Author Archives: Jen

Petroglyphs and Sandia sunset

One last view from our Santa Fe terrace

Today it was time to say farewell to Santa Fe, and head off for our last couple of days in Albuquerque. This was heading down in both the literal and figurative sense, as Albuquerque is a couple thousand feet lower than Santa Fe, and correspondingly warmer.

Even though it’s only an hour’s drive away, it’s a completely different ecosystem. By the time we got here the snow had vanished, and deciduous trees with bright fall colors had taken the place of pinion and juniper. The city itself appears fairly flat, but there are still mountains in the distance everywhere you look.

Our first stop was Petroglyph National Monument, just a little ways outside the city. There are a few different disconnected areas of this park, but we elected to go to the Rinconada Canyon section. We walked through the canyon alongside a steep hillside covered with volcanic rocks, many of which had been decorated with petroglyphs. We learned that in addition to the Native Americans, the early Spanish settlers also copied the technique — so in some cases, it’s not known which culture created a given piece of artwork.

For lunch we headed into the city and found the Sawmill Market, a large, upscale food court with just about any kind of food you could imagine. Zoe had lemon parmesan pasta, and I decided to be virtuous after all the heavy food we’ve been eating and get a large Cobb salad. Both were delicious, and we capped off our meal with paletas, a sort of Mexican popsicle.

The afternoon turned out to be my very favorite part of the trip. Just outside the city, which is at around 5000 feet, you can take an aerial tramway to the top of the Sandia mountains, at over 10,000 feet. As you can imagine, the ascent is quite dramatic. It reminded me of a similar trip we did in the French Alps, but with a very different landscape.

We had decided to go in the late afternoon, do a short hike around at the top, then watch the sunset and the emergence of the city lights of Albuquerque. We didn’t get very far on our hike due to the snow, which was several feet deep here. We followed a packed-down path in the woods for a while, but eventually decided that it was becoming too treacherous. So we returned to the safe platforms and viewing areas around the tram to watch the sunset. The views, especially in the light of golden hour, were spectacular — even as the temperature plummeted. We stayed up on the mountain until darkness fell and the twinkling lights of the city emerged. After a delicious dinner at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant, we were both ready for bed.

Atoms & art

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Full-size replicas of Little Boy and Fat Man, the bombs dropped on Japan.

Today we ventured forth from Santa Fe again, this time to the nearby town of Los Alamos, which has lots of interesting history around the Manhattan Project and the development of the atom bomb. Once again it was a gorgeous drive winding through the mountains with amazing views around every corner. You could see why this remote outpost was a good choice for a secret city.

We started at the history museum, then made our way over to the Bradbury Science Museum. (Oddly, the former, which was small and simple, charged us $5, while the latter, which was larger and much more elaborate, was free.) Both were very text-heavy, so even though the information was pretty interesting, eventually we began to get a bit of the dreaded museum life-suck effect. Fortunately we were able to revive ourselves with a delicious lunch at the noodle house next door.

Los Alamos also had this nice park.

For the afternoon we were back in Santa Fe, shopping in the plaza and visiting Canyon Road, the famous strip of art galleries. Given the many thousand dollar price tags for the artwork, we contented ourselves with window shopping. With the lovely

Rock paper scissors sculpture!

architecture and outdoor sculpure displays all along the winding road, it was a very pleasant stroll. I’m not sure how the 100+ art galleries all manage to stay in business, but the art scene is definitely a point of pride here.

To round out the day, we wandered into the Desert Dogs Brewery & Cidery, which was the perfect place to have a drink or two, enjoy the laid-back ambiance, and play a couple of board games. Turns out they also had delicious street tacos for dinner.

As previously mentioned, Zoe and I are very directionally challenged. But we also have a secret ambition to someday compete on The Amazing Race TV show. We know that navigation will be our downfall, so tonight we challenged ourselves to walk back from the town center to our apartment without consulting Google Maps. This was not a particularly impressive feat, given that we were covering ground that we’d been over several times over the last few days, but we still had a few moments of indecision. Fortunately we persevered and arrived back home without incident.

Into the past

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It would be hard to imagine a greater contrast between yesterday’s Meow Wolf experience and today’s activities. The House of Eternal Return was delightful and fascinating, but also tended toward overstimulation. Today’s trip outside the city was the perfect antidote.

We set off first thing, heading northwest to Bandelier National Monument. (Zoe and I are both directionally-challenged, and one real concern for us is getting lost on some back road with no cell signal. Fortunately, this area is enough of a wilderness that there is really only one road and everywhere we went today basically just involved going straight.)

Bandelier is less than an hour from Santa Fe, and was well worth the trip. The drive there was beautiful, winding through the mountains with a new vista around every corner. We were first to arrive in the parking lot, just as the park opened at 9am. Setting off on the main loop trail, we had the whole park to ourselves.

The main area of Bandelier winds through the

View from inside the cliff

Frijoles Canyon, which was the home of Pueblo people. There are ruins of their brick buildings on the canyon floor, and the famous cliff dwellings that were hollowed out on the sides of the canyon. Bandelier is possibly unique in that there are ladders along the trail that allow you to climb up and explore some of these cliff dwellings.

Unfortunately the section of the trail that is known for its long, steep ladder ascents has been closed since September due to flooding, so we didn’t get that adrenaline-pumping adventure. Instead we took a side trail that climbed steeply to the top of the canyon and through a juniper forest. The views were stunning and the silence was amazing. With only one road (the park entrance road) within miles, and very little traffic on that, we could hear nothing except the rustle of wind and the occasional bird. It made us realize how seldom we are able to experience that kind of silence in today’s world.

The second part of the main loop went through a very different ecosystem on the other side of the canyon. Leaving the sun-baked exposed rocks, the trail wound into a forest and along a stream. The trees and plants were completely different from what we’d seen in the forest on the top of the canyon.

By the time we got back we’d worked up an appetite. Bandelier’s cafe (at which we were the only customers) is supposedly known for having the best burger in New Mexico — the “Doug”, which comes with American and mozzarella cheeses, carmelized onions, green chilis, and a whole chili relleno on top. The lone restaurant worker recommended having the Doug made with an elk burger, so we went with his suggestion. It was delicious. (But luckily we decided to split one, along with a few other snacks. I wasn’t even able to finish my half.)

Next up we continued down the road a while to Spence Springs, a natural hot spring along a hillside in the wilderness. We weren’t quite sure if we’d be up for going in, but we took the mile-long trail down the side of a canyon then back up again. It was a big treacherous with snow, ice, and mud, but we eventually made it (though my sneakers will never be the same). There were two other people there soaking and we decided to go for it despite the chilly air. It was pretty amazing sitting in the warm water, surrounded by snow drifts, with a view out over the surrounding mountains and no signs of civilization. There was a cave on one side that you could barely squeeze into, and one of the guys who were there told us it was like a sauna inside. Neither of us (nor his friend) were brave enough to do more than stick our heads in, despite the chill.

Our last stop was supposed to be the Valles Caldera National Monument, another huge park between Bandelier and the hot spring. We had driven past it on the way, and upon our first glimpse were very confused to see what looked like a huge, snow-covered lake in the middle of the high desert. But upon closer inspection, we realized it was the caldera of the huge volcano that erupted here long ago. Since the ground inside was snow-covered and has no trees (except one strange raised area that looked like an island), it looked very much like a winter lake.

Not a lake!

When we pulled in, we saw that the entrance road was dirt and traveled downhill to the bottom of the caldera. As we started down, the road became more snow-covered. Looking at the long, long road winding away out of sight below, and thinking about the drive back up and the remoteness of our location, and remembering the multiple harrowing instances we’ve had of being stuck on uphill winter roads while on ski trips — I decided to bail out. Luckily there were no other cars so I could just reverse back up the short distance we’d traveled. So, we didn’t really get to enjoy this park other than the stunning views from the top (which were worth the stop in their own right).

No evening adventures today — we were both too tired to walk into town and didn’t feel like getting back into the car, so a quick board game, Door Dash, and an early bedtime it was.

A city that is very cool, and very cold

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The view from our apartment’s terrace.

Zoe and I are on vacation this week, belatedly celebrating her graduation last May. She had narrowed own destination down to either Ashville, NC (and Great Smoky Mountains National Park), or Santa Fe, NM. Given the recent sad events in Ashville, Santa Fe it was.

Who would have thought – cactus in the snow!

Possibly November was not the ideal time to visit. When I think about New Mexico, I think about desert and cactuses and sunshine. What I don’t think about is snow. And yet, here we are — bundled up in hats and gloves, tramping through snowdrifts. A woman in a shop told me that they’d gotten as much snow in this one storm as they’d gotten all year last year. Luckily we didn’t get caught in the storm itself, and we’ve been enjoying abundant sunshine and blue skies (but with temps that only range from 30 to 50).

Botanical gardens and paper crane sculpture

By the time we arrived on Saturday and drove up from Albuquerque, we didn’t have time to do much but have a very late dinner and go to bed. We inadvertently picked a VERY popular restaurant, which still had an hour wait at 8:15pm. Luckily this gave us just enough time to drive to our apartment rental and get ourselves checked in. We got right into the spirit of things with house margaritas and a delicious Mexican dinner (our first of many encounters with chili sauce — your choice of red or green — which comes on almost everything. Zoe and I went with the “Christmas” option.)

We couldn’t see much around our apartment in the dark, so it was a lovely surprise the next morning to see the clear view of the distant mountains, the sun shining brightly on the snow-covered peaks. We’re in a great location on the eastern edge of the city, close to hiking trails on one side and a short walk into the central plaza on the other. We started our day with a brief foray to Trader Joe’s for some provisions, and marveled at how much cheaper the groceries are here.

We had to do a fair amount of logistical planning today, because some things are closed on Sundays and many things are closed on Mondays. Another wrench was thrown into our plans when the food tour we’d signed up for was canceled due to lack of participation. So we decided to start out at the Botanical Gardens, a short drive south. It was a little odd being in gardens where many of the plants were dead and/or snow-covered, but it was very peaceful and serene. We saw the giant stalk of an agave plant and learned that these plants put up only one such stalk in their lifetime, after 20-40 years, and that the stalk grows several inches each day. We inhaled the fresh scent of the juniper pinion trees while strolling on a winding path through the forest. And we loved all the sculptures gracefully placed throughout the grounds.

We started the afternoon by walking the short distance from our apartment to Fort Marcy Park and the Cross of the Martyrs, a large white steel cross overlooking the city. Downhill on the other side brought us Santa Fe Plaza, the center of the tourist area of the city. Santa Fe doesn’t exactly have the feel of a city like we’re used to — no tall buildings, not a lot of traffic. There is a fair amount of sprawl, but the city center is pleasant and walkable, and full of independent shops and art galleries. We had a delicious, if decadent, lunch composed of three different types of mac & cheese (out of a menu featuring at least 10 types). We did a little shopping around the plaza and from the Native Americans selling their wares in an outdoor market along the edge. We checked out the Loretto Chapel, which has an amazing spiral staircase that appeared on Unsolved Mysteries because no one can figure out how it was built.

In the late afternoon we’d signed up for a sunset tour with the Sky Railway. (We’d originally wanted to do the tour that involved an e-bike trip out on the rail trail and a train journey back, but were foiled due to the snow.) The train leaves right from the middle of the city. It has live entertainment and drinks, and travels out of the city through beautiful scenery while watching the sun set over the mountains. There is a “flatcar” that is basically a platform with railings, so you can stand outside and watch the scenery. That is, until you turn into an icicle. We spent a lot of time on the flatcar, with occasional forays indoors to listen to the music and thaw out.

After our return we headed to a nearby restaurant for dinner, and once again were foiled by a long line. (It’s very odd — the streets here are pretty quiet at night, with not a lot of traffic and very few pedestrians — but the restaurants are somehow packed.) By the time we finished dinner and started our long-ish walk back home, we were definitely ready for bed. (Being on East Coast time is great for getting moving in the morning, but does not lend itself to late nights.)

Rocky Mountain High

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Today’s agenda was Rocky Mountain National Park, just 10 minutes away from our vacation cabin. I was expecting today to be pretty simple from a logistical perspective, but as it turns out it is much more complicated than you’d think. There’s now a timed entry reservation system (thanks to our friend Michelle for tipping me off to this, as otherwise we would have shown up that morning and gotten turned away.) You have to reserve a two-hour window to enter the park, and if you want to go to the Bear Lake area, there’s a different kind of reservation that’s even harder to get. Some tickets are released well in advance, and others are released the evening prior.

Our initial ticket times weren’t great, so at 6:59 the night before I was poised on my phone, as though I was trying to get Taylor Swift tickets. You can’t make more than one reservation for a given day with the same account, and I didn’t want to cancel any existing reservation until the new one was secured. By the end I had created accounts for four different members of our family, and we had tickets to enter the main park at 9am and the Bear Lake area at noon.

On the plus side, the reservation system meant that the park was less crowded than any park we’ve visited in the summer. We cruised right in and almost immediately saw people looking with binoculars at Sheep Lake, where there was supposedly a moose in the underbrush. We did not actually see the moose, but a nice ranger showed us some moose antlers (heavy!) and offered the girls Junior Ranger badge workbooks. (These were extremely popular when we were on our cross country trip in 2012, but not exactly what our 22-, 20-, and 16-year olds were looking for.)

We’d decided to head for the Alpine Visitor Center, way above tree line. We had quite a debate about which route to take. The first option was a 9-mile, 15mph one-way dirt road. It was described by many as more beautiful but terrifying, with tight switchbacks and no guardrails. The main road, Trail Ridge Road, was 20 miles long and is one of the highest paved roads in the US. We’ve driven this before — and found its switchbacks and lack of guardrails terrifying enough. Imagining a road that was MORE narrow, with MORE switchbacks and drop-offs, gaining elevation twice as fast, was enough to put us off that option. (Nadia, who suffers from both fear of heights and car sickness — and as such was already in for a pretty challenging day — was the strongest vote.) So back to Trail Ridge Road we went (with me driving this time, since Bob still has traumatic memories of last time).

There were lots of beautiful spots to stop at along the way. Every overlook seemed more gorgeous than the one before — and more tiring, with the amount of oxygen in the air dropping with each mile. Luckily we’d had two days to adjust in mile-high Denver, then another couple of days in 7500 foot Estes Park. Even so, by the time we got to the Alpine Visitor Center at close to 12,000 feet, we were all suffering in one way or another. Most of us still managed to climb an additional .6 miles on the Alpine Ridge Trail, for broad views of the tundra and distant glaciers. We rewarded ourselves afterwards with lunch at the nearby cafe (which we had discovered is the only place to buy food within the park). The food was mediocre but the views were fabulous.

The first lake

This all took quite some time, especially after there was some additional excitement with a temporarily lost wallet, so we found ourselves rushing to get back down the mountain in time to reach Bear Lake within the noon-2:00 window allowed by our reservation. The top part of the drive down was the most white-knuckle part of the trip, and I was very glad to get back to lower ground.

Bear Lake was a completely different ecosystem, with lush forests, roaring brooks, and high peaks in the distance. Once we started the trail recommended by our friend Michelle (the Emerald Lake trail), we could instantly see why this is the most popular area of the park. The trail goes to three alpine lakes. The first was a small, verdant pool tucked into the woods. (Lanie, tired from the altitude, elected to stay here and read her book rather than continuing on.) The second one was much larger, greenish, and opened up to spectacular views of dramatic mountains . Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the third one, as we decided we should be getting back to Lanie and Nadia (who, still not feeling well from all the windy roads, had elected to stay at the visitor center). This was one of my favorite trails that I’d ever hiked so I was sad to miss the end, but this was tempered by the fact that it started to rain just as we arrived back — so it was probably best that we weren’t still out on the trail with miles to go. (In general we’ve had amazing luck with the weather this week. It seems like it reliably starts to run just as we complete some outdoor activity and head inside.)

On the way back we stopped at Sheep Lakes again and this time the moose was right out in the middle of the lake! We got a decent view through Zoe’s binoculars.

We got back to the cabin right around dinner time, and after a short rest the troops decided they were energetic enough to tackle the Estes Park escape room, the Time Emporium. I made a reservation before we headed out for dinner, but we hit some kind of time warp where it somehow seemed to take about 40 minutes to make the 10 minute drive into town. This led to us having to bolt down our (delicious) pizza and race the short distance to the room, but we made it just in time. Perhaps it was oxygen deprivation or hiking exhaustion, but I proved to be totally useless in solving any of the puzzles that the room had to offer. Fortunately, the rest of the family stepped up and we were able to escape the Lost City of Atlantis in around 45 minutes with minimal assistance.

Raft and Shine

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Bob and I had visions of getting moving early in the mornings to go for walks (or, even more delusionally, runs) but for the most part that hasn’t really happened. But today we at least managed to get out for a short stroll around our resort complex, along a shallow rushing river.

For today’s main adventure, we headed north a bit to Fort Collins, for a white water rafting trip on the Poudre River. Unfortunately this outing was mostly unphotographed. (Or rather, it was unphotographed by us. We didn’t have our phones with us, for obvious reasons. The rafting company did have a photographer stationed at various key points along the route, but Bob and I elected not to pay the $75 price tag for their photo package. Our devotion to our blog followers has some limits. You’ll have to rely on our powers of description.)

Anyway, it was a pretty fun trip. We all managed to stay in the boat, despite some touch-and-go moments. Our guide perceived the girls’ love of adventure and offered to make the trip more “spicy”. This included running the last rapid while spinning the raft in circles. Cole the guide said his record was five circles, but we only got to four. None of the other rafts in our groups did any circles at all, so we considered it a win nevertheless.

The scariest part by far was the bus ride. On the way there, I was a little concerned by the speed at which the bus driver was taking the very curvy road. (I kept my rafting helmet on and hoped that would protect me in the event of the bus plunging over the guard rails.) On the way back, when we were approaching a small traffic circle, the guides on the bus all started chanting “DO THE LOOP! DO THE LOOP!” We discovered that this meant doing an extra lap around the traffic circle, at relatively high speed. At one point the bus went slightly over the curb into the center median. But we survived to tell the tale.

Next stop: the beautiful and historic Stanley Hotel. The main claim to fame of this place — and what saved it from bankruptcy — is that it is the inspiration for “The Shining”. Stephen King stayed here one winter night in the seventies, and much of the plot of the book was based on his experiences here. Many people (including, previously, us) also believe that the movie was filmed here. Actually, that was not the case — but Stephen King hated the original movie version, and later shot his own miniseries here at the hotel. (Apparently “Dumb and Dumber” was also shot here, and Jim Carrey had some kind of supernatural experience on his first night here that led to him decamping to the Holiday Inn in town.)

In any case, the hotel has fully embraced this history, and offers Shining-themed tours several times a day. We heard lots of interesting stories about the history of the hotel, various haunted tales, and stories about Stephen King’s visit and subsequent filming. Apparently the hotel also got tired of dealing with disappointed guests — and realized which side their bread was buttered on — so they recreated several features from the movie, even though they weren’t in the book. This included a hedge maze and several exquisitely-reproduced rooms from the hotel. It was an interesting tour, even if you weren’t that familiar with The Shining. This was good because some of us had read the book and seen the movie long ago, some had only read the book, and some had not done either.

Dinner was in downtown Estes Park at Mama Rose’s, an Italian restaurant that had been recommended to us by a local. We all greatly enjoyed the big plates of pasta (and for some of us, big glasses of house wine). The girls managed to save room for a subsequent stop at Dairy Queen before returning to the cabin.

Truckin’

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Vacation scheduling gets a lot more complicated once the kids are old enough for college and job and driving themselves around. Between Zoe’s job at the Nature Conservancy, Nadia’s pre-season training, and Lanie’s summer architecture program, I was able to eke out exactly one six-day window for a family vacation. So we consulted the Internet to see where we could fly within that window that was (a) not too long, (b) nonstop, and (c) cheap. Of the available options, Denver won the family vote.

Everything went smoothly on our sunset flight, apart from the tragedy of being unable to pair bluetooth headphones with the seatback televisions (get it together, JetBlue!) We had a minor snag at the rental car company, where instead of the sedan we’d reserved we were given a choice between a tiny Kia and a pickup truck. We are not really pickup truck people, but here we are — driving down the narrow city streets at midnight, holding our breath as we edged between parked cars and oncoming traffic, hoping that it wouldn’t start to rain and that the suitcases wouldn’t get bounced out of the truck bed.

We were here briefly once before, as part of our cross country trip. The kids still fondly remember the waffle restaurant and the children’s museum. Unfortunately this time we don’t have cousin Danny to take us around, so we had to plan our trip on our own. I asked everyone for a short list of must-see attractions.

We started with one of Lanie’s picks — the Denver Art Museum. We’re not always art museum people either — but we really liked this one. The building itself was amazing and the exhibits were interesting and varied. It was definitely low on the Museum Life-Suck effect that we can find ourselves vulnerable. Our favorite part was the Biophilia exhibit, featuring art and architecture inspired by nature. We also took a quick detour across the park to the state house to stand on the Mile High Step — exactly one mile above sea level.

Next up was Nadia’s pick — the Denver Aquarium, walking distance away along a pleasant route through downtown and along a riverside bike path. (Not everyone in the party considered this 45-minute stroll to count as “walking distance”.)

Nadia had read good things about the aquarium restaurant, where you can eat surrounded by fish, and a substantial lunch there restored morale. (Sadly you were not able to point to a fish in one of the tanks and ask them to cook it for you.)

Never too old for the stingray touch tank

After the aquarium, our plan had been to stroll around the nearby 16 Street Mall, an outdoor pedestrian district of shops and restaurants that had come highly recommended. Unfortunately, the whole thing was under construction and the shops were mostly non-existent or closed, so this one was kind of a bust.

Morale flagging once again, we decided to stop at the Rock Bottom Brewery for drinks and snacks. This was a fortuitous decision, even though we didn’t like the beer much, because slightly after we arrived the skies opened. We were very glad we weren’t still outside on the 16th Street Mall, navigating closed sidewalks and picking our way around construction debris.

To cap off the day, we had scheduled a family favorite activity — the nearby Escapology escape room. Zoe had insisted that we were capable of the expert-level Mansion Murder, but we were a bit daunted when we saw the 27% success rate. Nevertheless, the difficulty scale seemed a bit easier than we were used to from home, and we managed to solve the mystery and escape the room in about 45 minutes.

And the room had an attached cool steampunk-themed bar and restaurant with board games, so we were able to finish the day with dinner and Trivial Pursuit before heading back to our VRBO apartment.

Great North American Eclipse, Part 2 — We see the light, and suspect that Taylor Swift walks among us dressed as a martian

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It is famously difficult to adequately describe the experience of viewing a solar eclipse, but we can pretty accurately describe how we managed to view this Great North American Eclipse of 2024. Maybe this will help someone get ready to view the next one when it comes along.

An important first step: Get a good breakfast in. Roaming around all day requires fuel, and in the excitement it’s not a sure thing that you will remember to eat, or even that you will always have access to food.

Breezing past Millinocket

The Bangor Inn and Suites offers a good spread, and it opens at 6 am. This worked well for us. We had decided to visit Houlton – it was a little farther away, but it offered the chance to experience the eclipse in the presence of experts from NASA and lots of other people who were excited about it all. It was 140 miles to Houlton. We needed to be set up somewhere with Wifi by 9 am. Finishing breakfast by 7 was pretty important.

Houlton’s claim to fame prior to the eclipse? It’s the only place you can be on Route 1 and Route 2 at the same time.

Clear roads to Houlton were also important. We breezed past Millinocket, Island Falls, and, really, only a handful of other towns. We had great views of snow-topped Katahdin. And in almost no time, we were pulling off 95 and heading toward the heart of Houlton. We stopped in a bank parking lot that seemed well-located. It cost $20, and we later learned that the funds would go to the local Humane Society. The lot was mostly empty at 8:30.

The Riverside Star Park was pretty empty at first.

Getting a good parking space turned out to be important. Our spot was right across the street from the Riverside Star Park, one of four such parks the town had set up for visitors. We were able to visit the van several times during the day. Upon arrival, we carried our bags and chairs across the street, and staked out some space, including a picnic table. A man was there to let us know which direction to point our chairs to see the eclipse.

There was a van in the park’s parking lot with a satellite disk providing Wifi. Another van there was from The Weather Channel. There was even a bank of porta potties in the back corner of the park. By 8:45, we were ready to view the eclipse. We only had five hours or so until first contact – when the moon starts to cover the sun. It was time to check out the Maine Eclipse Festival.

Across a pedestrian bridge and up a small sidewalk, we found Houlton’s wide Market Square. There was a huge set of eclipse glasses, and a bust of George Washington wearing eclipse glasses. There were open storefronts, food trucks, and tables with displays. Large speakers on a stage pumped out eclipse-theme music. We found posters with the Festival’s catch line: The End Is Here.

There were not a lot of people in the Market Square. But it was still early.

Zoe takes and Extreme Weather exam.

Zoe was set up for her exam on a park bench near the library – in another one of the Star Parks the town had set up. The rest of us poked in the shops and booths, picking up eclipse donuts and commemorative posters. We mailed special post-marked cards to ourselves. We watched the square slowly begin to fill up with people. In not too long, the exam was done – Zoe got a 92!

Yeah, we got some of those eclipse doughnuts.

Houlton had grand plans for the Festival, and the town worked really hard to make it happen. Booths and displays around the square included bake sales and tie-die crafts. There were Native American drumming displays, and a some noodling on an eclipse-themed electric guitar by a local rock legend.

Lanie could not turn down the offer to hold a snake, even though she and Jen had to wait in line about an hour for her chance. Meanwhile, the crowd in the square got larger and larger.

At a booth in front of the movie theater – the movie theater where they would have simulcast the eclipse from a weather ballon if there had been clouds – we talked with NASA folks who asked us to download an app that would help them figure out the shape of the Sun. Trisha and I decided to become citizen scientists.

We got closer to first contact. The crowds in Market Square were not oppressive, but the mass of people was noticeable. Some of us got lunch at a food truck. We spent time in the riverside park, which had filled up with eclipse watchers. We played Ransom Notes on the picnic table. There were snacks and people in the park to talk to. We could see the Weather Channel crew working a few dozen feet from our chairs.

As first contact approached, we tested our eclipse glasses and got our colanders. The Sun shone on us. It was around 60 degrees.

It’s important to know what kind of environment you want to watch the eclipse in. At least, it was important for us, because we were fortunate enough to have a choice. We sought out communion with fellow enthusiasts. Early in our eclipse day, we heard reports of our friends the Ervins closing in on Houlton, a few hours behind us. I kept a lookout for them all day long. There were a lot of people in Houlton and the down had dedicated an impressive amount of space to the Festival; but it wasn’t so big and crowded that I thought it likely that the Ervins would escape me.

We later found out that they never made it to Houlton. They stopped for gas in, Smyrna, the town right before us. Talking to a few locals they were told something like: “I wouldn’t go to Houlton. It will be crazy there with so many people.”

I mingle with Taylor and her street team.

It’s true that Houlton swelled with more than 20,000 visotrs on eclipse day, and it’s also true that personal jet traffic into Houlton International Airport was very brisk that day. Rumors swirled that Taylor Swift herself was in town for the day. We did not see her — or did we? The band of roving martian creatures was very well choreographed and definitely had a diva-esque vibe. What better way for her to let down her tentacles and migle with the commoners.

Besides that buzz of excitement, though, things never really got oppressively crowded or overly intense. We enjoyed mingling with the commoners as much as Taylor did.

Meanwhile, the Ervins ended up finding a hillside in Smyrna where a handful of other people were set up to observe the eclipse. They sat on the hill and watched nature all day, up to and including the eclipse, with a view of Katahdin. It was just the experience they were looking for.

The park filled up as the eclipse approached.

In “crazy” Houlton we experienced the surreal experience of totality. From the first second of contact, which I learned about because the people behind me had an app that announced eclipse milestones, through the various percentages of moon coverage, we shared the experience with several hundred people in the park.

We found ourselves in the background of the Weather Channel broadcast, and kept abreast of the milestones thanks to our neighbors’ app. To my immediate left was a man named Chris who talked about how he had viewed his first eclipse at a child in Bucksport, ME. He watched his second eclipse with his son in the Midwest. Today was his third eclipse.

We talked with a photographer from the New York Times who was interested in our colander trick. We took pictures of each other peering through eclipse glasses or manipulating the pinhole camera that we made. We heard snippets of conversations in 360 degrees all around us.

The light certainly changed gradually, but we noticed the change suddenly. It wasn’t noticeably darker; Zoe described it as “more saturated.” Darks looked more profound. Red and green looked more vivid. Other colors were washed out. We spent time remarking on this, and how we were at about 98 percent coverage, which is about as much of an eclipse as the people who stayed back home would get to see.

Then it got progressively and noticeable weirder. Definitely darker, definitely colder. Most people had put their coats on. It was a strange twilight where the whole periphery was sill pretty light, but right above was dark. It felt like it should be raining – storming.

The Weather Channel man carries on, despite less-than-stellar lighting.

The crowd chattered. The man from the Weather Channel called out to the crowd and asked if we were ready. People started cheering.

And then, totality. The darkness went most of the way down the sky. The streetlight next to the flagpole at the top of the park came on. Someone said we could take off our eclipse glasses and look. There were all forms of non-standard verbal communication – gasps and aaahhs. I remember Trisha yelling “Oh, my God!” multiple times, but I missed getting a video of it. I went to hug Jen and possibly ruined the picture she was trying to take.

The lights on the footbridge went on. The Oohs and Aaahs continued, and the crowd whispered reverently. There was stirring at the same time as silence, somehow.

Eventually, I thought to look up myself. It took some effort to look up, actually. My brain and body are conditioned to not look up at the Sun.

Note the streetlights — and Venus — shining at 3:35 pm.

What I saw was pretty much like the pictures we’ve studied over the past several weeks: dark disk surrounded by pale streaks in all directions. It was larger than I expected it to be, or maybe it appeared larger the way the moon does when it’s near the horizon. My attempts to photograph it were mostly a failure, but in one of my pictures you can clearly see the pinprick in the sky that we later learned was Venus. Just off screen was another pinprick that was Jupiter.

My phone and Trisha’s were propped up taking automatic pictures for the Citizen Science project.

We took all of this in, the stillness and the murmurs. And then, even though it seemed like much less than 3 minutes and 30 seconds had passed, someone told us to get ready for the “Diamon Ring effect”.

There was a quick burst of light on the bottom right of the circle and we were quickly warned to put our eclipse glasses back on.

Totality was over.

The Weather Channel man asked what we thought, and the crowd cheered.

Our little clan recovered. We regrouped. We revisited the portapotties (still not an unbearable line). And then we started to break camp.

They’re already planning the next eclipse trip.

On our way up the path to the parking lot Chris asked a photographer how their shots came out. The man said he got great pictures of the partial eclipse, and then forgot to take his filer off for totality. Another photographer next to him did the same thing.

Traffic, which had been a concern for us, turned out to be a non-issue. It would have been less of an issue of we’d listened to the (seemingly drunk) man on his front porch urging us to take a left off of Route 1 and bypass the already accumulated backup. We eventually got the message and turned off after another block of gridlock.

The trip to Bangor took only about an hour longer than we would have expected. We rearranged bags between cars back at the hotel and made the fateful decision to dine at the adjacent Olive Garden (the Orono Brewing Company was unfortunately closed). It was a drawn-out affair, and we didn’t get headed back home until almost 9. Those of us headed to Durham made it into town around midnight. It was a pretty smooth drive, unlike the stories we heard from other parts.

We will be talking about this trip for years — any and all traffic encountered will soon be forgotten.

Meanwhile, there’s already talk of traveling to the next accessible eclipse. Anyone else up for a trip to Spain?

Great North American Eclipse Day 1 — We get close to totality, and closer to a famous duck

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If we can skip the Big Bang and the planets forming and black holes and stuff, then our big eclipse adventure started a year ago minus a day when Jen booked a hotel suite for us in Bangor. Actually, it started a little earlier, sometime between when Jen read the Wendy Mass book Every Soul a Star and when she heard there would be a solar eclipse whose zone of totality would be within driving distance of home.

Hey, Stephen King, want to go see an eclipse?

Jen perceived the astrological signs and realized we could stay in Bangor near Zoe on the night before the eclipse, and then we (minus Nadia) could all drive the hour or so north to totality. The plan was outlined. In the year following the hotel room booking a few relevant detail emerged:

We talked the Halls (minus Emma) into joining us for the trip.
Interest in the eclipse gradually rose – but we all managed to get our requests for personal days approved before the school system ran out of substitutes.
We discovered that the timing of our trip allowed us to see Zoe’s last UMO Orchestra concert, and, with a little ride sharing, Jen could stick around an extra day to watch Zoe’s honors thesis defense.

You can see how the stars were aligning.

We drove to Maine on Sunday morning. Two quick stops in Bangor awaited us.

One of the most famous ducks in all of Maine law enforcement

First, we swung by Stephen King’s house. As usual, had a few other cars worth of tourists lingering around the spider-strewn front gate. It was a predictable, yet satisfying eight-minute detour.

Second, we motored across town to Bangor Police Department HQ. This was likely the place we wanted. Confusingly, though, they don’t have a sign on the building for the Duck of Justice, so Jen had to somewhat awkwardly press the call button out front and ask the attendant if the famous taxidermized bird was actually inside. We got buzzed in and then had to wait for an officer to meet us in the lobby to unlock the special Bangor Police Museum. Here we found the Duck, which Krissy has been urging us to visit since forever. We took our selfie wearing eclipse glasses (hopefully soon to be displayed on the BPD website) and enjoyed a few minutes browsing the small, but not un-interesting museum.

Famous taxidermized duck and us

Even with those two stops, and lunch at the Family Dog in Orono, we made it to campus in plenty of time to walk through campus before Zoe’s concert. The performance itself was moving and well attended. Highlights included the New World Symphony and Copland’s Hoedown. Zoe was one of only four cellos in this year’s orchestra.

Parents’ and kids’ paths diverged for a while at this point. One group took a more in-depth campus tour that solidly featured bouldering action in the Maine Bound Adventure Center. Eliza is interested in a college experience that includes lots of outdoor exploration and Zoe tried to give her an idea of the kinds of opportunities that would be available at U Maine. They also saw a very large plant through the window of a greenhouse.

Zoe’s last bow with the UMO Orchestra (as an undergrad, at least)

Meanwhile, those of us who already hold at least one college degree moved off campus to watch the NCAA Division 1 Women’s Basketball Championships. The staff at the Orono Brewing Company was happy to put the game on all of their TVs, even though we only needed to watch one. While we were watching South Carolina defeat Iowa, we got to have some popcorn and pretzels, and we also had a beer or two.

After the show

It should be noted that some of us had more than a passing interest in the game. South Carolina’s win netted Trisha $75 and Iowa’s loss prevented Chris from winning any money whatsoever.

After the game, we regrouped and headed into Bangor for dinner. It was a Sunday night, and the post-Covid restaurant scene can be difficult to predict. Our first stop, Bangor’s Market Square, had a good concentration of restaurants, but only one was open, and it had an hour-and-a-half wait. A two-block drive revealed an open Thai restaurant that ended up serving our purposes quite well.

Time for Thai

Throughout the day, there was speculation, anticipation, and last-minute preparation. With none of us having experienced a total eclipse before, it was difficult to know for certain what was in store for us. Some clues had presented themselves:

A week or so before the event, Maine State Police started suggesting that we bring paper maps because there was fear that the cellular network would not be able to accommodate the masses of people traveling north and east for the spectacle.
Many road signs along Rt. 95 urged us to be patient in traffic and avoid parking in snowy or muddy fields (apparently, there are not very many tow trucks in Aroostook County).
The predicted weather for the area seemed perfect.
The main event in the area, Houlton’s Maine Eclipse Festival was expecting as many as 40,000 visitors.
There was general speculation that some places might not have enough sanitation facilities to accommodate the crowds.
Other towns in the area were advertising eclipse watching events, but they did not seem as coordinated as Houlton’s, though Houlton was farther away from Bangor (and home) than most of the other towns.

Based on this intelligence, we made tentative plans. Then we were hit one more piece of information: Zoe had to take an exam tomorrow! She could take it remotely, but she needed to be logged in for the exam around 9 am. How would it all come together? Keep reading to find out.

Day 10: Palaces, museums, and parks

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I’ve been a little off my game on this Copenhagen leg of the trip. We’ve all been a little tired, and I’ve been feeling like I was coming down with something. (I thought it was Zoe’s cold, but — spoiler alert — it later turned out to be Covid, which I had successfully avoided for over three years. I blame the stress caused by SJ Trains.) As the family cruise director, I think my lack of energy caused a little bit of aimlessness and difficulty deciding what to do. For today, our last day, I figured I needed to rally and come up with a clearer plan — and fortunately we were able to find a cluster of activities all in the same neighborhood.

We decided to continue our strategy of energy conservation, and again were able to successfully navigate the bus system. (This is more due to how clear, helpful, and omnipresent the buses are here, rather than any particular skill on our part. However, we did feel a little cooler when the group of tourists we were standing among all got onto one of those hop on/hop off red tourist buses, leaving us alone to get on the regular city bus.)

First on the agenda: Amalienborg Palace. There are a few different palaces in the city and we didn’t have time to do all of them. We picked this one pretty much just because it was in the neighborhood of some other things we wanted to see. It’s the current residence of the Swedish royal family, and was worth a quick stop. (We had another mystery adventure envelope for this place, but were too disheartened from our prior experience to even pull it out.)

Next up: cardamom buns. These had been recommended to us as a Danish delicacy by our friends the Palmers, who visited recently. They proved to be slightly more difficult to find than we expected, and we had also not gotten what you would call an early start — so by the time we had secured them, it was just about lunchtime. So the buns went into a box to enjoy later, and we started casing the lovely historic harborfront neighborhood of Nyhavn for a suitable restaurant. We quickly found that lovely harborfront neighborhood restaurants are (a) heavily dominated by fish, which at least one of our party won’t eat, and (b) not the most affordable.

Eventually we found an Asian restaurant off the main strip. The main thing we’ll remember about it is the waiter, who was from Turkey and was single-handedly serving the whole place with much energy and enthusiasm. He seemed to have a bit of a gambling problem, and was very interested in the soccer game that Nadia was trying to watch on her phone. I’m not sure if he’d already placed a bet on it, or whether he called his bookie on the spot, but he was very anxious that two goals be scored by Nadia’s team. Both he and Nadia were very celebratory when this happened.

Next up was a museum that the kids had picked out after reading about it on the Copenhagen Card website. The Museum of Danish Resistance, detailing the history of Denmark during WWII, was not exactly an obvious choice, but it was actually a very cool place. It was in a dim, high-ceilinged basement and consisted of a series of audio tours, accompanied by flicking black and white movie images projected on the concrete

Nadia, cardamom bun, and Little Mermaid

walls. It followed the story of five different Danes during the war as well as the conditions of the country as a whole. There were fun hands on activities like eavesdropping on conversations with an old-fashioned telephone switchboard, and decoding secret messages. (Also, we later discovered that while in the windowless basement we seemed to have avoided a substantial rainstorm.)

The museum was right next to a large waterfront park, with an imposing fountain, pieces of an old fort, and a short walk to the famous Little Mermaid statue. (This, as the Palmers had warned us, was not all that impressive and was also swarmed with tourists, but the walk there was pleasant and it proved to be a nice place to take a rest and enjoy our cardamom buns.)

Our planned dinner destination was somewhat nearby, but we weren’t ready for dinner yet. Conveniently, there was a cool-sounding museum nearby, and another right near our dinner spot. Better yet, Thursday was the one night of the week that the latter museum was open late, so we’d have time to do both and then roll into the dinner hour.

The first was the Design Museum of Denmark, and we all really liked it. The exhibits were so diverse that it’s hard to sum them up. It was a cool mixture of modern art, interior design, and social commentary, and well worth the time we spent there.

The second museum was on the other side of the harbor, so we had to take a ferry to get there. Fortunately, as with all the other public transport that we’ve found here, this was well-run and easy to navigate. It took us quite some time of scratching our heads and squinting at the signs to feel confident that we were going in the right direction, but we could actually see the sign from across the harbor so we really had no excuse for this other than tiredness and paranoia.

On the other side of the harbor, we found ourselves in a strange post-industrial part of town. It seems to be in the process of gentrifying, but hasn’t quite gotten then yet. The Copenhagen Contemporary museum was at the far end of a dreary street mostly populated by deserted factories, and did not at all seem like an area where you’d find a tourist attraction. But we found this fit well with the vibe of the museum, which itself was built in a former welding factory. This is another one that is hard to describe. There were exhibits consisting of huge movie screens, giant sculptures, a pile of stuffed jeans for lounging, and much more. It was a nice museum for avoiding overwhelm, because most of it was large rooms with only one or two things to look at.

We waited in line for this one “experiential” exhibit, not knowing what to expect. After going into an antechamber and replacing our shoes with white cotton booties, we (along with 4 other people) climbed a set of lighted stairs and emerged into a cornerless tunnel flooded with different colors of light. We were left to experience this for about 10 minutes, as the colors changed around us. It was quite a unique experience! Unfortunately no photos were allowed, but we would recommend a visit if you ever find yourself in Copenhagen.

Finally, dinner time! On yet another recommendation from the Palmers, we were traveling to Reffen, just down the street from the museum. It’s hard to describe this place. It’s a little industrial looking shanty town, with winding alleys lined with shacks selling all kinds of delicious food from around the world. We were having trouble deciding if it really was a ramshackle place that sprung up in old shipping containers and the like, or whether it was carefully constructed to look that way. We decided it was probably the latter, but it was so well done that it was hard to be sure. Several of us were reeled in immediately by the burrito place that had a spit out front of pork, roasting tantalizingly on a rotisserie. Others got tofu and noodles, sandwiches, chicken satay, ice cream — it was a feast across the board.

We were thrilled when we found that there was a ferry route traveling most of the way back to our hotel, but alas — after waiting for a while and squinting at the signs again, we eventually determined the ferries were no longer running. (We don’t really blame ourselves for how long this took, because while we were waiting about a dozen other people lined up behind us. We assumed they knew what they were doing, and apparently they (unwisely) assumed the same of us.) So it was back to the bus again, for one last night in our hostel.