On The Road Again!: Day 10: Sunday, May 20th-Las Vegas, Nevada to Bryce Canyon National Park,Utah-286 miles

After saying our goodbyes to John, Irene, and Alyssa, we made the trek to Bryce Canyon in Utah. We stopped by our motel in Panguitch, a few miles outside of the park to unload our luggage and check the room out(the kids are not too thrilled with our check in routine...we make them wait in the car until we deem the room 'bedbug free') When we arrived in Bryce, we were shocked by the huge crowds there considering it is so early in the season. We learned soon enough what all the commotion was about. Every year Bryce hosts an Astronomy Festival...this year they changed the date so that it would coincide with the annular solar eclipse (A solar eclipse in which the moon covers all but a bright ring around the circumference of the sun because the moon is too far away from earth )This was to occur at 6:30 p.m. This eclipse was only visible in Asia and in certain western states within a 200 mile band. It was the 1st time in 18 years that an annular eclipse was visible in the western U.S.

anyone within a 200-mile-wide strip of territory between the Oregon-California coast and northwestern Texas, should have the chance to see a rare occurrence, weather permitting of course.

Source: redOrbit (http://s.tt/1aQEw)

anyone within a 200-mile-wide strip of territory between the Oregon-California coast and northwestern Texas, should have the chance to see a rare occurrence, weather permitting of course.

Source: redOrbit (http://s.tt/1aQEw)

anyone within a 200-mile-wide strip of territory between the Oregon-California coast and northwestern Texas, should have the chance to see a rare occurrence, weather permitting of course.

Source: redOrbit (http://s.tt/1aQEw)

Bryce and other National Parks were evidently some of the best places in the U.S. to view it…how cool is that? I think we were the only ones there who had no clue this was going on as most people we saw had chairs, blankets etc. to make viewing the eclipse comfortable. When we arrived at the front gate we were strongly advised not to bring our van into the park but instead to take advantage of the free shuttle buses available. After our experience with parking at Zion, we decided to follow the Ranger’s advice. We arrived at Bryce Point and waited until 5pm for the Rangers to hand out special eclipse viewing glasses. Then we decided to take a hike down into the canyon. We all loved this park! The ‘hoodoos’ are really unusual landforms and the colors are so vivid.They are in really strange shapes and it is fun to imagine them representing different animals...we 'saw' all sorts of creatures during out hike! Luke was the expert:) We all agreed the hike into the canyon was not as scary as the Grand Canyon and it was one of our highlights from the trip. It took us about an hour to get back up to Bryce Point, one of the main viewing areas for the eclipse. The place was crawling with astronomy enthusiasts and avid photographers…there was even a booth selling stuff with the ‘Ring of Fire” logo on it. There were people everywhere and we had a hard time finding a spot for all 8 of us…we finally settled on the path overlooking the canyon. We sat back and watched as the eclipse began…it was like waiting for a pot of water to boil as the moon slowly moved over the sun…it was better to take a break and then look again because you could notice the progression more. I think we were entertainment for the people immediately surrounding us as the kids soon grew bored and began tricking Mercy by covering her glasses so that she could no longer see the sun(the glasses make everything but the sun black so she could not see their shenanigans with her glasses on). After viewing for about 45 minutes, we moved down to the parking area knowing that halfway through the eclipse (when the ring of fire was evident), the crowds would disperse and there would be bedlam as all those people tried to get on a shuttle back to their cars. We watched the final 15 minutes from the parking area with a very enthusiastic Park Ranger who literally counted down until the ring of fire was visible. There was even a blown up image from a special telescope projected onto a sheet hanging from a truck. Luke had the creative idea of snapping a picture through the glasses. A lady behind us informed us that attempting that would melt the camera lens! I’m sure glad she told us! The odd thing about the eclipse is that you never would have known it was going on if you were not viewing it through the glasses because this was not a total eclipse when the sun appears dark. Shortly after the ring of fire appeared, we loaded onto the 1^st bus down to our van. Five minutes into the trip, the bus totally died…we should have guessed something wasn’t right when the bus driver could not open the doors but had to radio another driver to manually pry them open so that we could climb on board. The poor driver was left stranded with a bus of tired passengers who all tried to outrun the crowds only to watch bus after bus pass us by. Finally, he unloaded a few passengers at a tim.e onto other passing buses which were already pretty full. Those left behind (that would include our gang) had to wait over an hour for another bus to get to us down to where our van was parked. It was definitely a test as we were all (our family and the other passengers) tired, hungry and getting impatient..and 3 empty buses drove right past us to pick passengers up at Bryce Point rather than offloading our bus. It was after 9pm by the time we made it back to our van but we had already planned to return at 10pm for a stargazing/astronomy program at the park. We had planned to just drive to a spot in the park and view the night sky but because of the Festival Bryce had a special Astronomy program going on. We ate some snacks and went to the Visitor Center to kill some time and check out the displays while the sky grew darker. The National Parks in Utah are known as “The Last Grand Sanctuary of Natural Darkness” because of their high elevation and pure air quality which makes star gazing much more vivid. Bryce even uses special lighting around the buildings so as not to create ‘light pollution’. I was really hoping Luke would get to see a night sky similar to what we experienced last year in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (he slept through it). It was pitch dark and we walked to a remote parking lot which had the very knowledgeable astronomy enthusiasts manning some high powered telescopes set to view Saturn, Mars, Pluto, a star cluster called M-5. Viewing Saturn was surreal as it looked like a perfect tiny computer generated icon. It was quite comical as we all moved from scope to scope and tried to find each other in the dark. You were not permitted to use a flashlight so it was by voice only. At one point we ‘lost’ Philip who later commented he could find us anywhere because we are so loud! It was too early to view the Milky Way without a telescope but we decided to call it a night. Thankfully, Luke was not disappointed and we were all amazed at how the Lord worked out all the details for us to see His glories in His creation. As we walked back to the van this is what resounded in my grateful heart: