Southwest US road trip time.
We had a few easy days with Grandma and Grandpa Lyons (swimming, basketball, line dancing class, good food, easy living) including having the kids make a simple scale model of what would happen during the total eclipse [sun = 1 meter in diameter newspaper circle, earth = 2 cm newspaper circle, moon ~½ cm circle. Moon will cover sun at +100 meters away; very cool scale model to think about how amazing the eclipse is, that everything lines up] and then we headed out to Texas.
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| Alex and Luke making their one-meter-diameter Sun for the (low tech, but super informative) scale-eclipse model. |
We stopped at Guadalupe Peak National Park (using the amazing, 4th-grade-free-pass-to-all-National Parks Pass, thanks NPS!), which we learned is the tallest point in Texas.
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| Alex excited about his NPS 4th grade pass! |
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| Luke separately adding his excitement to the mix! |
We spent our first night in Texas in a small place called Pecos (named after fictional folk hero Pecos Bill who, among other feats, was known to have lassoed a tornado with a snake - I also read the kids of the myths that claimed that Pecos’s wife-to-be tried to ride his bucking-horse, Widow Maker, and the horse was so wild that she was bucked to the sky and her metal bustle kept bouncing her up and up so that she was about to starve to death when Pecos humanely shot her so she would not suffer. I understandably did not like this ending. Another end to the tall tale has him lassoing her down to Earth on the 7th day of her bouncing at which time did she decides she does not wish to be involved in the wild cowboy life after all and Bill kisses her hand and sadly leaves town without his bride). We listened to the high school baseball and softball games on the radio as we came into the small town; we had dinner and found our motel. I must admit that I was concerned about driving about the small town with our California plates much more than I thought I would be (so sad.. I did not think like that before he who shall not be named brought the incredible, current level of vitriol and violence into the Red-Blue state divide) and I did not sleep well that night. Might have also been that we were all 5 stuffed into a hotel room and Luke kept sticking his cold feet on my warm legs. One or the other was the sleep-issue:)
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| Pesos Bill lassoing the tornado with the snake. |
The next day, we made it to San Antonio in the afternoon and had lunch with Scott’s Uncle Wendell and Aunt Cindy. After touring their lovely neighborhood and house, we continued on to Austin. We made it before nightfall and waited (no joke) one hour for these well-known tacos. We also stood on the South Congress Ave Bridge for more than an hour, with a thousand or so other people, waiting to see the colony of bats wake up in the evening and go mosquito hunting. Sadly for us, we only saw a few dozen fly about as they do not go out to eat every night in the Spring.
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| On the South Congress Bridge in Austin, waiting for dusk. |
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| Still on the bridge.. We were rewarded with a dozen bats, too bad, but we got a nice skyline view. |
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| At University of Texas, Austin, the Longhorn. |
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| Great Presidential Library stop! |
Sunday April 7 was lovely, the day before the eclipse - We spent the morning at the LB Johnson Presidential Library, located on the University of Texas campus. The many videos from about all that happened during his presidency were really accessible for our age-diverse group. We headed downtown and met up with Scott’s college buddies who were in town for the eclipse and then headed over to our grad school-friends’ house; it was so lovely to see her and her family; we hadn’t seen them in all the years since they moved from Berkeley to Austin. We left their house full from so many delicious tacos (a food-theme) and planned to hang out the next day for the eclipse.
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| We played so hard at Lori’s house, Alex and Luke ended up leaving this damage on their basketball hoop. Of course, Lori and Jake were so nice about it. |
Bad news! Our eclipse-day host had a very sad death in the family and of course we canceled plans to watch the eclipse together. Scott and I decided to hang out in motel room and have the kids do school work until lunchtime, then watch the eclipse at a nearby park. By 10am, the clouds were looking ominous and the forecast was still bad (for a total eclipse - the only kind of eclipse that is cool in my opinion - you hope to get a clear view of the sun; you can watch with solar glasses as the Moon moves over the Sun and feel day turn to night all around you as more and more of the Sun is covered up. Then! When the Moon is at totality and all that you can see is the diamond, the corona of the Sun ringing the black Moon, then you take off your solar glasses and it’s safe to look at the Sun. Everyone around you exclaims or is silent or is greatly moved by these precious moments when the Sun is blotted out.] With clouds all around us, we told the kid to pack, that we were leaving in 10 minutes; we ran out of the motel (that I had paid for for two more nights, adventure!); we ran out of the lovely City of Austin which I had been hoping to see more of on Tuesday; we started driving west, toward home and toward sunnier skies.
The drive was interesting - All official communications were: Do NOT drive on the day of the eclipse, Texas was to crowded. We were bad people driving and it was not crowded (because so many people are good people!); it also seemed that the crowds from around Austin did not come for the Totality because the weather forecast was cloudy. So! We had clear roads and many sheriffs out to keep peace during the big event. We drove for 2+ hours and decided to stop at the LB Johnson Ranch - a state or national park. We found a nice field + parking lot where park rangers were directing people, we joined all the lawn chairs and crowd to wait for the event. It was sunny enough! Then.. sadly, during our 45 minute wait for the eclipse, the clouds accumulated and got thicker and thicker.. Just before eclipse time, the clouds parted and we all could look at the Sun with our glasses and see the Moon cutting into the giant Sun-pie and a cheer went up from the crowd! Then.. more clouds. As totality fell, it got dark and quiet as everyone watching the sky for the full 4 minutes.. All.. Clouds… It got bright again and none of us had gotten to see the Sun totally covered by the Moon. We were so disappointed (Scott more than anyone). Alex and Luke kicked the soccer ball with a little kid. We drove over to the Johnson Ranch visiting area, just a few hundred yards from where we had been sitting and it turned out some of the viewers in that location had seen the corona. Oh the disappointment deepened. By dinnertime, Scott was looking up the next, fun-place total eclipse (Iceland and Spain in 2026). We lamented our bad luck and tried to look forward to the (30 HOUR!) drive home, having not enjoyed that event that brought us to Texas. It was tough.
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| Alex and Luke playing waiting for the (clouded over) eclipse. |
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| Consolation after the dud-eclipse viewing, we visited the Johnson Ranch. |
We made it through a lot of Texas that day. Next day, we visited our buddies in Alpine, Texas; more friends who moved a few years ago and we hadn’t seen since their Bay Area departure. It was so much fun to see their lives in the small town; they were very happy; our kids played and played; we enjoyed their backyard chickens and good food.
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| Hiking with Michaeleen (and Matt, not pictured) in Alpine as part of their homeschool day! |
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| Still hiking! |
The road trip continued!
We stopped at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico (we spent the night inside the Monument which made for dark skies and incredible morning-sun on the red cliffs). The next day, we drove all the way through Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation (a long stretch on dirt highway; very different views, we marveled at how unpopulated and desolate these parts of America looked and what it meant about the kind of land the US government “gave” to Native tribes..). We also stopped at Canyon de Chelly, in eastern Arizona - the “other” Canyon in Arizona that has fascinating views without crowds.
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| Katie in one of the Bandelier caves where Native civilizations lived both below the caves and up high for shade. |
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| Making the climb to the caves. |
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| Canyon de Chelly |
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| Canyon de Chelly; that arch in the background provided shade for living areas along the river that is at the bottom of the Canyon. |
We kept driving through Arizona to the big daddy, the Grand Canyon; we made it about an hour before sunset, perfect.. This was the second time we took the kids to the GC; this time I think they will remember it. We just want to whet their appetites for it a bit so they’ll be ready to climb it in some future trip!
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| Grand Canyon. |
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| Trying to capture the Grand Canyon. |
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| We had a nice, night sky as we left the Grand Canyon. |
Don’t stop now! We continued on to the Hoover Dam; wow, super interesting! The museum was closed and tours were too long of a stop for us so we just borrowed a “facts’ pamphlet and wowed (or for some, snoozed) each other with all the crazy facts an engineering project of that size contains (The Dam is more than 650 feet THICK at its base! The Dam is 725 feet tall! It took 5 years to build and was completed in 1936! Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the whole US [though it is only 35% full after decades of drought!]). We also walked across to the viewpoint on the Hoover Dam Bypass bridge also called O’Callahan-Tilman Bridge. I was dismayed to read some of the interpretive signs for the Bridge that noted it was completed in 2010 at a cost of ~$240 million which “might sound like a lot but is a deal compared to the most expensive bridge in the US constructed at the time of its opening - The Oakland span of the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge, completed in 2013 at $6.5 billion. Sigh. Why does everything cost so much in the Bay Area?
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| In front of Lake Mead. |
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| In front of the Dam. |
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| Very tall new (built 2010) Hoover Dam Bypass bridge. |
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| From the Bridge walkway, looking down on the Hoover Dam. |
We couldn’t stop at the Hoover Dam and not stop to see Scott’s Aunt Myrna (cousin Samantha was at work); it was great to spend a quick hour saying hello and playing with Sadie the doggie.
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| We got to visit Scott’s Aunt Myrna in Las Vegas. |
Last overnight stop before home - Death Valley. We were so excited for this stop because neither Scott nor I had been to this park. It delivered. It was so spectacular. The scenery was unreal and so many superlatives! (The lowest place in North America! Almost 300 feet below sea level! It’s the largest national park in the continental US! Holds the record for hottest recorded temperature on planet Earth [134 degrees F])!
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| Death Valley, standing at the lowest point in North America. |
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| Final stop on the way home - To see my brother and his kids! |
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