What I Did on My Summer Vacation -- Part 3, Seeing new things in old places

Aug. 24-26

We’re up, fed and on the road at a reasonable time of the morning. The trip to Lubbock will eat up most of the day, but we’ve discovered that leaving fresh in the morning -- and not encountering DFW traffic -- seems to make the journey feel shorter than a comparable journey that begins after lunch. Having more towns to travel through makes a difference as well.

The flatness continues most of the way to Lubbock save for a brief period north of Amarillo. But it's flatness I’m familiar with, and it feels like home. After all, we did spend a number of years living in the Panhandle/South Plains.

Tonight will be mostly devoted to catching up and hearing about Brandon and Aaron’s vacation to Bend, Oregon, which is decidedly not flat, and by all accounts is a great vacation destination.

We look at all of Brandon’s pictures, then all of my pictures. We would have looked at Sharon’s, but a series of silly events caused her pics to be scattered across three memory cards -- yes, we still primarily use stand-alone cameras, not cell phones, and would have been more complicated to view..

A long time ago, when film cameras ruled, we used to gather with friends and sit through slide shows projected on a screen. (I still have my projector and screen, BTW.) Now we hook a computer to a large-screen TV. No telling what we’ll doing next.
Brandon works from home on Friday, so Sharon and I can go roam the mall and some shopping centers and not have to bother him about getting back into the house. We’ll join Bran for a very nice supper at a restaurant up the street and generally enjoy not being in the car for most of a workday.

Lubbock skyline from the Wind Power Museum

Saturday we’ll go to the American Wind Power Center, off E. 19th Street. We’ve known about this place for years, but none of us have ever been there. Just about every type of windmill and wind turbine is on display. The place overwhelms with the sheer number of devices on display. The museum also features a model railroad set in the kind of landscape you’d find on the Texas plains, but it's not running.

The train is to scale, but the landscape isn’t necessarily. Makes for some funny displays. For instance, in one part of the display a collie is nearly the same size as an adult cow, and both stand near a farmhouse and appear to be nearly at tall as the first story of the house.

Just one of the halls of the museum filled with windmills

Did you immediately guess that this is a wind-powered

washing machine?

A long time ago, in rural areas, you could address a letter to

someone using a farm's windmill designation for an address.

The rural postal carrier would put the mail in a box like this.

The two types of wind-power devices that interest me most are some wind turbines that have to be started by a motor because the unusual vanes don’t catch wind in a way that will crank the windmill up from a standstill and a large windmill that looks like those old Dutch windmills you see in pictures.

These windmills had to be spun up using a motor. Once they

were spinning, the force of the wind would be sufficient to 

keep them going.

The large front part is a wind-powered grain mill. The smaller

unit on the back kept the mill pointed into the wind.

 In fact, It’s not Dutch but a type of wind-driven grain mill that was developed in England and used in early colonial America. A large, vane assembly in the front of the building drives the mill machinery. Attached to the back is a smaller vane assembly set on a circular track that keeps the building pointed into the prevailing wind. Quite impressive.

Most of the outside displays lack signage to explain what type of device you're looking at. But they're obviously either pump mills or turbines for generating electricity. (I know that occasionally farmers would rig old windmills to perform both functions. If you live in the area or visit Lubbock ever, the museum is worth your time.

The time comes to hit the road for home. We’ll travel through old, familiar territory -- past cotton fields and wind turbines, over rolling plains, and past mesas and hills, a welcome and comforting change in scenery. The weather threatens to dump rain on us, but we only have brief encounters with small showers. It's good to be home -- you know the feeling.

Labor Day weekend

I’m counting this as part of our vacation, even though six days separate the trips. We head to Austin on Saturday to visit Aaron. I rely on Google Maps and the time of our departure to make the decision to travel there by way of I-35, aka Our Road of Perpetual Construction, and it works out this time. But I won’t take the same route home.

The big fear for this weekend is the availability of gasoline. Hurricane Harvey devastated the Gulf Coast of Texas, dumping unprecedented amounts of rain in the Houston/Beaumont area, and the prospect of gas shortages looms because refineries have been forced to shut down. Some car owners panic and drain some stations dry. This is dutifully reported on the news, which leads to more folks making gas runs, and more empty gas stations.

In a day or so, a railroad commissioner assures the public that plenty of gas is available -- the problem lies in distribution, he says, not supply, also dutifully reported. But the damage is done. Stations receive a new shipment of gas only to be met with cars ready to suck down whatever’s delivered.

I manage to fill up at our new Walmart convenience store before leaving, which will be enough to take us to Austin, drive around a bit and come most of the way home. (BTW, when it opened, this store was the only one of its type in the U.S. Not sure why they picked Crowley, Texas, for the location, but it seems to be doing a bang-up business.) 

If we can buy gas in Austin, or at least somewhere along the way back, we'll have no problems, I figure. On the trip down, many of the smaller towns seem to have at least regular gas, and I expect the Buc-ee’s in Temple will have gas somehow or other.

After our previous trip, the jaunt to Austin seems short. We hit town and head for Aaron’s place, checking for gas availability at the stations we see along the way. Pretty much everyone is out. 

Cedar Park Art Garden with community center

in the background.

After lunch, Aaron takes us to the Cedar Park Sculpture Garden. Sculptors agree to loan the city their artwork for a year, and all but two are for sale. Visitors follow a path that begins adjacent to the city’s rec center, and signs provide information on each sculpture. You have to look online to find out which ones are for sale, though.

Most of the works look like what they're supposed to be. I'm not much for abstract and modern art, so I really enjoy the pieces. Perhaps the most whimsical is Koala-T of Life. Although the other works sit on a pedestal in the center of a circular site, when you approach this section, nothing stands on the pedestal. The sculpture is a metal koala mounted in a tree next to the viewing area. Just where you’d expect a koala to be.

Something supposed to be here?

There it is -- in the tree, of course.

I check gas availability the next morning before heading to Aaron’s. An H-E-B not too far away shows to have some, and when we arrive, they do, but regular only, Not a problem. The pumps all have cars at them, but one car leaves just as we drive up, and we don't have to wait..

We’ve planned a trip to Inner Space Cavern for Sunday morning. Aaron’s never been there, but we had visited on a previous trip to see Michelle before Aaron moved to Austin. The unique feature of this cave is that it runs under the interstate, and you can sometimes hear trucks rumbling overhead.

The tour of the cave takes about an hour, and our guide this time is a young man who I believe is a local college student. He’s pretty entertaining, and we have a fairly small group, so it’s a pleasant tour. Now I have way too many pictures of one cave.

Look at this formation from the right angles, and it looks

like a human.

Underground pool of water.

Our guide has said something funny, judging from the

expression  on the kid's face.

We grab breakfast out Monday morning and visit with Aaron until after lunch. Most of the trip home will be off  the interstate -- one back road to Temple, another to Waco. At the intersection of the road we took and I-35 just north of Temple, we can see that traffic is backed up for quite a way on the interstate, so the choice was a good one.

We do stop off at Buc-ee’s, where the lots and the gas pumps are nearly full. We know it’s a giant concrete blot on the landscape, but they can push hundreds of people through the store at an amazing pace while maintaining clean bathrooms. We’re supposed to hate it, but …

By taking the backroads we should only add a bit of time compared with the trip down, but given that we miss a major traffic jam, we’ll arrive home sooner than if we stayed on I-35, and the whole trip feels more relaxed.

We haven't spent this much time traveling in a car in a long time. Our journeys will add up to a bit more than 1,900 miles, which in the old days would have been a mere hop, skip and jump taking no more than two days. Ah, the good, old days.

Even though we saw a lot of flat land -- you know, that “plains” thing -- we've seen and experienced places we've never been and things we've never seen, making this, for us, another great vacation.

What I did on my summer vacation -- Part 2, Quilts and Dodge

Oh, Mister Dillon

Tuesday, Aug. 22

Because this is our vacation, we needed to do more than drive to Nebraska, watch the sun disappear, and drive back home. I originally planned to spend the entire day after the eclipse exploring Lincoln. It is, after all, the state capitol and the home of a branch of the U. of Nebraska, so lots of sightseeing should be available. And indeed there is.

But I had decided to cut the vacation short a day so we could be home all day Sunday and recuperate/take care of laundry. Still, Lincoln had one sight I was determined we should see -- the International Quilt Study Center and Museum. When your wife’s a country gal and a quilter, you gotta go to a quilt museum, especially if it's supposed to be the largest in the world.

Exterior of the quilt museum. The architect apparently

told whoever picked the design that it emulates the

structure of a quilt. Yeah, me too.

They have so many quilts they change the displays frequently, so whatever was on display there when we were there won’t be the display when you arrive. Assuming you go.

Two of the most fascinating exhibits focused on tapestries, clothes and other items featuring intricate stitching and quilting from the region I took to calling the “stans” -- you know, Uzbekistan, Waziristan, that part of the world -- and quilts by a Nebraska artist and quilter who produces pieces that are essentially 3-D topographical maps of parts of the state. Seriously cool stuff.

Heart sculputers done by various artists are scatterd

around Lincoln. 

One of the quilts on display.

One of the quilt blocks that depict topographical features

of Nebraska.

Google told us that most people spend about two hours at the museum, and we do. We could have spent more time there, but we were up against noon, when I had decided we needed to grab lunch and get the heck into Dodge, our next destination.

Now before you go thinking that “get the heck into” expression is just another of my sad attempts to be cute, let me tell you: That is the official tourist motto for Dodge right now. Go look it up. I’ll wait.

Somehow the route our various devices outline for leaving Lincoln don’t manage to take us by anyplace to eat. We wind up driving to York, the home of the hot-air balloon water tower, to find a fast food place and pick up the highway that will return us to Kansas. Travel note: If you are on the AT&T network, you may not have cell service in York. The coverage map I looked says you will, but I didn't. I don’t know what network covers York, though.

Did I mention the Great Plains are aptly named? The trip southwest to Dodge made the areas we’d been through til now look positively lush and hilly. And as an extra benefit, the GPS signal starts fading in and out the farther we travel into Kansas, almost always disappearing when we really needed guidance about turns, which were not always clearly marked with signs. Fortunately, Sharon wanted to buy an atlas before we left so she would be able to figure out where we were without looking at a device. Sometimes the old ways come in handy.

Shortly after we turn onto the highway leading west to Dodge, we encounter a feature we’ll discover is a source of pride for some of the residents of the city -- wind turbines. Not such a big deal to those of us who live on the edge of West Texas and travel through the area frequently. But we hear references to the wind turbines outside Dodge more than once the day we toured the town.

When you drive from Fort Worth to Lubbock on U.S. 84, you will pass hundreds of wind turbines, but most of them are set well off the roadway. On the road leading to Dodge, the turbines line both sides of the road, and they’re not that far away. This goes on for almost 30 miles.

As we near Dodge, the GPS signal returns, but the TomTom takes us on a route that loops around the north side of town. I’m pretty sure we could have taken a shorter route, but I usually get in trouble when I ignore the directions and decide to strike out on my own, so ...

Our motel lies in a lesser developed part of the west side that is rapidly becoming motel row. It's pretty new and is the nicest of the ones we stay in on the trip. The parking lot is full when we arrive, and it turns out that a bunch of FEMA guys (and as best as I can tell, they are all guys) are crammed into a small meeting room. They’ll be there when we head to the room for the night after supper, about 8:30, I think. And they’ll be at it again when we come down for breakfast in the morning 11 and a half hours later.

Wednesday, Aug. 23

Today is devoted to exploring the city, or at least the touristy version of the city. Dodge is, of course, a legendary part of the Old West, the place where Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson helped enforce the law and the setting for the long-running TV show “Gunsmoke.”

Despite the long drive around the north side of town, the drive to the center of Dodge only takes a few minutes down the main east-west street, Wyatt Earp Boulevard. They also have a Gunsmoke Street. Not that they're tourist minded at all.

School is in session, so when we pull into the parking lot in front of Boot Hill Museum, we have our choice of spots. A small street separates that lot from the one next to the tourist information center, which is also basically empty. A locomotive engine and the old railway depot, which like many of the attractions has been moved from its original location, are located near the visitor center just off Wyatt Earp Boulevard.

Me and Matt Dillon outside the visitor center.

A couple of women staff the visitor center and greet us warmly when we arrive. We want to take a one-hour tour the city runs, and you purchase tickets at the center. We’re a bit early and have to wait for the bus decked out as a trolley, so we fall into conversation with the woman staffing the reception desk.

All I need to ask to crank her up is, “What's the dumbest question you’ve been asked.” I follow that with the standard, “Understanding, of course, that there are no stupid questions.” She laughs and kids a moment about that and goes on to tell us the most common questions, adding that I can decide the dumbness of for myself.

Visitors to Dodge don’t seem to know where the OK Corral is, she says, and one man was so upset he didn’t see the corral on the tour that he took the tour-bus driver to task, telling the driver that he specifically took the tour to see the corral. The driver told him the bus didn’t go that far west.

Tourists also ask all kinds of questions about the characters from “Gunsmoke,” apparently not understanding that the characters were fictional and not based on any specific actual human. Where is Matt Dillon buried? Where is Matt and Kitty’s house? That sort of thing. At the end of our day, one of the folks who was entering the Boot Hill Museum asked us about the place and then wanted to know if Doc’s office or Marshall Dillon’s office were part of the museum.

Rather than try to explain that the museum depicted Dodge from the late 1800s not the sets from the TV show, I explain that the office of the last U.S. marshal to serve in Dodge, which he decorated to look like the TV show’s office, was there, and a doctor’s office was also part of the museum. That seemed to make him happy.

After our entertaining visit, we still have a bit of time to wait before the tour starts, so we wander about for a while. A life-sized statue of James Arness stands in a grassy area in front of the center, and I have Sharon take a picture of me standing next to it. I look small next to it. Another statue situated on Wyatt Earp Boulevard in front of the old railway depot depicts Doc Holliday sitting at a poker table, reaching for his revolver. Chairs form part of the sculpture, so you can re-enact a card game gone wrong if you want. Other statues are scattered about town, but the only other one we seek out is Wyatt Earp’s.

Sharon tried to talk Doc out of reaching for his gun.

We wound up with six or eight people on the bus for the tour. The driver was quite the card, but he didn’t do the main narration during the tour. Instead a recording by the city’s special U.S. marshal plays over a PA system. We also have a brochure with the complete text so we don’t have to remember all that information. The marshal has trouble with the pronunciation of a couple of the words, though, which makes the whole thing more interesting -- what will he mispronounce next? 

Statue of Wyatt Earp -- larger than life. He never 

used the revolver depicted while in Dodge, and

the barrel is much longer than the long-barreled

revolver he actually did use.

Dodge was and is a cattle town. After looking at the various historic buildings -- the city's first denominational church building, the whiskey distillery, etc., -- and hearing the history of the town, we ride by the feed yards filled with thousands of cows. That’s a lot of … oh, you know.

We drive by Old Fort Dodge, which has been converted to a veterans home and only has a few buildings open to the public, so we decide we won’t try to return later in the day.

Most of the rest of our day will be spent at Boot Hill Museum. Boot Hill was the highest spot in town, and still pretty much is, though the distillery dominates the view now. Boot Hill comes by its name honestly. Some 60-odd people -- the numbers vary according to the source -- mostly cowboys, were buried there before the town built a new cemetery and moved all the bodies they could identify. 

The cow punchers would often be buried with their boots on, and because they were usually buried by other cowboys who really didn’t care to put that much effort into digging a deep final resting place. That meant the departed’s boot toes often stuck out of the ground.

Depiction on Boot Hill of the shallow graves typically dug

by cowboys when burying the dead.

Part of the cemetery has been recreated in its original location. The first occupant’s grave is marked, along with a number of graves of decedents whose demises had been recorded in newspapers of the day, and the grave of the woman who was the last person to be buried there. Many of their epitaphs are recreated as well, some quite amusing.

Boot Hill was deeded to the school district after the new cemetery was built and the inhabitants had been moved. Our tour driver told us that children playing in the area would sometimes find bones, which leads to the confusion over the number of people buried there. Whether the bones were human or animal wasn’t always determined, he said.

Recreation of Lizzie Palmer's grave. Palmer was the last

person buried in Boot Hill.

Explainer about Palmer's death.

The rest of the museum is a recreation of the original business district of Dodge. The original buildings burned down in the late 1800s, were rebuilt, burned down again, and rebuilt once more as brick buildings. Boot Hill museum lies three blocks west of the the original site. Each of the buildings was built to match period photos and is decorated with period furnishings. The Long Branch saloon, possibly the only part of Dodge that appears in “Gunsmoke” that was real, is manned by a bartender and a piano player, both wearing period garb, and you can order a modern brand of beer or soft drink, including sarsparilla, which, if it's the same stuff they’ll sell you in the museum store, consists of water, sugar and artificial everything else. 

Recreation of the original main street of Dodge.

We spend the greater part of the day looking at the displays and eat a late lunch in the recreated restaurant. The food, of course, does not reflect the period, unless paninis were a feature of Old West cuisine. They served sandwiches, which were good, and modern soft drinks.

This is where the buildings above were located before

burning down twice.

One of the outdoor exhibits consists of two hand-operated water pumps. The water dumps onto a couple of wooden sluices, and we notice that a small, rubber duck lies at the end of each sluice. We quickly deduce that visitors are supposed to race each other by placing a duck at the top of the sluice and pumping water furiously. First to the end wins. I have an Obama moment and win my races -- twice.

In addition to the recreated businesses, the museum grounds contain some historical structures that have been moved from their original sites. A jail sits at the entrance to the cemetery, and a one-room schoolhouse, a blacksmith shop, and the former home of one of Dodge’s prominent early families are sited at the end of the business section.

After we leave the museum, we trek a couple of blocks to see a statue of Wyatt Earp. The statue presents an idealized -- and historically inaccurate -- view of the famous lawman, who actually was a deputy sheriff, as was Bat Masterson initially, Both of them worked for Charlie Bassett. Watch enough Westerns and Bassett’s name will eventually come up. Too bad he never became the feature of a TV show.

The town also has a Trail of Fame, large circular medallions embedded in the sidewalks commemorating former residents of Dodge such as Earp, Masterson, Bassett, the “soiled dove” Big Nose Kate, and many of the actors from the “Gunsmoke” and “Bat Masterson” TV series. We don’t take the time to track them all down, but we saw many of them in front of businesses along Wyatt Earp Boulevard.

This is Earp's Walk of Fame medallion. I should have

taken a shot of the one for "Big Nose Kate," one of the

town's famed and favorite "soiled doves.

The museum usually features gunfights throughout the day, but once school starts, they scale back to one a day at 7 in the evening. After buzzing by Walmart to pick up some fruit to eat, chilling out for a bit and eating supper, we head back to the museum for the gunfight -- our tickets are good for day of the purchase and the next day.

The bad guys.

The good guy.

I’m used to gunfight recreations. They tend to feature a quickly developing conflict that will be resolved in a volley of gunfire. Loud and quick. In Dodge, one of the characters comes out about 10 minutes before the show to warm up the crowd, albeit with a bunch of groaner jokes. 

The show will last almost 20 minutes and feature bad jokes, worse acting and muffed lines. They even found a way to drag out the showdown. At half the length, it would have been better. Kinda like the adage that there’s no such thing as a bad short sermon.

After the show, the lead offers cast photos for $1 each, and the cast make themselves available to sign autographs. We buy a picture as a memento but forego the autographs. It’d be like getting autographs from the people who live three blocks over -- we don’t know them, will probably never see them again, and none of them are likely to be famous.

Back to the motel to relax and rest up for the next day’s long journey to Lubbock.

What I did on summer vacation -- Part 1, There goes the sun

Here comes the sun 

We've long been fascinated by astronomy. Sharon being a former science teacher may have something to do with that.

We own a small telescope, binoculars suitable for viewing the moon and finding comets, and H.A Rey’s book that teaches kids and adults about the constellations. We stopped off at the Very Large Array in New Mexico on our way back from a trip to the Grand Canyon. 

We traveled to the countryside outside Abilene to find clear skies so we could see Halley’s comet, and I was able to capture photos of the once in a lifetime passing. I've way too many pictures of lunar eclipses, including those involving so-called super moons. We’ve even sought dark skies so we can watch the International Space Station pass overhead. 

So when we heard about the total eclipse for this year, we began talking about how cool it would be to see it. Discover magazine advertised tours that included eclipse viewings, but I procrastinated in looking up the information about them. 

When I finally checked, I discovered the tours were fairly expensive -- the cost would have been comparable to our Ireland trip. And I'd missed the initial deadline for signing up. But some openings were still available. 

We discussed it and decided to try to plot our own trip. We figured it would be hard to find hotel rooms, but I dove into the internet to find the nearest sites with open accommodations. 

Missouri and Nebraska seemed to be the closest, and I discovered that Homestead National Monument was a host site and would have personnel from NASA and Bill Nye on site. Beatrice was the nearest town to the park, and its eclipse site indicated that obtaining a hotel room was an iffy proposition. 

But Lincoln is close by, about 40 miles, and the hotels had available rooms -- at a premium, of course. I immediately nailed down two nights at the least expensive over-priced room. The rest of the plan would be formed later. As long as we’re going that far, we might as well see some other attractions. 

Saturday -- Sunday (Aug. 19-20) 

We're on our way to Wichita, Kansas. I'd looked at the map and decided that Wichita was about halfway to Lincoln, and that each day's drive would wind up being about the distance from home to Lubbock -- a drive we make a couple of times a year. I was wrong.

Wichita turned out to be more than half the distance, and added to a mistake I made at the outset, we wound up being on the road a couple of hours longer than I anticipated.

What mistake, you may ask? Let's just say that I forgot that when dealing with DFW traffic, Google maps may be a handy resource but not for soothsaying -- a traffic accident can seriously extend your day.

Our route took us straight up I-35. We've only traveled that way as far as Oklahoma City before, and we quickly learned why this part of the country is known as The Great Plains -- heavy emphasis on plain. Pretty much the only thing that broke the long, straight, fairly flat expanse of highway was the occasional construction zone. Seems as though no matter where you are on I-35, you run into construction. 

Sharon brought along a small quilt to work on and her iPod, which has much more music on it than mine. We bluetoothed the ‘Pod into the car stereo and drove until we needed food or a break, then drove some more until we reached Wichita. 

We didn't really do much there except have supper and sleep. We did visit a Walmart, using Google maps to direct us to the store. Strangely, the route put us right in front of the store, with entrances to the lot, but the voice kept trying to convince me to drive past the store to the next cross street, then turn right and come into the lot from the entrance off the cross street. Go figure. 

The next morning we saddle up and head out again. The drive to Lincoln will be shorter by almost a hundred miles, which should make for a much easier travel day. 

But we’ve been seeing highway signs -- you know those lighted signs that alert you to accidents and Amber Alerts -- that suggest we could run into an unusual amount of traffic because of eclipse traffic.

It’s Sunday, and we’re traveling through low population states, so eclipse or no eclipse, I’m not expecting much until we reach I-80, and I’m right. Unless, of course, what we saw was unusual traffic. Even after we merge onto I-80, the traffic doesn't seem to be that bad. A lot of semis, but the average Sunday in DFW is worse.

We encounter a couple of unexpected sights along the way. First, in Concordia, Kansas, where we’ll stop for lunch, we spy what appears to be an enormous church atop the highest rise in the town. We eventually spot a sign that says it’s the “Motherhouse” for the Sisters of St. Joseph, a convent that has a significant history with the Orphan Train, for which the town also houses a museum. 

I knew nothing about the Orphan Train, the term applied to a time in U.S. history when orphan and displaced children were sent west from the East, many if not most, from New York, to work mostly on farms. 

We didn’t take time to visit the museum, so I googled it. It’s a fascinating story; you should look it up. 

The Motherhouse

Entryway closeup. I walked a short way onto the
grounds, even though a sign told me I wasn't allowed to.

These statues are of two girls who came to the area as
part of the Orphan Train, but their families decided they
couldn't support them. The sisters at the Motherhouse
took them in, and they eventually joined the order. 

Next, as we drove into York, Nebraska, we thought we saw a hot-air balloon floating above the town. Turned out it was the town's water tower painted to look like a balloon. It’s the town’s second water tower and was supposed to be painted the same color as the old one. But some residents thought it should be painted with more flair. Now, if you’re traveling east headed for Lincoln, you know you’re an hour away when you see the tower. 

We relied on a TomTom GPS to guide us to our hotel. Not sure of that was a mistake compared with using Google maps, but we took a scenic tour of Lincoln before arrival. Our hotel was situated across from a giant Walmart Supercenter (I know that sounds redundant, but its size communicates “supercenter” better than the ones we have at home.) Immediately in front of the hotel is a large but well maintained empty lot that’s part of a commercial area under development. 

A restaurant located on the strip will be having its own watch party, and for a short while, I discuss the merits of staying put and being able to walk out the front door to an ideal viewing point. In the end, we decide to stick with Beatrice. (BTW, for the uninitiated like me, it's pronounced bee-AT-tris.) 

Monday, Aug. 21. 

This is it. The “Big Day.” We’re up early but are already too late to find a seat in the hotel’s breakfast area. The place buzzes of talk about, well, you know. 

After a nice breakfast we pack up the stuff we’ll need for the day, program the national monument into the GPS and head out. I try to tune in a radio station that's supposed to be providing information on the situation in Beatrice, but it's a low-power station, and we'll have to drive about halfway there before being able to pick it up. 

When we do, the various reporters stationed around town indicate that the traffic is steady and flowing smoothly. Good news. The amount of traffic steadily increases the closer we come to town, but it's never as bad as a morning commute in Fort Worth. People are already staking out spots in the motel parking lots and along various grassy rights-of-way. 

We’re headed for the fairgrounds, where the city says plenty of parking will be available, along with shuttle buses to take us to the monument. Lots of people are already in line, but it seems to be moving well. There are gaps in the bus arrivals, though -- fairly long gaps actually. The line forms a long “U” shape when we arrive, and though the line moves fairly quickly when we join it, we stall out at the top of the curve because of one of those arrival gaps. 

Eventually, buses start appearing again. By the time the bus we boarded leaves, the line has become a long “S” shape. 

The line with us stalled at the top.

The monument is located about 4 miles from town, and as we drive along, we pass a goodly number of folks who’ve decided to just hoof it out to the park. They may well have chosen the best travel method when it comes time to leave the park. Hoofing it back will definitely take less time. 

We arrive at the park around 9:30, and it's already packed. An area has been set aside for telescopes; tents for displays and vendors have been set up; a couple of hundred port-a-potties line some of the walkways; and a stage has been erected with I don’t now how many folding chairs placed in a semicircle facing it. 

We wander about and finally stake out a place clear of the trees and near the stage, though we can’t see much of what’s going on up there. 

Clouds build and thin as the morning progresses. One of the park rangers announces that we will be rained on, but the storms should pass quickly. The big hope is that heavy clouds won’t stick around and ruin the event, but that hope often seems dim. In fact, rain falls on us twice, the second time heavily enough for us to dig our ponchos out of our backpacks and hope it passes without turning the park into a quagmire. 

Sometimes threatening weather can be pretty.

Much of the early involvement on stage is given over to a band dedicated to leading children's songs and promoting a PBS program called Ready, Jet, Go, starring a character named Jet Propulsion. 

Jet Propulsion

Someone in an outfit similar to a mascot’s costume -- complete with a big, rubber head -- makes a couple of appearances that cause a modicum of stir among the crowd. But the real celebrity is Bill Nye aka The Science Guy.

Shortly before the time for the eclipse to begin, a big stir crops up on the sidewalk to our right. People begin murmuring, and a large group of folks begins trooping by. Turns out to be at least a hundred Nye fans who crowd about the stage, followed by others who’ve figured out what’s going on and have pressed forward for a better view. 

Nye participates in a panel discussion about the eclipse and helps lead a countdown to a start that is unfortunately obscured by clouds. As he talks, though, the clouds begin to thin, and Nye grabs his eclipse glasses and rushes to the front of the stage in hopes of seeing the eclipse, to no avail. 

Shortly after he left the stage,  the clouds did thin out enough to reveal the beginning stage of the eclipse. People around us begin shouting, “There it is! There it is!” We all grab our glasses and gaze skyward to the sound of cheers and applause, a process that will be repeated each time the clouds clear. 

At some point, a weather balloon is launched that carries a camera broadcasting a video signal. A large screen set up on the far side of the stage displays the images, but we can’t see much because of the position of the stage and the crowd in front of us. Would loved to have seen the feed once it cleared the clouds and beamed back pictures of the sun. 

Nye returns to the stage several minutes before totality -- retinue duly in tow -- and again leads a countdown. The clouds play with us, clearing just before totality and teasing us with the possibility of seeing Bailey’s beads, especially the part of the effect known as the diamond ring. If that was visible before the clouds cover the sun again, I missed it. 

But when totality comes, it's like someone's flipped an off switch on a room light. We don’t have long to wait to actually see totality, though. The clouds thin sufficiently, and the cheering breaks out again. Cameras are pointed skyward; Nye enthuses on stage; and we experience two of the phenomena associated with this kind of cloudy eclipse show: a 360 degree “sunset” and prisming around the corona. 

The clouds will thicken and thin throughout the two and half or so minutes of totality, again eliciting cheers from the crowd at each clearance. With a warning from the NASA moderator, we put our glasses on to see the end of totality, which the clouds most kindly decide not to obscure. 

As soon as the merest sliver appears, the switch is flipped again. The contrast is startling. At this point Sharon and I agree the experience has absolutely been worth the long drives. 

You’ll hear people talk about what a great spiritual experience viewing a totality is, how profoundly they are affected -- some even calling it life changing. I can’t say I felt that, but it did rise to the level of awesome that word is meant to convey, ranking up there for me with seeing the Grand Canyon, the glaciers in Alaska, the vastness of the Outback, that view of Halley’s Comet. I’m a sucker for grandeur, I guess. 

Almost there. 

What we came for. Click the photo for a larger version.
You should be able to see the prism effect.

Most attendees began packing up and heading for the exits as soon as totality ended. We knew that was a sucker’s bet, so we decided to wander about and look in the exhibition tents. We have our picture taken as we stand by a sign advertising the event, and keep gazing up each time the clouds thin to catch the moon’s progress in unveiling the sun, catching a view of the last tiny bite before the two separated to go their own ways. 

Eventually we wound up in a line to catch a shuttle that turned out to not be an "official" line. We’ll spend a couple of hours waiting to board, having the opportunity to watch some folks make asses of themselves. It's a long story that I’ll not recount here. Suffice to say we made it back to the car and headed back to Lincoln. 

Sharon had seen hand-written signs advertising T-shirts on our way to the fairgrounds, but I hadn’t decided I wanted one. Now, on our way out, I decide I would like one if it mentioned Beatrice. So she starts scanning for the signs. When she spots one, she also notices that we’re on the street the shop is located on. 

We don’t have to travel far before we understand that the shop is on the other side of town. At least it's a straight shot. The shop is located in a small strip mall, and when we enter the parking lot, no other cars are in sight. I’m afraid the shop is closed and drive up close to the door so Sharon can check the hours. 

They’re still open, and should be for another 5 minutes. Sharon jumps out and goes in while I park. A couple of nice, young women are obviously trying to prepare for closing, but one of them is also helping Sharon when I walk in. They have a limited number of shirts in my size and only one choice of color, but I’m happy with the choice. 

While we’re checking out, more customers arrive and come in the shop. When we leave, a couple of other cars pull into the lot. Hope the women didn't have to stay too much longer. 

The drive back to Lincoln was quite pleasant as most of the traffic had cleared by the time we left the town. We returned to our motel delighted with our choice of viewing areas and the day we’d spent.