Nice. My sister and BIL tried to get out there but the roads were already parking lots by 1pm so ended up staying home in the driveway. Not totality, but man, 97% never looked so cool.
I so need a real camera for events like this. We drove the 4 hours to VT to reach totality. Worth every mile. Strangest thing to me was how the sun lost all its heat as it got closer to occlusion. Even in the bitter cold, you can feel where the sun is hitting you. This event, the sun continued to light up the sky but there was no feeling at all, might as well have been a LED. Totality was incredible, a spectacle for the ages. I hope the kids remember this.
Like others have said, this was truly an awe inspiring event. I'm glad I was able to just walk out my front door and experience it. A bunch of our neighbors all met up at one house that had the best sightline and hung out to watch the whole thing. We even met the Amazon delivery driver that was in the hood at the time join in with us. I wasn't able to get any pictures comparable to those already posted, but I did find this interesting... See if you can guess when the eclipse was over my house.
Got into the 3-minute totality zone. Took two hours to drive up, but eight and a half to drive back. Worth it.
It was okay, I guess. Spoiler: More photos (2.5 hour drive up for 3 minutes of totality, and a nightmare of a 9 hour drive home. Would do it again tomorrow.)
We had three and a half minutes of totality. Cloudy as anything so we couldn't see much, but the darkness and sudden cool was insane. It was actually really creepy. Goats went running into the barn thinking it was night time, birds all fucked off, dogs started losing their shit. Weirdly, my body started going haywire and I had the worst anxiety attack I've had in years (old PTSD, brain tumor stuff). Mentally I knew it was fine though and still walked around the pasture taking it all in with the rest of the family, but I still feel a bit emotionally hungover from it. Gonna go on a run later to clear my head. Just really weird all around. The one pervasive thought was how insane it must have been before we had the technology to understand and predict all of these things. Back when people were worshipping the sun god and shit. All the sudden there's darkness in the middle of the day like that? Fuck no wonder there's stories of god being pissed!!
The next coast-to-coast eclipse happens in 2045, when I’m 61 and my son will be 21, we’ll have to go three or four hours south to see it. Already excited about it.
I went back and read through our 2017 thread on the Eclipse, and you had some great photos in that one, too. Nicely done, you! A quote in that thread from one of our TiB members who doesn't come around anymore:
Great pics Binary! I miss Toytoy and his crazy stories. I don't recall him having an issue with anything/anyone, just stopped by less and less. My brother and his wife flew into Dallas, watched the eclipse and flew back. I'm confused why he didn't make a trip out of it and stay a few days but then again, I don't have 4 kids, a dog and a job haha
Yeah that's one of those things that happen on a forum given enough time. I was away for a while myself. No real reason, just... didn't think to stop by. On the other hand, I have a forum site of my own that's been going for ten years and I still beat my head into the wall trying to figure out how to keep people, get them back, attract new people, etc.
I'm not an eclipse chaser - both the one in 2017 and this year's happened within easy driving distance of where I was living when it happened - but I can understand the desire. It's such an insane sight. My mother in law started crying when she saw it because she felt so overwhelmed with how spectacular it was, and talking to the people around us, that wasn't an unusual response. My dad had his trip screwed up in 2017 and missed it, so this was his first, which was special to share with him. He's always been a bit of an astronomy buff.
My dad and his wife for some reason decided to see the Eclipse from Ashtabula, which leads to a lot of questions for me. Like how do you decide on Ashtabula? Its single claim to fame is being mentioned in a mediocre Bob Dylan song.