We drove from Atlanta to Indianapolis on Sunday, and then drove back after watching it at the motor speedway (which was cool in it's own way, so we had stuff to look at while waiting for it all to begin). It took about 11 and a half hours to get home (hurray, in bed at 4:30 this morning), but it was absolutely worth it. The girl scouts who were selling cookies to all the people waiting to get out of the parking lot made an absolute killing.
I drove from north Alabama to western Kentucky with a friend. Did not think we were going to make it as the Google Maps travel time kept increasing, but we were able to divert to a spot just inside the zone of totality that avoided the traffic in Paducah, Kentucky. (We had planned to cross over into Illinois.) It's an amazing experience. I saw the 2017 one at the Nashville Zoo with my family, and when it got dark, the giraffes just started running around like crazy.
I live in Indianapolis, but we drove to my brother's house in Franklin, IN to see it as a family. That put us right on the centerline, so we had a bit over four minutes of totality. I also had my 5" telescope set up, which was perfect for the day, but towards the end of totality I was hyper-fixated on making sure everyone had had a chance to look but that we had the filter back on before it ended. Visions of unfiltered sunlight through the scope gave me the heebie-jeebies.
This was my second total eclipse after traveling to southern Illinois in 2017. I struggle to articulate to people how uncanny and dramatic totality really is. It's totally justified to be underwhelmed by lunar or partial solar eclipses if that's not your bag. But a total eclipse is easily the most dramatic astronomical phenomenon you can witness. The only thing that comes close is maybe a naked-eye comet like Hale-Bopp, and that's still a distant second.
We drove from Atlanta to Indianapolis on Sunday, and then drove back after watching it at the motor speedway (which was cool in it's own way, so we had stuff to look at while waiting for it all to begin). It took about 11 and a half hours to get home (hurray, in bed at 4:30 this morning), but it was absolutely worth it. The girl scouts who were selling cookies to all the people waiting to get out of the parking lot made an absolute killing.
I drove from north Alabama to western Kentucky with a friend. Did not think we were going to make it as the Google Maps travel time kept increasing, but we were able to divert to a spot just inside the zone of totality that avoided the traffic in Paducah, Kentucky. (We had planned to cross over into Illinois.) It's an amazing experience. I saw the 2017 one at the Nashville Zoo with my family, and when it got dark, the giraffes just started running around like crazy.
I live in Indianapolis, but we drove to my brother's house in Franklin, IN to see it as a family. That put us right on the centerline, so we had a bit over four minutes of totality. I also had my 5" telescope set up, which was perfect for the day, but towards the end of totality I was hyper-fixated on making sure everyone had had a chance to look but that we had the filter back on before it ended. Visions of unfiltered sunlight through the scope gave me the heebie-jeebies.
This was my second total eclipse after traveling to southern Illinois in 2017. I struggle to articulate to people how uncanny and dramatic totality really is. It's totally justified to be underwhelmed by lunar or partial solar eclipses if that's not your bag. But a total eclipse is easily the most dramatic astronomical phenomenon you can witness. The only thing that comes close is maybe a naked-eye comet like Hale-Bopp, and that's still a distant second.
I'm definitely hoping one day to, but even the bit of partial eclipse that we got here was pretty cool.