Somusing

The Teton Valley News is our local small-town weekly newspaper covering primarily Teton County, Idaho and Alta, Wyoming. For our family the consistently most interesting section is the Sheriff’s Log report. This week contains an entry that reminds me why we often enjoy it: January 8 — A driver south of Victor reported seeing what appeared to be a fist fight taking place on the side of the highway. A deputy responded and found a couple people salvaging a moose next to the road. They had given each other enthusiastic high fives at one point, which may have been misinterpreted by the passing driver as an exchange of blows. 😆

These are small, low-quality versions of the photos. If you're interested in high-quality files, you can contact Chad directly. His email is included in a link at the bottom of the post. Stepping to Totality, Chad's composite of photos throughout the eclipse. The center photo, during totality, is without any kind of filter. The blue filter shows sun spots really clearly. The orange filter looks like what we saw through our eclipse glasses. Photos without a filter during totality, which lasted over 2 minutes. Check out the sun flares! The Diamond Ring, which appears at the beginning and end of the total eclipse, as the sun starts to appear again. This is kind of what it looked like during totality. These are the two prints that Chad has available. You can email him here for info.

Photo by our good friend Chad Roberts .* This is what I wrote in my journal not long after we saw totality in our front yard for about 2 minutes 19 seconds: That was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I’m afraid that I’m so tired my brain is going to forget how it looked – black circle surrounded by glowing white flames, sunset colors along all horizons around us, very bright red planet to the south, very bright white planet above, dim star next to the sun, nearly dark, shadow bands along the sidewalk just before and after, the diamond ring as the totality ended. It was awesome and beautiful and amazing. When it hit totality, everybody started exclaiming and shouting like a much louder response to fireworks or something. The response almost seemed involuntary. Everyone said the animals would freak out, but it seemed like it was just the humans who freaked out. Really, it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. So beautiful and awesome and...

Vera and Glen brought a cotton candy maker that Mira really enjoyed. She is forbidden (by me) from eating cotton candy unless it's freshly made and she witnesses it. (That's just how cotton candy is supposed to be!) So being able to actually make cotton candy herself was pretty great. Also, please enjoy scrolling through these photos of Mira jumping on the rocket launcher thingy that Vera and Glen brought.

During the week or so we've been back in Teton Valley, Idaho, it has snowed a lot. And then the last two or three days it started melting. Yesterday (Saturday) was beautiful and sunny. I took the kids on a short hour-and-a-half trip to hike on the snow north of the top of Pine Creek Pass. We started out walking on snowmobile tracks and when we reached the end of those, we headed out on virgin snow. Mostly the snow was firm enough that we only sunk in a little, with a few exceptions. We saw lots of snow fleas in some areas, and since it's always windy up there, some areas were windblown and rocks and scrub showed through, while in other areas there were deep drifts. We started at elevation 6726 feet (2050 m) and topped out at 7316 feet (2230 m). It was bright and beautiful and even though we weren't out that long we got slightly sunburned thanks to the sun reflecting off the snow!