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The bookstore is where we started our Louise Penny adventure. They and others in the village sponsor the event. This bookstore represents the bookstore she writes about in her fictional town of Three Pines.

The prelaunch is held in this tent on the green in front of the bookstore, with the mill pond in the background. Three hundred tickets are sold, which include a copy of the new book, but people without tickets are welcome too.

Danny, the bookstore owner and Louise talked about writing and her books for a while before she started signing people's books. There was a raffle for various prizes, that even included those who did not buy a ticket. A good time was had by all.

She personalized everyone's books and chatted with each of us. Lovely lady!

We stayed in an AirBnB close to the bookstore. We had the whole second floor.

From the balcony we could relax, eat meals, and watch the world go by.

The inside was very spacious and very French. So comfortable!

Saturday morning was a farmer's market down by the mill pond. Mary Ann enjoyed a cappuccino made by a cute little French man.

The display of produce was a work of art.

Sunday evening we attended a play about children who were brought from England in early 1900s. They went to local families to help with the farm and other work. Sort of how Anne of Green Gables arrived on the farm on Prince Edward Island. In the audience were several people whose grandparents were home children. A few thousand came to the Knowlton area.

Next, Quebec City!

On the way to Ohio we noticed this sign that obviously caught our attention. The town is near Notre Dame University.

One place we stopped for gas was really old with pumps you had to reset by turning a crank. The owner even came out to wash the windows and offered to check the oil.

We stayed with cousin Paul and wife Jan in Burton Ohio. We visited the cemetery where Uncle Paul and Aunt Emma are.

They live in the Amish area and this is an example of Amish advertising.

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We left the van in Ohio and flew to Idaho to see the total eclipse. In this photo you can see the dark shadow approaching on the horizon. It sort of looks like the marine layer of haze at home.

With our eclipse glasses we watched the disk of the sun get covered more and more. That was interesting, but was nothing compared to the two-minute period of totality. Even a 99.9% coverage of the sun is pretty bright and it isn’t until it is total that you are really impressed.

The air cooled noticeably and some crickets started their evening songs. It was a somewhat emotional moment. Although the duration of totality was about two minutes, it seemed more like 20 seconds. The sun’s corona was visible around the moon, but it was dark enough to see the brighter planets.

Below is a 360 degree panorama of the horizon during the totality. All around was the glow of a sunset or sunrise. Also, the temperature dropped, the wind came up and the crickets started singing their evening songs.

When the sun first became visible again, it was just one bright point and looked like a diamond on the corona ring. In seconds, it was too bright to look at without the glasses.

Once the sun reappeared, we celebrated that the world had not ended!. Alan, Becca, Tracy, Mary Ann, and Morgan.

Then it was back to Ohio and off to Quebec and Louise Penny's prelaunch party for her new book, Glass Houses.

This is about our trip to Newfoundland and Labrador, a province in Eastern Canada. Due to technical and other delays, I am writing this four weeks into the trip, from New Brunswick.

We left home on Thursday August 3, in the afternoon and stayed in Barstow overnight. Lots of traffic along the way and the weather was hot. We got up the long hill east of Baker without problem since it was not very hot.

We spent the next night at the Richfield Utah KOA campground where we have stayed before. It is quiet and there are places to ride out bikes, except this time it rained on our bike ride a bit. Next day we went via Evanston Wyoming to our friend Becca’s in Paris Idaho. Lots of traffic for a Raspberry festival in Garden City along the way. Spent a day with Becca and daughter Morgan and boyfriend Matt before heading east towards I-80.

Stayed at a KOA in Rock Springs Wyoming and had dinner with our friends Don and Nancy. We had met them in the Tetons 25 years ago and have seen them only 2-3 times since, but we always enjoy spending hours talking when we do see them, over dinner.

Heading along I-80 we were looking for camping in Laramie and got a recommendation to go to Curt Gowdy State Park which was a bit further east. It was way off the freeway (which is good!) but was the best campground we had been in on this trip. It is on a lake and was really quiet. We liked it so much we stayed all of the next day, riding our bikes around part of the lake and just relaxing. It rained some but that was fine since it as hot hot like we had expected.
 

We next headed to North Platt where we wound up staying in a run-down trailer park. Next morning we did a tour of Buffalo Bill’s residence and training facility where his Wild West Show prepared for their world-wide tours. The site includes a two-story Victorian house and a huge barn, along with various outbuildings like an ice house and a spring house (cooled by spring water running through it to keep vegetables cool).

We were following I-80 which took us by Grand Island and Doniphan, Nebraska. Doniphan is where our friend and neighbor, Tim Lowry, grew up. His family had a farm there and there is even a road named after them.

We drove through Doniphan and took a few photos for Tim.

A little past Chicago, we visited Indiana Dunes State Park. We had been there many years ago on another cross-country trip. The campground is fairly new and quiet. Nearby are sand dunes along the shore of Lake Michigan. Our neighbor, Anita, remembers rolling down the dunes as a kid. Last time I remember being able to see the skyline of Chicago, but this time it was too hazy. The beach has been enjoyed by lots of people for many years. There is an old pavilion building built in 1929 that is still there.

We met a nice family from Chicago with their two boys. They can get to the dunes in one day and enjoy camping there. We took a photo of them, but my phone broke a few days later and those photos could not be recovered to the replacement so this is the photo the dad took.

Next, on to visit Mary Ann's cousins in Ohio!