Well worth it
Aug. 23rd, 2017 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rscFor most of my life, I've wanted to see a total eclipse of the sun. The same is true for my older brother (who live in Philadelphia), which is why he suggested over a year ago that we and our spouses travel to Carbondale, IL, to see this one (he chose Carbondale because his research indicated that the period of totality was longest there). I liked the idea, so he started working on hotels, eventually succeeding (sometime around Sept. 1) in getting reservations for the Best Western. They required a minimum stay of three nights, so he made the reservations for Saturday-Tuesday.
We met in St. Louis on Thursday, and did a little touristing there before driving over to Carbondale. My brother had made reservations to view the eclipse from Little Grassy Methodist Campground in Makanda, IL, 7 miles south off the same road as the hotel. Not a bad deal; $25 per person, guaranteed parking and a box lunch. The first incursion of the moon's shadow was shortly before noon, and not being sure what traffic was going to be like and how easy it would be to score space in the shade, we left the hotel shortly after 10:00; as it turned out, there was basically no traffic, and after sorting out a little confusion about exactly where we were supposed to go, we got parked at about 10:45, and were able to take possession of a picnic table under a canopy, on the end of which were two huge jugs of ice water. Perfect! ("We" refers to me,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jwg, my brother, and his wife, later joined by my sister-in-law's first cousin once removed and the latter's husband.) There were a fair number of people at the site, more arriving over the next half hour, but it was never really crowded (I'm guessing they had limited registration to achieve exactly this effect). The campground folks (who were as nice and helpful as could be) brought our lunches around at about 11:30, so we had time to eat before it was time start looking at the sun.
We had fun taking occasional (and then not-so-occasional) looks at the gradually disappearing sun through our Approved Eclipse Glasses, and Gretta's cousin did the colander thing, and we wandered over to the edge of the woods surrounding the field to observe the crescents formed between the leaf shadows.
The weather for the preceding days had been mostly sunny and very hot (although there was a bit of cloud cover on Sunday afternoon), but forecasts for Monday had been iffy, ranging from partly cloudy to possibly showers. But it was pretty clear when we arrived, although a few puffy clouds started drifting through about the time the eclipse started, occasionally obscuring the sun briefly. (This was a bit strange when I was looking through the glasses, as I couldn't see anything except the sun, so the clouds would appear without warning.) But around 1:00, which is to say about 20 minutes before totality, we noticed that the sky in the area from which the clouds were coming had gone completely clear, and there was much rejoicing.
We couldn't really detect the change in the light until the last 15 minutes or so, but then it really did get strange; as everything I'd read had said, it really was not like regular evening twilight. There were no birds around to speak of, so we didn't experience the "confused birds flying home to roost" phenomenon.
At the moment that the remnant of the sun's disk disappeared and we all took our glasses off, a cheer went up from all the watchers. The black circle of moon shadow surrounded by the blazing white corona was every bit as awesome as I had hoped. The sky did not really get nighttime dark; it was more like twilight. Venus was clearly visible; with my suboptimal vision, I was unable to see Mercury. (My one mild regret is that I didn't bring my binoculars to the eclipse -- it might have been interesting to look at totality through them, not to mention probably finding Mercury.) When the "diamond ring effect" appeared on the other side of the disc, and we all put our glasses back on, another cheer went up (I called out "We're saved!" but I don't think anyone noticed). My brother remarked that it seemed like the shortest 2 minutes and 40 seconds he could ever remember.
We hung around for a while after totality, but somehow watching the gradual growth of the sun's disc didn't seem as exciting as its gradual disappearance -- people started leaving almost immediately after the end of totality -- and we spent most of the time looking at each other's phone photos. We eventually left at around 2:30.
And then there was traffic. Our guess is that there were other viewing sites to our south, plus people who had driven in from elsewhere in the vicinity probably all decided to go home at once. Anyway, it took as about an hour to drive the 7 miles back to the hotel. (My brother was driving.) Well, we didn't need to be anywhere else until dinner time.
When we got back, we learned that at the hotel (more or less downtown Carbondale), a big cloud had arrived just before totality, and people who had stayed there to view the eclipse from the parking lot and the adjoining field -- something we had briefly contemplated doing, so as not to have to spend so much time outside in the heat -- saw about 10 seconds' worth of totality. So we really lucked out.
I gather that traffic out of Carbondale was pretty bad that whole day. The next day, when we drove back to the St. Louis airport, there was none, and we made very good time.
All in all, a most satisfying experience, and well worth the (mild) hassle and (perhaps not quite so mild) expense. I'm not ruling out trying to see the one in 2024, for which, weather permitting, we won't have to travel nearly as far; but we'll be seven years older, so we'll see how we feel about that when the mite comes.
We met in St. Louis on Thursday, and did a little touristing there before driving over to Carbondale. My brother had made reservations to view the eclipse from Little Grassy Methodist Campground in Makanda, IL, 7 miles south off the same road as the hotel. Not a bad deal; $25 per person, guaranteed parking and a box lunch. The first incursion of the moon's shadow was shortly before noon, and not being sure what traffic was going to be like and how easy it would be to score space in the shade, we left the hotel shortly after 10:00; as it turned out, there was basically no traffic, and after sorting out a little confusion about exactly where we were supposed to go, we got parked at about 10:45, and were able to take possession of a picnic table under a canopy, on the end of which were two huge jugs of ice water. Perfect! ("We" refers to me,
jwg, my brother, and his wife, later joined by my sister-in-law's first cousin once removed and the latter's husband.) There were a fair number of people at the site, more arriving over the next half hour, but it was never really crowded (I'm guessing they had limited registration to achieve exactly this effect). The campground folks (who were as nice and helpful as could be) brought our lunches around at about 11:30, so we had time to eat before it was time start looking at the sun.We had fun taking occasional (and then not-so-occasional) looks at the gradually disappearing sun through our Approved Eclipse Glasses, and Gretta's cousin did the colander thing, and we wandered over to the edge of the woods surrounding the field to observe the crescents formed between the leaf shadows.
The weather for the preceding days had been mostly sunny and very hot (although there was a bit of cloud cover on Sunday afternoon), but forecasts for Monday had been iffy, ranging from partly cloudy to possibly showers. But it was pretty clear when we arrived, although a few puffy clouds started drifting through about the time the eclipse started, occasionally obscuring the sun briefly. (This was a bit strange when I was looking through the glasses, as I couldn't see anything except the sun, so the clouds would appear without warning.) But around 1:00, which is to say about 20 minutes before totality, we noticed that the sky in the area from which the clouds were coming had gone completely clear, and there was much rejoicing.
We couldn't really detect the change in the light until the last 15 minutes or so, but then it really did get strange; as everything I'd read had said, it really was not like regular evening twilight. There were no birds around to speak of, so we didn't experience the "confused birds flying home to roost" phenomenon.
At the moment that the remnant of the sun's disk disappeared and we all took our glasses off, a cheer went up from all the watchers. The black circle of moon shadow surrounded by the blazing white corona was every bit as awesome as I had hoped. The sky did not really get nighttime dark; it was more like twilight. Venus was clearly visible; with my suboptimal vision, I was unable to see Mercury. (My one mild regret is that I didn't bring my binoculars to the eclipse -- it might have been interesting to look at totality through them, not to mention probably finding Mercury.) When the "diamond ring effect" appeared on the other side of the disc, and we all put our glasses back on, another cheer went up (I called out "We're saved!" but I don't think anyone noticed). My brother remarked that it seemed like the shortest 2 minutes and 40 seconds he could ever remember.
We hung around for a while after totality, but somehow watching the gradual growth of the sun's disc didn't seem as exciting as its gradual disappearance -- people started leaving almost immediately after the end of totality -- and we spent most of the time looking at each other's phone photos. We eventually left at around 2:30.
And then there was traffic. Our guess is that there were other viewing sites to our south, plus people who had driven in from elsewhere in the vicinity probably all decided to go home at once. Anyway, it took as about an hour to drive the 7 miles back to the hotel. (My brother was driving.) Well, we didn't need to be anywhere else until dinner time.
When we got back, we learned that at the hotel (more or less downtown Carbondale), a big cloud had arrived just before totality, and people who had stayed there to view the eclipse from the parking lot and the adjoining field -- something we had briefly contemplated doing, so as not to have to spend so much time outside in the heat -- saw about 10 seconds' worth of totality. So we really lucked out.
I gather that traffic out of Carbondale was pretty bad that whole day. The next day, when we drove back to the St. Louis airport, there was none, and we made very good time.
All in all, a most satisfying experience, and well worth the (mild) hassle and (perhaps not quite so mild) expense. I'm not ruling out trying to see the one in 2024, for which, weather permitting, we won't have to travel nearly as far; but we'll be seven years older, so we'll see how we feel about that when the mite comes.
