Days 30-31: St. Ignatius, MT to Bellevue, ID
Apparently last night while we slept there was a fairly large grizzly taking a midnight stroll around the property (the reason for the aforementioned bear fencing), munching on apples and stomping about. We learned a bit more from our host about the area and her farm, saw more of the cob house and her work, and then had to say goodbye to all of the animals and keep up our journey for the eclipse tomorrow!
As far as our drive today goes, we were not prepared for how beautiful the drive would be—and especially unprepared for how beautiful Idaho is. Highway 93 takes you down through the Bitterroot Valley, which is dotted with historical markers about Lewis and Clark. Right around the border a sign tempts you toward a town called Wisdom (we'll have to visit next time), then the road crosses through the Bitterroot Range and into Idaho.
Highway 93 follows along with the Salmon River, winding through an unexpectedly gorgeous and untouched landscape, all the way down to Challis, where we took 75 into the Sawtooth Valley. As you get closer to the Sawtooth Mountains, there's that moment when you see their serrated peaks and smile at the name. Perhaps we just arrived on the right day at the right time, but the light is spectacular there, highlighting the valley in golds and greens. The road then leads into famed Sun Valley, but we'd be staying a bit further north to be closer to full totality.
The very nice folks at Smiley Creek sold us some very last minute (but cheap!) eclipse glasses and directed us toward Alturas Lake, a few minutes north, where the Forest Service had set up one of several eclipse viewing areas. You can see on the right where we stayed—almost at the center of the path of totality. Most of the campgrounds closer to the lake seemed pretty filled up, so we ended up setting up camp right there in the viewing area, where nothing could be in our way for the big show in the morning. And, in the end, there weren't many people in the viewing area, so it ended up being pretty perfect.
When we woke up, there were a few more cars pulling in, but none blocking our view. We set up our chairs and got our glasses ready. We weren't watching the clock too closely, but we noticed suddenly a large group of little birds flying circles around the area, a little cyclone of tweeting that suddenly stopped, just as a fellow viewer shouted, "IT'S STARTING!" He proceeded to narrate the entire eclipse (probably more for the benefit of his family), which was mostly entertaining.
As we drew closer to totality, things got really weird, basically following everything we'd read: the sky grew darker, the temperature dropped, everything grew very still, and then it happened. All of the children around the viewing area let out little screams of confused delight, and there was a palpable giddiness throughout the crowd.
We could see what appeared to be solar flares and some planets. We even tore our eyes away from the eclipse for a minute to see the 360-degree sunset effect on the horizon, which was as beautiful as it was disorienting (you can see that in the photos above). After sitting in the blazing sun all morning, being in that cool, dim light was beyond soothing.
And then, before we were really ready, totality ended with a brilliant flash (the diamond ring effect). You can see the flash in the iPhone time lapse on the right, just as the light gets brighter.
As things wound down, we finished packing up our campsite and said goodbye to the people around us, and headed down toward Bellevue, where we had a room booked for the night. In theory, this was perfect—we wouldn't have to drive very far in eclipse-related traffic. Except for one thing... we forgot a bag at the campground. And we didn't discover it until we were about an hour and a half south. So we drove back, just as a police officer was getting ready to take it in to the station. Grateful that we didn't have to track it down, we headed back down to Bellevue and settled in for the evening. We picked up some pizza from South Valley Pizzeria, which was surprisingly delicious.