The Madsen's and Total Solar Eclipse

We headed down to Spring City to visit our friends the Madsen's.  The kids had so much fun catching up!  Nanette and I were able to sneak to the temple for a couple hours.  It was a short visit, but so sweet.

Riley -14, Camille - 13, Garet - 11, Preston - 11, Mason - 8, Annie - 8, Dallin - 6, Paige - 4
Wesley is 17 yrs and was off working.

Garet and Preston....they disappeared behind the Madsen's house (they live next to the mountains and have no neighbors for a mile or so) to explore.  Garet was in heaven!

Riley made the school volleyball team, so she was off practicing some of the time we were there, but they got to hang out a little bit.

Mason and Annie were so embarrassed to get their picture taken together!  Annie's baptism was the next day.

 We wanted to see the total solar eclipse so we headed to Wyoming....we camped in the forest near Lander and found a beautiful spot.  We left on Friday and the Eclipse wasn't until Monday morning.  We enjoyed being together on Saturday and then made the trek to church in Lander on Sunday morning.  We packed two solar showers and bathed in the forest!  It was quite the experience!  The kids were troopers.  Sunday night, Terra and Nate, Grandma and Grandpa, Will, Nate and Xander, and Scott came and camped with us.  We drove up to Riverton WY on Monday morning to await the famous Eclipse.  It was well worth it! We all thought it was better than we expected.

Eating our delicious corn on the cob baked over the fire!  Camille and I planned some yummy meals.  We did all of our cooking on the fire....it was really nice not to worry about packing a camp chef.

We brought along the motorcycles for fun!

This was one of the trails we hiked.

Dallin made a brick oven on the side of the fire and thought it was the coolest thing every.  We roasted apples and then rolled them in cinnamon and sugar....delicious!

The hammock was a huge hit!

More cooking for this boy

He was so black by the end.

In the forest their were all these really tall piles of rocks that we could see above the trees.  Jared convinced us to hike to the top of one.  The kids were such great hikers and we saw some cool things.

We made it to the tippy top.

A huge spider.

Forest mushrooms

The kids made a little garden out of different things.  Very clever.

We were on our way back to camp from a hike we had been on and spotted this huge bull moose just eating away in the pond.

He was so fun to watch.  He would put his entire head under the water and then come up with a mouthful of plants.

Can you spy the moose?

We hiked up to this old fire look out!  That's how they would search for forest fires in the olden days.  It was a spectacular view at that top.

These 5 crazies mean the world to me!

We went over to Rock Creek Hollow before church on Sunday and the sweet missionaries told us all about it.  We didn't realize we were so close to where we were planning to do a family pioneer trek in September. 

We also visited Sinks Canyon State park after church.  The river flows into an underground limestone cavern and then reappears a mile or so downstream on the other side of the highway (which is called the rise).

Walking into the visitors center.  Three handsome boys!

This is where the water goes under ground.

Finally Eclipse day!  

We had a great time playing and waiting!

It was fun to watch the progess over the sun.  Notice everyone's sahdows....it was only 11 am, so shadows should be pretty small, but the light is already fading.

It went so dark....the crickets were chirping and the lights in the church parking lot came on.

It only lasted for a couple minutes and then the sun started peeking out again!

The shadows from the leaves were really interesting.

This was such a fun memorable trip!  It's good to do something different once in a while!  We made the long drive home just in time for the kids to start school the next day.  Goodbye Summer!