a site you need to travel on a road that damages the Whale so badly it takes lots more than 30$$ to fix.

Goblins

The valley of Goblins

Drove on through to Capitol Reef National Park - beautiful drive following the Fremont river valley and stayed over at another BLM spot.

Sundowner at another BLM site

BLM site

Capitol Reef National Park

The dome

Beautiful drive up the Fremont River

Eons of erosion

By some luck I managed to book two nights just before the eclipse at the Fremont Indian National Park - which was smack in the middle of the path of the eclipse.  However, had to spent Wednesday night in the Home Depot parking area in a town called Richfield.

My view from the Home Depot car park...  that is snow of them mountains

Thursday I pulled into the Sam Sawyer campground in the Fremont Indian National Park - totally serendipitous find.  Every time you turn around there is a rock painting of some type - ranging from 5000 years BC to the 1800's.  The Clear Creek canyon has evidently been habituated for centuries by mainly the Paiute Indians - who were very good in documenting their history on the rocks.

Dramatic rock faces covered in art

100 hands cave

mini Bryce canyon in the campground

Idyllic

Newspaper rock - zoom in

A beautiful trout river

Indian Blanket - mother who lost her baby in the canyon painted the blanket for the baby to keep warm - per local legend

Saturday morning arrived, and at 10:26am the full annular solar eclipse started.  It was spectacular - as good was the people watching.  The warnings beforehand about major traffic jams, and crowds were slightly exaggerated, but there were a lot of people.  The crowd was made up of the normal enthusiasts that could tell you everything about the next eclipse and give you the 'real' glasses you must use all the way to the groups that were in-place at 8:00am playing 'Dark side of the Moon' and my favorite - right at 10:26 - 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' by Bonnie Tyler.

The full monty - taken with my phone through my 'special' glasses.

Half-way

The gear was there

The start

The strange thing about being here was that suddenly I was at 7000+ft and mornings were down to 28F (-3C).  It was cold after traveling in 80F. 

Fall in the valley

Cycled up to some old railroad tunnel - crazy construction

One of the few bugs (very dead bug) I saw

In any case, managed to stay at the campsite for Saturday as well and left on Sunday morning towards Las Vegas.  Change of plan was that I was going to abandon the idea to get to the west coast before Thanksgiving - mainly due to the fact that there are some major mountain ranges between me and the sea, and those mountain ranges just had some big snow falls which I was not going to drive through.  So, took scenic route 89 south and by total accident passed Bryce Canyon - or rather turned in at Bryce Canyon.  We had been here in 2008 with our American circumnavigation, and to be honest (probably due to me being saturated at the time), I remember it as being 'great, but no big deal'.  However, I am re-evaluating my opinion - it is amazing; unbelievably amazing.  I did not walk down into the canyon this time, but...  

See the hole?

Did not stay over at Bryce canyon - should have, but got as far Saint George, Utah and managed to book into a the Sand Hollow state park for the night.

The Red canyon tunnels on the way out of Bryce

Sandy Hollow State park

The next few weeks are going to be spent resealing the roof of the whales (in preparation for wet Oregon) and finding a place to store it for Thanksgiving and Christmas.