Solar Eclipse

I must be totally isolated from the world.  I knew nothing about the solar eclipse happening until Brynn said something about it.  She wanted to head down to southern Utah to see it. Lucky me, it didn't happen until the evening so I could swing teaching primary and going.  I say, "Me and I"  because Houston couldn't come. :(  I blame that on the summer semester of school.  Anywho, Brynn, Justin, and I all headed down to Brian Head Ski Resort at around 1 in the afternoon.  We made it there at about 5.  We only had to pay $8 to ride the lift up to watch it from the top of the mountain.  Not a bad deal, I thought.  We got up there about 30 minutes before the moon was to start covering the sun.  Once it started we all watched, and I took pictures. :) 

 


The hard part about watching the sun or filming it.  You obviously can't stare right at it.  Lucky for Brynn and Justin, they had solar glasses up there.  I brought Houston's dad's welding goggles.  As for the camera, you can't just film the sun either.  It is way too bright and will ruin the sensors in it.  For cool people, they buy a solar filter for the camera. I, on the other hand, waited until the last minute and wasn't able to get one.  BUT, I rigged up my own.  Remember those welding goggles I mentioned I used... I used it as my camera filter too.

My AWESOME goggles!

I took pictures all through out.  They are not the best.  Come to find out, filming the sun is A LOT harder than it looks.  There's none of that point and shot crap.  You have to put it on manual and change the f/stop, ISO, and such to get the shot at least somewhat decent. It didn't help that I don't have a tripod so the movement didn't help.  (Note to self: GET A TRIPOD!!)  Anyway, here they are...  At least it's proof I was there. :P

The Welding Goggles make the light green.  I thought it looked pretty cool.

YAY!  They're okay pictures.  I did the best I could.  :P  After it was all said and done was packed up our stuff thinking we would be quick to get out.  Well, everyone else had the same idea.  It didn't help that the lift is not meant to take people down so they can only put, up to three people, on every fifth chair.  There were LOTS of people.  As we waited for our turn I took this shot...

When it was our turn... Finally... we about died... literally.  We had a bit of a mishap getting onto the lift. Justin dropped one of the chairs RIGHT as the chair was to us, Brynn stepped closer to me to give him room which in turn made it possible for only one butt cheek to find the seat.  So, Justin and I are scrambling to get on.  Thankfully they stopped over the catch net, so if we did fall, we didn't go rolling down the mountain.  Once Justin was on, Brynn turns to me, still hanging on for dear life to see if I made it up.  LOL! I had to tell her to scoot over because there was really no room to pull myself on.  Neither Justin or I fell, and once we gave the okay to the guy running the lift, everyone up top clapped... "I like to thank the academy..."  No.... not really.  That was super embarrassing! 

Then all the way down we laughed about it, which didn't help Brynn who was is desperate need of a restroom.  Which, as it always does, made us laugh even harder.  Once down, we got to start the LONG trek home.  When we got passed Scipio, for some reason, the freeway went to a crawl, so we had to take some back road to Nephi.  Thank goodness for back roads.  We were all ready to be home in bed.

What an adventure!  LOL! It was really fun!  I'm glad I got to see it. I do wish Houston could've made it.  At least I have some pictures for him to see.