#1917 my solar eclipse experience

Oh friends! I am so excited to write this post and relive the eclipse experience. Right off the bat I want you to know that seeing the total solar eclipse yesterday was a total highlight and something I won't ever forget. It was quite possibly one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I'll also let you know right off the bat that I do not have a photo of the eclipse. What my eyes saw and what my camera saw are two different things. I do have a bunch of photos to share with you and I'll describe it as well as I can. Here we go...

MT and I drove to Shoshone, ID on Sunday afternoon to spend the night at MT's brother Kevin's house. Our goal was to get into the Path of Totality, which was about a 70 mile wide band that went through central Idaho roughly from the Sun Valley area through the Stanley area up to Challis. From the image below, you can see Stanley is right on the blue line which indicates that it would have the longest time in the shadow of the eclipse. We wanted to get there, if possible.

For several months and even more in the weeks leading up to August 21, we had heard that thousands of people would be in Idaho for the eclipse, so we decided to leave Shoshone at 5 AM and get as far north as traffic would allow. Kevin's wife, Janet, came along with us. Kevin had to work. He is a Sheriff's Deputy so he as on traffic duty.

There were some cars on the road with us in darkness, but not too many. In this first photo, we are near Hailey, ID. You can see there's a car in front of us, but it's pretty quiet out there.

We got to Galena Summit just as the sun was starting to rise, so we pulled over to take a photo.

From there the road winds down the mountain and we found a scenic overlook that was already crowded with cars. We stopped to stretch our legs, use the potty and take a picture. The headwaters of the Salmon River are in this valley.

We kept driving along, following the river, looking for good eclipse viewing spots, heading for Stanley. Caught this image of the sun rising.

We got to Stanley around 7 AM and decided to have some breakfast of the Mountain Village Resort restaurant. They had a special eclipse menu, complete with special eclipse prices. MT and Janet had eaten there the previous weekend and said that the new menu's prices were a couple of dollars higher than they had been the week before.

After a really tasty breakfast, we bought eclipse t-shirts and headed out to find a place to watch the solar show. We found a good spot in the parking lot of the Stanley Ranger Station. We liked it because we also had a great view of the Sawtooths.

You can see that the air was kind of hazy but there was not a cloud in the sky.

We were super excited for the eclipse!

Did I mention it was kind of cold? When we got to Stanley, the temperature was around 35 degrees (1.67 C). It warmed up to around 50 degrees (10 C) by the time the eclipse started around 10:10 AM. We lounged in our camp chairs and watched the moon's progress across the sun.

My chair is in the middle. I had taken off my red sweatshirt and it's hanging on the back of my chair.

As the moon continued it's path across the sun, the light around us took on a muted quality and the temperature started to drop. The automatic lights on the car near us came on as the sky grew a little darker.

We were getting really hyped up for totality. Check this out:

11:27 AM

At 11:27, it was still quite light and the eclipse was probably around 97 - 98% complete. The sun is super bright and still puts out a lot of light, even when 97% covered. The temperature has started to drop by now. I had to put my sweatshirt back on.

11:29 AM

 At 11:29, the sun was 100% covered by the moon and we are in the shadow of the moon in the Path of Totality. You can see that it is quite dark. You wouldn't have been able to read a book. It's not dark as night; it's more like the time of day when the sun is coming up or after it has set and the glow is lingering. We were in the Path of Totality for just over two minutes.

Here's a photo of the sun that I took during totality:

11:29 AM

Maybe if you click on the photo you will see a little black dot right in the middle of the sun. That would be the moon. On the video I put on Facebook, there are a couple of glimpses of the sun and you can see the black dot. What the human eye could see was completely different, in my case, than what my beloved Iphone's camera could see. 

What I saw with my own bare eyes was a black circle surrounded by a brilliant ring of white. I found this photo online, and this is pretty much what I saw, except that the ring of white was very thin.

11:31 AM

You can see in this photo that MT is looking directly at the sun without the glasses. At this point the totality is complete, but we are seeing the "diamond ring" effect. It kind of looked like this:

Seeing the total solar eclipse was very moving for me. It was a powerful couple of minutes. I was teary-eyed and choked up about it, which isn't really surprising, if you know me. I was surprised to see MT teary-eyed and that Janet was also choked up. I've talked to another friend of mine who was watching in Sun Valley and she said several people in their group were moved to tears as well. I've been thinking about my reaction and the only way I can explain it is that seeing the eclipse and actually being in the shadow cast by the moon onto the earth was so unusual and so cosmic that being there for those two minutes touched my soul. It sounds so hokey, but it was very pure and genuine and really, really beautiful.

Of course the eclipse was not complete. The moon continued it's journey across the sun and we watched the whole process as the positions were reversed. It started with what looked like a nibble on the top right hand side of the sun and ended with a nibble on the bottom left hand side of the sun. 

And then it was over. It felt like it happened all so quickly, but from start to finish it lasted a couple of hours. We all had a little post-eclipse let-down. At various times during our drive back to Shoshone, one of us would say something like, "Holy shit that was amazing" and the other two would agree and we'd talk about it for a couple of minutes then go back to silence.

Are you wondering how the traffic was? 

Coming out of Stanley was great. We didn't have any issues with traffic until we got back down to the Sun Valley area. There are three towns: Ketchum, Hailey and Bellevue. Ketchum is pretty tourist-y. We were backed up for five miles there. The backup in Hailey was three miles, and there was no discernible back up in Bellevue. The road to Shoshone was clear sailing. Kevin said traffic through the town had been steady.

We headed back to Utah around 5:00. Traffic through Idaho on I-84 was a non-issue. The absolute worst traffic was in Utah where I-84 merges onto I-15. There were a jillion cars coming back from eastern Idaho. I think many Utahns went to the Idaho Falls area or the Jackson Hole area to be in the Path of Totality and we all came home at the same time. I think we pulled into our driveway sometime between 9:30 and 10:00.  It was a super long day, but you know what? I would do it again tomorrow if I could see another total solar eclipse.

The next total solar eclipse that will be seen in the United States is in April 2024. Janet, MT and I have decided that we will figure out where to go to see that one. It comes up through Mexico and across the eastern states. Yahoo!!