Texas Trip Part II: The Eclipse! And More!
After another long drive through Oklahoma, and a late night getting in, we finally made it to Fort Worth. Fort Worth is where Leland's brother Alexander was living while finishing his residency. So we stayed in Fort Worth for a couple of nights before the Eclipse. We got there on General Conference Saturday, so we watched the sessions at Uncle Alexander's house. He had a giant projector screen so that was fun, and he even made us our traditional conference-saturday-cinnamon-roll breakfast.
You will probably be disappointed to hear that we didn't actually go to downtown Fort Worth, and we went to none of the beautiful or amazing things that I'm sure the city has. It was just SO hard to find parking for the RV and we had been driving so much, and there were a lot of crowds around because of the eclipse, so we just stayed at Alexander's house and enjoyed the city from a distance.
We did go to a park down the street from his house during one of the sessions of conference when the kids were getting extremely restless. We sat on a bench and listened while the kids played.
These ominous clouds had us all hoping and praying for clear skies on Monday for the eclipse.
Moses's curls loved the humidity! I couldn't stop taking pictures of it.
Moses asleep in the RV as we drove back to our RV park one night. (We stayed at the Fort Worth KOA these two nights.)
In the weeks leading up to the eclipse there was so much panic and predicted mayhem surrounding the eclipse. There will be traffic for hours! Cars will be lined up on the highway, stuck and out of gas because the gas stations are going to run out of gas! Cities are going to be overwhelmed! Stores are going to run out of food! Stay home! Don't travel for the eclipse you selfish people!!!!!
Well when I brought these concerns up to Leland he said "Um, do these people know how big Texas is?" He was not concerned and so neither was I. We did pack up the RV with lots of extra food and supplies just in case we were stranded on the highway for days, but of course, like most of these things. NONE of it came to pass. We left Fort Worth Sunday morning and made the four hour drive to Fredericksburg, where we were going to be watching the eclipse, with no traffic and normal conditions everywhere.
We did have an impossible time finding an RV park to stay in for the night of the eclipse in Fredericksburg. In the end we ended up just parking it in front of Leland's Grandma's house and sleeping in it there, without any power or a/c and it was a little bit hot but totally fine.
Anyways, the kids were very excited to go see Granny and Great-Granny. Esther had remembered that Great-Granny had chickens, and wasted no time in befriending them.
I'm so glad that they got to meet. Not having any grandparents left on earth myself, I think it's really cool that Leland's grandma is still alive. (Side note, but as I am writing this today, on October 12 2024, it is actually Great-Granny's 101st birthday!) She is losing her eyesight but she is still really sharp and always remembers Leland and me and our kids.
Seeing these pictures, and seeing Great-Granny so happy to see all the great-grandkids, made me think of the other seven great grandparents my kids have in heaven, and my great grandparents, and so on, and thinking of the love and sense of investment they must still have in our little family's life, and vowing to learn about them more, and remember them more, and look for them more. I could go on, but lest I wax too philosophical on this little blog, I'll stop myself there.
That evening, we took a little walk around the country lanes near Granny's house. It was nice weather and we looked at the clouds and hoped and prayed once again that the skies would be clear for the eclipse. I told myself it would be okay if it was cloudy, the trip would still be totally worthwhile. I told myself that but I really really wanted to see it haha.
The next day was the day we had been waiting for! We donned our eclipse shirts and glasses. Alexander and Leland's other brother Kent and his wife Shelby arrived. We had breakfast and waited around and pretty soon the eclipse was starting.
In the beginning we were blessed with sporadic clouds, and we got to see the sun slowly shrink away, with a bigger and a bigger bite out of it as it did. It still wasn't quite sunny enough to see the cresent shadows like we did for the last eclipse in 2017, so I was a little disappointed by that.
As totality approached it got cloudier and cloudier. We could see the sun at times as it peeked out but not as much.
Right at totality the sun was covered by clouds. It started to get dark really slowly, almost so slowly that you couldn't notice. Then it got pretty dark, the way it looks at dusk right after the sun goes down. The street lights came on and everyone got quiet, except for the kids that were running around and chasing each other. The chickens did not go to bed as we expected them too.
We got one tiny small break in the clouds where we saw the ring of fire. It was a very split second but I was grateful that we were able to see that. We were right in the center of totality, so we enjoyed the feeling of darkness for about 4 and a half minutes.
Then faster than we were ready for, it started to get light again. For the rest of the eclipse there was thick cloud cover and we didn't get to see anymore.
I was a little bit disappointed that we didn't get the full eclipse experience. And I was pretty jealous of the people who did. But it was cool to experience the darkness at totality. Maybe I hyped myself up too much for the eclipse experience. I was expecting a lot! But it was cool, maybe I would have been disappointed anyways, I don't know. Anyways, now we've experienced a total eclipse. I don't know if I'd go chasing them . We are ready to watch the next eclipse in August of 2044 from the comfort of our own home though.
Pictures Aunt Shelby took and sent to me.
Some scriptures that could be referring to eclipses.
After the eclipse we went to a Mexican restaurant in Fredericksburg for dinner. Eating out was on the list of things not to do during the days surrounding the eclipse, but we did it anyways and it was completely fine! We had a really big group and there wasn't even a wait!
An attempted selfie of the group. Mamacitias is probably the tastiest Mexican restaurant I've ever been too! We loved it!
That night we drove for an hour or so to another state park campsite. The kids had fun playing in the scrub oak forest next to our campsite. Utah just doesn't have amazing scrub oak like Texas does!
The next day we traveled South again for a few hours to San Antonio. San Antonio was where more of Leland's family was staying so we went and had lunch with them at their airbnb.
We tried to go visit a park in San Antonio but it was SO HOT. It was maybe 90 degrees but the humidity just made us all feel awful. We lasted 15 minutes at the park and then went to downtown San Antonio to find some water that the kids could get in.
Three cousin girls
Just a little tidbit for the record book, driving the RV in downtown San Antonio was a NIGHTMARE! It had the tiniest narrow streets that the RV could not even fit or turn down. These weren't little side streets, these were the main roadways. All of the parking was atrociously expense and didn't allow RVs anyways. Finally after stressfully driving around and narrowly escaping smashing other cars several times, we finally found this abandoned gravel lot. It didn't have any signs about not parking there so we just left it there and prayed that it wouldn't get broken into.Then we walked several blocks to where the splash pad was, near the space-needle-that-is-not-called-the-space-needle.
Texas may have a lot of flaws and terrible weather but they know how to do a splash pad right! The kids LOVED this place. It was like a big wading pool, but there were several of them with lots of tables and chairs and shade surrounding them for the parents.
Sorrel was wishing I would have brought her swim suit.
Finally taking a much needed rest.
And warily letting other people hold her.
There was a really fun playground next to the splash pad. The kids all loved this mosaic tiger thing.
But we couldn't stay long because our next RV park was about an hour away. But we had to first stop at an HEB to get some groceries. It was a two level thing where you send your cart down an escalator after you check out. The kids were amazed. We got some Texas shaped chicken nuggets to microwave in the RV for dinner. #classy The kids wanted to know why there aren't Utah shaped nuggets. "People in Texas really love everything Texas" Israel remarked. He's not wrong!
That night we stayed at a really pretty RV park The Alamo River which I'll give a shoutout too because it was decently priced and really pretty and clean. That night it poured rain like it never does in Utah. It poured and pounded our little RV for hours. I would have liked it if I wasn't slighly worried about a tree falling on us or a tornado or something. (There had been cautions of tornados on the weather that day). But we all survived the night and the next day we drove far out of our way to go strawberry picking.
My poor children have grown up on books like Blueberries for Sal and Brambly Hedge but they have never in their poor little lives ever been berry picking. So I knew I needed to remedy that. We found a strawberry farm that was open on a Wednesday and went to it.
We were the only ones there and the little lady that owned it loved telling us all about the place. How it was organic, how they recently started using these sand beds to grow, all the different varieties ( I had no idea there were so many, I guess I'm unrefined because they all look and taste the same to me), how we had 6 kids! and telling us all about everything they make out of the strawberries. Once she started telling us the same stories again we tried to back away slowly (the kids had picked us $40 worth of strawberries in about 10 minutes) and when that didn't work we bought some strawberry jam and strawberry barbecue sauce and made our escape.
Chatty woman notwithstanding, it really was a fun experience.
After that we tracked down some raw milk, since the milk we brought with us had run out, and we made another long long drive to Carlsbad, NM for the next leg of our trip!
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