Back in 2017 I made a road trip with Alpha to view an eclipse as it passed over Illinois. (We got tangled in traffic before we reached the path of totality, but it was a good trip overall.)
When we got home I started planning our next eclipse trip, so that pesky traffic wouldn’t prevent me from seeing totality. Enter the six-year plan leading up to the latest eclipse in 2024, with the path of totality passing over Niagara Falls.
NASA’s map of the eclipse’s path
We arrived a couple of days before the eclipse, and left the day after. Traffic would not be a problem this time. We had hotel rooms, cameras, snacks, and chairs.
The one thing you can’t control is the weather. It was cloudy.
Most of the path of totality was cloudy, as a matter of fact. A relatively short swath from Vermont to the Atlantic was mostly clear, but the rest of the path had varying levels of poor weather, including some nasty storms.
We eked by with a mostly cloudy experience, which had a pleasant side-effect: filtering wasn’t required for most of the time.
The one artificially filtered picture I took. The rest were filtered by the cloud deck.During peak totality the sun and moon were completely obscured by clouds, so I took a few photos of the landscapeThe clouds thinned out just enough during totality for me to catch a glimpse of what appears to be the corona, just before the moon slid out of the way. It could also just be glow from terrestrial clouds.As totality came to an end, we could momentarily see the border between darkness and light over the Canadian side of NiagaraThe clouds add some drama to the scene as the sun slides out from behind the moon againA few minutes post-totality, the moon’s shadow leaves a Cheshire-cat-like visage
Young Cinderella was getting ready for her best friend’s wedding. Snow White was getting married to her prince, and asked Cinderella to be her maid of honor.
As Cinderella was readying herself for the big event, her Fairy Godmother appeared. She read all of the tabloids and knew everything about the best man, Prince Charming.
“Cinderella, darling, I have something for you. It’s a magic IUD to help with any, uh, delicate conditions.
“But you have to promise me that you’ll be back by midnight, for it will turn into a pumpkin.”
So off Cinderella goes to her best friend’s wedding, safe with the gifts and blessings from her fairy godmother.
But then midnight comes and goes without sign of Cinderella.
Just after dawn a very disheveled, but very happy, Cinderella comes wandering up the lane.
“What happened to you?!” demanded her fairy godmother. “You were supposed to be back hours ago! What happened to your IUD?”
“It’s fine, it’s taken care of.”
“Prince Charming doesn’t have that kind of power!”
“Oh, it wasn’t him,” Cinderella said, with stars in her eyes. “It was Peter, Peter, something or other.”
Baba, aka my mother-in-law, invited beta child on a lightning trip to Montreal as a Christmas present. Three days, two nights. I was invited to attend as well.*
Baba had two requirements. One was seeing the Notre-Dame Basilica. The other was eating in a French restaurant. Beta’s sole requirement: shopping. (I had no additional requirements besides going on a road trip. I love road trips for themselves, so anything else is gravy.)
So off we go for a 300-mile drive.
Beta child’s view from the backseat as we cruised through Vermont
There’s an interesting bit of geography: the border between Vermont and Canada coincides with a geographical border between mountains and plains. Shortly after crossing the border we were struck by the immediate change from hills and trees to flat plains and farms. A few hills, including Montreal, stick up from the ground in anomalous fashion.
Montreal in January is not a popular tourist choice. It’s cold. Being from New England, we’re used to cold, but Montreal is still pretty cold.
Montreal is like NYC and Boston had a baby city. Medium-sized office buildings. One-way streets in a grid pattern with lots of potholes. Mostly clean, but homeless people scattered around. Not many people on the streets in the middle of night, but still 24-hour businesses. Mostly new, but a mid-16th-century section.
We found a French restaurant for dinner on our first night: Modavie. Baba ordered an appetizer called “Normandy Sweetbreads”, but she didn’t know that sweetbreads are actually organ meat. Not knowing what it was, she thought it was delicious. She had second thoughts the next day, however, when she found out they were probably made with a calf’s pancreas. We also had charcuterie (Beta) and salad (me). Entrees were seafood pasta (Beta), salmon filet (me), and Filet Mignon (Baba). The food was excellent.
The next morning was crisp and cold. Our first stop: the bus stop. I had procured some 24-hour bus passes (unlimited rides for 24 hours) so we could get around town and have a cheap bus tour of the city. It seemed wiser, as well as more environmentally responsible, than pulling the car in and out of the small parking garage by the hotel for each trip. Waiting for the bus was a cold experience, however. Beta child under-dressed for the occasion despite my warnings, and was visibly cold.
Standing at the bus stop by our hotel. We didn’t visit the Ferris wheel on this trip – too cold.
The Basilica was worth the cold.
The Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal. The pulpit is to the left. Stained glass windows and paintings adorn the outer walls.
After a quick lunch at a bakery near the Basilica, and a pit-stop back at the hotel for Beta to change into warmer clothes, we paid a visit to The Underground City. Baba took a breather in a food court near our entry point, while Beta and I took off to see the malls.
After the mall we killed the remaining hour of daylight by riding the bus home from one end of the line to the other. We went through neighborhoods we never would have seen otherwise. The driver’s confusion when we didn’t immediately disembark at the end of the line was palpable. “Where are you going?”
We ended the day with takeout dinner from a restaurant next to the hotel called “The Pastaman”, and talking about life for a couple of hours.
Coming home was uneventful, except the border crossing. The guard asked us some off-the-wall questions, like “where have you been? – not just today.” “Why did you go to Jordan?” I think they try to ask unexpected questions to throw people off balance a little and shake loose anyone who may be concealing something. I’ve only been out of the country a couple of times, but it happened each time.
* After some indecision on how to get there, because the train required 24 hours each way (due to an overnight stop in NYC) and neither wanting to drive a car for that long, I suggested that I could drive them. They readily accepted my offer. I very much appreciated the chance to join the trip, and I had a great time!
1-5 cookie sheets the more cookie sheets you have, the faster you can swap macaroons into the over
1 ice cream scoop optional, should be around 1 tablespoon in size
aluminum foil
cooling racks
1 small sauce pan
Ingredients
21ozflaked coconut(3 packages, around 7 2/3 cups)
1cupall purpose flour
1/2tspsalt
14ozsweetened condensed milk(1 can)
2/3cupcream of coconutNOT coconut milk
1tbspvanilla
1/4tspalmond extract
1egglarge
6ozsemi-sweet chocolate chips(1 bag)
1tbspvegetable oil
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350
Line cookie sheet(s) with aluminum foil, and sprinkle 1 cup of the coconut flakes over the pan.Bake for 2-7 minutes, take out as soon as it's golden.Cool the toasted coconut.Reserve the foil for later.
Mix toasted coconut, flour, and salt in large bowl.
Beat milk, cream of coconut, vanilla, almond extract, and egg in a medium bowl, then pour it over the dry ingredients and stir.
Drop batter onto foil-lined cookie sheets by heaping tablespoons.
Bake 12-14 minutes, or until golden. Move macaroons, still on their foil sheet, to a cooling rack.Repeat until all dough is cooked.
Allow all macaroons to cool for at least 30 minutes.
Melt chocolate chips and oil in a small sauce pan over low heat. Stir constantly until melted.
Drizzle chocolate over cookies. Allow to cool until it sets, about 30 minutes.
I thought the street lamp was a nuisance, casting too much glow on everything else, until I realized that it was backlighting the playscape and trees in a peculiar, almost spooky wayAfter playing with the light levels of the raw photo, I got a much more dramatic image.
So, we have this bay window right? And its big, and pretty, and has a decent amount of room for a display in it. That decent amount of room is usually covered in all kinds of detritus of the house. It leaks cold air like a sieve. You can feel it flowing over your hand like a liquid if you put your hands on the bottom.
Not today. Not any longer. I did a thing. I took everything out of it. The Terrarium. The random horse statue. The weirdly healthy african violet. All re-homed (some of it needs to be permanently re-homed, but I’ll get there).
Once I had it clear, I cut several pieces of 3/4 inch foam insulation to fit in it and covered the shelf.
Then I had to trim it to make it look pretty.
Once it was (almost) completely covered, I hit my stash. A couple years ago I made a quilted circle skirt. I had a fair amount of the cotton batting left over that I should have thrown out years ago. I used that to cover the foam insulation and make it look like snow. Its cotton with no glitter in it so we don’t have to worry about microplastics. I used scraps to fill in the gaps that I couldn’t get into with the foam core.
My ability to throw things out has taken a huge hit, but hey. It looks amazing.
Once it was covered, I broke out the lasercut village display Michele gave us years ago. It is really pretty and I love it. I hung two strings of LED lights around it, and added our window candles. It looks so cheery and light!
I sent pictures to Michele. Hopefully she likes them.
I can’t feel cold air pouring out of the windows anymore, so hopefully that is all set, too. It would be nice to not have to plastic the window this year.
Megh and I recently celebrated our anniversary (22 years!), and we took the train to White River Junction, Vermont, for an overnight to celebrate.
On the train to Vermont
The weather started clear and warm, and we ate dinner outside.
The town holds an annual parade for Halloween called “Gory Daze.” It started at 9 pm and featured a few hundred young adults in costumes and small marching band. We didn’t know about it until we saw the participants gathering in front of the local museum. It’s a hoot!
The next morning was cold, cloudy, and (eventually) rainy. We walked around a bit to check out the town.
The Connecticut River from White River Junction
We started by heading across the river to a breakfast place in New Hampshire, then came back to do a little shopping. About the only thing open on a Sunday morning was the local co-op grocery store. We picked up some maple donuts and oatmeal cookies for the train ride home, and some local syrup for Meghan to give to her coworkers.
