This weekend I started a new chapter of my travel career with a trip specially planned to watch an eclipse—specifically the annular eclipse. I flew to Salt Lake City yesterday, met up with Amanda who had flown in from Denver, and then drove the hours south to the small town of Richfield, UT, where we would be able to see full annularity.

But first we stopped to do some antique shopping got the Boise house—because priorities. We did not buy the taxidermy but did find a bookcase and clock that will be perfect.

When we got to Richfield we met up with Amanda’s parents and brother who had driven from Grand Junction and were already at the hotel.

There’s not much to do in Richfield, so we turned in fairly early, and then got up early to be ready for the eclipse. By then Amanda’s aunt’s family has joined us so we had a good group to set up on the hotel lawn. We had lawn chairs, telescopes, special sunglasses, and extra jackets and blankets for when the sun went dark and things got cold.

By around 9 am we started to see the moon’s shadow overtake the sun—and the shadows started to turn strange…

As the moon advanced, the light got noticeably dimmer, the temperature dropped, and a few stars came out. And then the eclipse was complete—the famous ring of fire! It was incredible to see through the glasses, and Andy managed to capture some terrific shots through the telescope.

And after about 3-4 minutes, it was over! The moon’s shadow broke through the ring on the other side and kept moving on.

At which point we posed for another group photo, went inside to eat lunch and birthdaycake (for Amanda, Andy, and Josh), and then hit the road back to civilisation (and in our case, more antiques natch…)