A Thousand Words: August 2017

Several months ago, my husband told me there was a total solar eclipse going through the state below us. He thought it'd be neat to see it. Looking at the date, I realized it was a Monday... and the day after we returned from a camping trip (which took us further north, away from the eclipse). We debated what to do. Since we weren't organized enough to have booked a hotel or made a camping reservation several years ago, we knew the only way we were going to see it in totality was if we got up super early and drove down there. Where we lived it was supposedly going to be at 90%. We debated if that extra ten percent was worth it.

We both got the day off of work, but it wasn't until my brother, newly returned from his travels around South and Central America, said he and my parents wanted to come chase it with us, that we committed for sure to giving it a try. In the weeks leading up to it, the news reports were quite dire: traffic would be so intense, it would take days to get in or out of the totality zone, gas stations would run out of gas, there would be no food, no bathrooms, etc.

We decided to go anyway. What can I say, we're great decision makers.

My parents arrived at our house shortly after we got home from our camping trip. We unloaded the car as best we could, then immediately repacked it with water, food, and even an emergency "bathroom" I created out of a Home Depot bucket, a little toilet seat left over from potty training, and a bunch of plastic bags. (Which I thought might be overkill, but it turned out not to be: It did get used by one child). Then we all tried to go to sleep. Of course, that was a night where the toddler suddenly decides to party all evening and my stomach decided to act up. In the end, I'd been asleep about 2.5 hours when the alarm went off at 2am. Fabulous.

We were on the road by 3am, my husband and kids and I in our van and my parents and brother in another car. We made it to the Tri-Cities near the southern border of Washington around 5am. Through all this, my brother was checking his phone repeatedly- all roads were "green" (or no traffic) to our destination. At this point, I started to think we might actually make it. Amusingly, he also kept an eye on the traffic on the west side of the state- much more 'red' over there! (It's a lot more populated).

Sure enough, driving through Eastern Oregon was the easiest thing ever. It was a beautiful drive with the sun rising over the Blue Mountains. My kids slept occasionally and didn't complain much, even the toddler. They're good travelers for how young they are in general, and they were excited about the eclipse. Eventually my stomach settled down. We made it all the way to Baker City, just inside the path of totality, right about 40 minutes before it was supposed to start (and thus quite awhile before totality). We debated whether or not we wanted to keep going- we were already in totality, I didn't want to load my kids up in the car again, and who knows what we'd find if we kept going? Here there was a park- I didn't want to get stuck on the side of the highway. But my brother insisted the roads were clear and we wouldn't get stuck, and that 30 min more of driving would get us more time in totality. So we went for it.

We made it to Durkee, OR, which is such a tiny town I'm really not sure it even has a stop sign. I saw literally two roads. We went on the one along the train tracks. There were 2-3 other groups nearby: another family, and some college-age girls who said they were from Portland, and a few others scattered up and down the road. It was a perfect sunny day and HOT even though it was mid morning. We set up our camp and some games for the kids (we had a bean bag toss in our car from camping), sunscreen up, busted out our glasses, and started watching as the moon slowly inched its way across the sun.

The sunscreen is kind of a sad story, actually. So, one problem is that mid to late morning is my daughter's nap time, so she wasn't in the greatest mood. Plus, on our way out to the camping trip I thought I'd forgotten the sunscreen. We were stopping to pick something up from a sporting goods store anyway so my husband grabbed some. All they had was the "typical" chemical based sunscreens. I don't typically use those on my kids because they give my oldest eczema and I don't like keeping track of different sunscreens for different family members. It wound up being the only one in my purse for our Eclipse Adventure, too. I guess I'm not used to using them anymore and I assume I used way too much or something, but somehow it got into my daughter's eyes and she was crying and crying about it, saying, "Eyes! Owie eyes, Mama!" and sobbing. She's too little to appreciate the eclipse anyway, but I hadn't expected to have such a sad kiddo on my hands. It was a little warm out there, so I sat with her in the car (which had shade) and that seemed to help. Still, I had a sad girl clinging to me most of the time we were there.

When I got out of the car (I'd been sneaking looks at the eclipse through the sunroof) I noticed it was much cooler out. I think it was about 50% at that time. Interestingly, the light had barely dropped at all.

In fact, other than the temp dropping, we noticed very little change in light until around 90%, and even then, it was more like "a cloud going over the sun" than anything else. Even at 99%, right before it went, it was still what I would call "daylight", it just seemed "cloudy."

And then totality. Totality was WOW. First of all, it was so sudden! It was like someone turned off the lights. A few birds went flying off, the temp dropped even more, and the sky went a deep blue (not quite black) and we could see stars. Yet, all around us at the very edge of the horizon, you could see a glimmer of light, like a sunrise. And then the sun! It looked so BIG. Everyone's seen the pictures but it's hard to get perspective to understand how big it was in the sky. Picture a big full moon, except that part was black instead of white. And all around it was the sun's rays, reaching out towards us in lines like the points on a star. It was amazing. I've never seen anything like it. We had two minutes (and a few seconds) in totality.

What was especially cool to me was how cool everyone else thought it was. People nearby were cheering and clapping, and my family was all exclaiming over it. We were all exhilarated by the time it was over. My grumpy sad daughter, who spent the whole time clinging to me and snuggled in, occasionally sniffing about her eyes, looked up at briefly, so at least she can say she's seen it, even if she'll never remember, hahaha! None of us had ever seen an eclipse in totality before and my dad and my husband (and my oldest son actually) are kind of "space nerds" so they were especially excited. It turned out to be kind of a big family-bonding experience and my dad said several times how cool it was to experience it with all of us. I felt the same way. Totally worth the lack of sleep and the drive.

The drive home wasn't as awesome as the drive down. It actually took nearly twice as long. Some of that was from bad decision making- trying to get around the traffic we encountered and winding up on some crazy detours- and some of that was just heavier than normal volumes, and some of it was because there were random lanes closed for construction (not that we noted any actual construction happening, mind you), including over the bridge across the river into Washington! COME ON, Oregon DOT. Give me a break. You can't tell me you didn't know this was coming... time your construction projects a little differently, please!

Anyway, including a few stops, it took us 6 hours to get down there, and 9 hours to get home. I had to warn the kids to be quiet a few times, otherwise, they did great.

Totally worth it.

Here are some pictures. I decided not to photograph the eclipse itself. To photograph anything not in totality, you need a special filter, which was apparently going to cost me $100 (no thanks). You can photograph without a filter in totality (and look directly at the eclipse without the glasses in totality as well!) but I'd have needed my tripod / shutter remote etc all set up. Which I could have done, but I wasn't even sure when we left that we'd made it to totality, I wanted to actually enjoy the experience and not be so focused on capturing it, and if I had the lens / tripod / etc set up for capturing totality I couldn't taken pictures of all of us during the partial stages. Plus let's face it I'm not going to get the pictures the pros did, even if they would have been cool. So I opted to just take pictures and document our experience. My husband did get a quick shot with his GoPro that does not in any way reflect the awesomeness of how the sun / moon looked during totality, but does give a sense of the darkness.

Without further ado...