The Great American Eclipse (or, Warren's Favorite Thing Ever)
We woke up like this
Hanging with our awesome friends
So, during the two months we spent in the
states, visiting our families as unemployed people getting ready to be very
‘brave’ and travel to Asia, we had an amount of money to spend on plane tickets
in order to use up the voucher. The trips from Detroit to Dallas and Dallas to
LAX (where our already purchased flight to Bali was leaving from) didn’t quite
spend enough money.
On a whim, Monica suggested we spend a few
days in Denver. “Sure,” says I, “why not.” We know people in Denver. It also is
very near mountains and nice hiking stuff.
And it cost only a little more than what was left on the voucher to get there.
Win win win.
Turns out, the news is different in other
countries. Can you, without googling it, tell me when the total eclipse was last in England? Nope. That
the eclipse was not going through Australia (where we were living) meant that
coverage of it was pretty minimal.
Our realization that we were going to be in
Denver during the eclipse went something like this:
“Our friends from Houston are going to be in
Denver when we are too!”
“Crazy! What a coincidence! Wait, the
internets are telling me there is going to be a total eclipse in the states
while we are there… it goes through Wyoming… when are we going to be in
Denver?”
“Hold up, are we in Denver during the eclipse?
Holy crap!”
Moving forward, our friends who put us up for
the night, fully planned and organized a camping trip to Wyoming so all four of
us could see it.
I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking
about the actual eclipse (it is covered very well here and
here),
but I do want to say that if you failed to make a trip to see totality during
the 2017 one, you absolutely need to start making plans to see the next in
2024. No joke. 90% is cool and
all, but it is worth it to see 100%.
But I do want to spend a moment and laud
Wyoming. Both Monica and I have been there before and both remembered it
fondly, but its beauty on this trip was like wow:
I took this picture from our campsite. Seriously.
And it was that moment I saw a pale rider...
My attempts at artistic photography
Also, did you know that on Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) land you can camp pretty much anywhere you
want?
How cool is that? We got lucky and found a few great public, free campsites, but for
the future it is good to know that you aren’t SOL if the campsite is full.
After the event was done, we slowly headed
back to Denver and had a great time seeing the city. It has been 13 or 14 years
since I was last there, and the city was almost unrecognizable. We ate at an
awesome German restaurant, drank at a cool as hell
speak-easy, and had a lot of fun catching
up/getting to know the wonderful people who put us up and planned the whole
camping trip to Wyoming for us.
So, in the end, our trip to Denver included
spending less than 36 hours actually in Denver, but loving every minute that we
were there. Wyoming was super, and not just because of the giant shadow caused
by the moon. What a cool last trip in the US before leaving for Asia, right?
Ahhhhhh, me's jealous... about the Wyoming eclipse part. Seven. More. Years.
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