The eclipse that was almost eclipsed by our move

Hey look, I'm posting on illguthlife again. My internet connection was so limited this summer that I couldn't maintain two blogs. I chose to update my travel blog as if it was my personal blog. I hope that you were able to find your way over to www.51centadventures.com and follow our epic summer over there. If you weren't, then you can go check it out now.

Now that the summer is over, and I've somewhat rejoined reality, I can go back to maintaining two blogs. 51centadventures will continue to be my travel blog where I post about the inexpensive places we have discovered. Expect A LOT of posts containing Yellowstone Travel tips to show up there in the next few months. Its a public blog and so I don't use my kids names and I'm a little bit more careful about what I say. Illguthlife on the other hand is my personal blog that doesn't show up on search engines and anything goes over here.

And so now that I'm able to be honest and unguarded I can tell you the truth about our summer in Yellowstone. And the truth is that it really was as amazing and fulfilling and wonderful as I made it sound.

From the very first day I had a feeling of contentment inside my heart. I loved the feeling of being so close to my family and living a simpler life. And after I was promoted to Assistant Controller of Roosevelt Lodge I had an incredible feeling of fulfillment. I LOVED my job.

But we always knew it was temporary and sadly our epic summer had to end.  In some ways it was time.  The RV felt pretty small after we found our 4 bedroom rental house in Pocatello.  

Moving was definitely on my mind.  Partly because we were ready for a bigger space and partly because it required a lot of planning to figure out how to move three vehicles with only two drivers.  

Have you ever heard the story problem with the farmer, the grain, the goose, and the fox? Here's a version from Wikipedia:

Once upon a time a farmer went to a market and purchased a fox, a goose, and a bag of beans. On his way home, the farmer came to the bank of a river and rented a boat. But in crossing the river by boat, the farmer could carry only himself and a single one of his purchases: the fox, the goose, or the bag of beans.

If left unattended together, the fox would eat the goose, or the goose would eat the beans.

The farmer's challenge was to carry himself and his purchases to the far bank of the river, leaving each purchase intact. How did he do it?

Every time I tried to figure out how we were going to get all three vehicle out of Yellowstone I kept thinking of this problem. We had three vehicles, but only two drivers, and we had four kids that couldn't be left alone.  Additionally we had only one vehicle that could safely hold all four kids.  We also had to figure out how to transport our stuff from storage in Eden to Pocatello. Oh and there would be a once in a lifetime eclipse happening the day after my last day of work and we'd be travelling through the totality zone so we might as well work that into the plan. 

It took quite a lot of brain power to figure out the order of operations to get everything to Pocatello.  Here's the run down of how we did that and our experience seeing the eclipse. 

We started the process of moving on Sunday August 13th.  Brandon and the kids drove down to Utah to get our stuff out of storage.  My in-laws were kind enough to let us store our stuff in their garage since we arrived in November.  So Brandon went down there to pick up the moving van and load all our stuff.  On Monday my father-in-law Steve and my brother in law Justin helped load the stuff into the truck while my sister in law Melanie helped with the kids.  Brandon and the kids slept over in Eden that night and then my mother in law Jacque watched the kids on Tuesday while Brandon and Steve drove the van to Pocatello.

I'd stayed behind in the RV because I still had work.  But on Tuesday I had my one day off.  I drove down to Pocatello and put our water/sewer/trash bills into our name and then picked up the house keys from our leasing office.  Then I went to the house and started cleaning.  It sat vacant for about 4 months so there was quite a lot of dust and spider webs to clean up.   Brandon and Steve arrived a little bit after I got there and they started unloading the truck.  The missionaries came over and helped unload the big stuff.  

I was pretty excited to see our stuff come off the truck.  Remember, we packed up at the end of October/beginning of November last year so it's been almost 10 months since I've seen some of this stuff.  I kept saying things like, "My PIANO! My green table! My dresser!" But the thing I was most excited about was my KING SIZE PILLOWTOP BED!  I have missed that!  I made sure that was set up that day.  When I laid down on it I was really tempted to break my contract with Xanterra and just stay there with that bed.  

But I couldn't find the sheets so I decided I might as well go back to Yellowstone for the last 5 days of my contract.

We bought pizza for the missionaries and later Brandon, Steve, and I went out for lunch at Wendy's after everything was unloaded.  Then Brandon and Steve went back to Eden and I went back to Yellowstone.  I got home around 11:00 and I was so tired.  Driving 8 hours in one day and cleaning is not something I recommend.  

Brandon stayed overnight in Eden and then drove up to Pocatello with the kids.  They spent the next several days getting furniture set up and starting to unpack.  They also went school shopping and met their teachers at back to school night. 

On Saturday night I drove down to Idaho Falls and met Brandon and the kids at the Fred Meyer.  We left the jeep there and drove back up to Yellowstone. We had one last squishy night in the RV.  On Sunday I went to my last day of work while Brandon got the RV ready to move.  He'd been starting it regularly throughout the summer, but it hadn't driven anywhere since we arrived at the end of May.  

We said one last goodbye to some of our dear neighbors and then I drove the Honda and Brandon drove the RV out of the park. 

 The RV runs well, but it has no guts on hills so I knew I would end up ahead of Brandon.  So I stopped at the park in West Yellowstone so the kids could play for a while.  By the time we got going Brandon was actually ahead of us.  He drove to Idaho Falls and parked the RV at the home of our Texas Military Relations Missionary friends the Bob and Vonnie Coombs.  Then he went back to the Jeep and started driving that north.

That's because we weren't going to our home in Pocatello that night.  We were meeting up with my in-laws at Justin's father's cabin in a tiny tiny town called Gilmore. This was about 30 minutes north of the totalitly zone for the eclipse.  Justin's father was super nice to let us all invade his cabin.

Meanwhile I was still driving with the kids in the Honda.  We reached Rexburg and started heading west.  But we ran into a road block and were told there was a fire near the highway.  The firefighter told me the detour route, but it was almost dinner time and so I decided a better plan would be to head back to Rexburg for some food.  So we went back there and found a McDonalds.  The kids enjoyed dinner and then had a blast on the play place.

 After about an hour we tried our luck with the highway again.  The fire was put out and we were able to get through.  As we drove we saw signs advertising overnight camping for $100.  We also passed many RV's, vans, and cars parked on pullouts on the side of the highway.  It was like everyone suddenly thought it was cool to be homeless.

After what seemed like forever we finally reached the cabin.  I was completely exhausted.  I'd worked almost 9 days straight (my only day off had been the day I drove to Rexburg and back), and I'd driven so much in the past week that I was pretty certain I should be in Texas instead of Eastern Idaho.  The cabin was great, but I had no energy left to really enjoy it.

After a good nights sleep I was doing better.  We had breakfast and then packed everything up and drove about 30 minutes to an area where people in RV's had slept overnight.

 We set up our own little area and started waiting for the eclipse to start.

 The kids wanted to go exploring so we went on a little walk.  My camera decided that this was a good time to die. So from here on out all the pictures are from mine and Brandon's phones.

Okay, so obviously you can tell that this eclipse thing was not our number one priority this month.  We'd been so preoccupied with the move, and getting ready for school that we hadn't put much thought into prepping for the eclipse. Thank goodness Justin and Melanie let us tag along with their plans because I don't know where we would have ended up.  In some ways this was like the final day of a road trip.  We were tired, stuff was spilling out of the car, I'd left all my clothes in the RV, we had random food in our cooler, and mostly I just wanted to get home.

But as the moon started moving across the sun we started to get really excited about what we were going to witness.  Charlotte was probably the most excited.  I'd told her what to expect and all morning she'd been hurrying us along.  She'd say things like, "This is my first eclipse, I don't want to miss it."  

 The other kids thought it was cool too.  We'd help Derrick look at the sun and he would say, "It's the moon" because it was crescent shaped.

 Here I am checking out the sun.  (And wearing the same clothes as the day before.) I vividly remember watching a partial eclipse though a pin hole on the playground at school when I was about 6 or 7.  I was really happy to be introducing this to my kids at the same age.

 Periodically Brandon would get his binoculars out and we could see the progress of the moon across the sun that way.

 Here's Charlotte and Lydia watching the eclipse in style.  If I remember right it started around 10:15 and totality was expected at 11:33.  So we had a while to wait while the moon moved across the sun.

 Justin had an app that was counting down to the eclipse and giving us information about what to expect.  We noticed birds flying around as if it was evening.  The light got dimmer.  The air got chillier.  If I'd known where my jacket was I would have put it on.

Soon we were within 30 seconds of totality.  Derrick and Veronica really didn't have any idea what was going on, but they were getting really anxious. They both wanted to sit in the car so we let them do that.  The rest of us put on our glasses and watched as the last bit of the sun disappeared behind the moon.  This was when it was safe to look at the sun without out glasses on.  I was excited to see the sun's corona.  I took off my glasses and was shocked to see that it was NIGHT!  What had been 11:00 am just a few minutes before had turned into twilight.  We were even able to see three stars in the sky.

 There was an amazing 360 degree sunset surrounding us.  Everyone oohed and awed at the amazing changes that had taken place. Derrick and Veronica were completely amazed by what had happened.  I wonder what they must have thought as the sky got darker around them. Charlotte and Lydia jumped up and down with excitement.

I knew my camera wouldn't take good pictures of the eclipse so I hadn't planned on taking any pictures.  I figured there would be plenty of good pictures on line. But I couldn't resist taking a few pictures.  And at the very end of the 100 seconds of totality I decided to take a video.  I'm so glad I did that.  I didn't capture any amazing images of the sun and moon, but I did get the excited reactions of my kids.  My favorite part of the video is when Veronica says, "do it again mom."




I immediately started making plans to see the next eclipse in 7 years on April 8, 2024.  I think that would be an excellent way to celebrate Derrick's birthday.  It's going to have a different path than this one did, but it's still going to cross a large section of the US.  Who knows, we may end up living in a state in the totality zone.

We had a quick lunch while the moon moved across the sun.  We bit our cookies into crescent shapes.

After a hanging around for a little while we decided it was time to get going.  We knew traffic would be bad, but I was not interested in staying away from my new home for another night.  Besides Brandon had his first day of class the next day so we needed to get home.

We were able to travel at normal speeds for about 45 minutes.  But outside of Idaho Falls we hit the bad stand still traffic.

 9 out of 10 cars had Utah license plates.  I knew we were in for a LONG drive home.

 Even the side roads were congested.

 After spending almost 4 hours in traffic we finally crawled into the rest stop north of Blackfoot Idaho.  Normally there are about 4 cars and 3 semi trucks parked here.  But on this day it was jam packed full of cars.  We had to wait in a line out the door just to use the restroom.

 We stayed here for a while.  We ate dinner, hiked on the trails through ancient lava flows, and of course played on the hills. We'd done this at the beginning of the summer and I felt like this was an appropriate way to end our summer.

 Here's another view of the packed parking lot.

The freeway didn't really clear up, but we decided we might as well keep going.  It took us almost 2 hours to make it the 20 or so miles from Blackfoot to Pocatello. I was pretty happy that we lived in Pocatello. I have no idea how long it took all those Utah people to make it home that night.

Brandon had his first day of class on Tuesday (more on that in another post) and then we drove back to Idaho Falls to get the RV.  It took less than an hour to drive the same distance that had taken us over 8 hours the day before.

We picked up the RV and drove back home.  On the way I promised the kids that we wouldn't drive anywhere outside of Pocatello for a month.  After all the time we'd spent on the road I was feeling like we should be in Florida.

So there you have it.  We finally made it to our new home and we witnessed the Great American Eclipse in the process.  Seeing a total eclipse seems like a pretty great way to start this next phase of our lives.

As always I'll keep you updated on all the little twists and turns of this crazy life of mine.