family:outing solar eclipse

I went with my family to a quiet little beach cove out in Point Reyes called Chicken Ranch Beach. 


We had a lovely family BBQ. 
At home, we marinated chicken, prepared salad, cooked rice and sliced fruit. 
At the beach, there wasn't much to do. The rice was still warm, the chicken strips were defrosting and marinating in BBQ, Apricot jam and dijon mustard sauce. After my husband barbecued, I plated the warm half white, half brown rice with chicken strips hot off the BBQ and a mixed green salad combined with pomegranate infused cranberries and almonds topped with poppyseed dressing and sprinkled with Point Reyes Original Blue Cheese. 


A side note about the cheese: Besides it being a fantastic farmstead cheese, the cows are raised on our family's ranch so it's extra special to us. As for the salad, I just put all our ingredients for the salad in a bag, shook, then plated and we were all set for a fancy beach dinner.


The beach is sheltered so that it wasn't too windy and the kids were able to play in about ankle deep waves while dad bar-b-qued. This beach was also the perfect location for viewing the solar eclipse; the first annular eclipse since 1994. We look forward to seeing the "Ring of Fire" again in 2023. My daughter asked if we'd save our viewer but I think we'll probably make a new one.


We made the viewer at home and brought it with us. Everybody at the beach was interested to see the partial solar eclipse so it was fun to share with other people.

Simple Solar Eclipse Pin Hole Viewer

• 2 card board sheets
• duct tape
• small square of foil
• push pin
• white paper

1. cut 2 large sheets of cardboard
2. tape a sheet of paper on one
3. cut a square in the other cardboard
4. tape tin foil over the square
5. push pin through foil to make a pin hole

You now have a viewer.  It was simple to make and worked perfectly!