My 20 year old kid did that.

Cool kid. Has skillz. Anyway, just looked at google maps, and there is a 58 mile back on I-5 to Eugene. Puts it on the level of daily LA and DC rush hour traffic.

Who needs a pinhole viewer when you have dogwood tree leaves over a deck...lots of crescents from the filtered sunlight was pretty cool

That's a lovely picture!

It was pretty subtle at 98.2% occlusion maybe disappointing if you were expecting it to get darker, but the unfiltered sunlight from high overhead did seem strange for the lower intensity. It also got dark enough for the night animals to start making noises which was cool.

Are you sure this isn't a picture from 1979?

Awesome!

Still grey here, with a brownish tint from the fires inland.

And a good job, too.

They were saying it was going to be 99.6% total where I live. Traffic predictions were at Y2K levels of panic. I lived on the east coast in 1979 so the best I had seen was an annular eclipse. My oldest daughter and I decided to make the drive 30 miles south into the path of totality. We took back roads to McMinville and ended up driving about two and a half hours total for 55 seconds of totality. It was completely worth it.

I was amazed at just how little of the sun peaking out of the shadow made it impossible to look at without the peril sensitive sunglasses. During the totality (and maybe not even all of it because it seemed like a lot less than 55 seconds to me) we were able to look directly at the sun and see the corona, which was pretty cool. As I remember it, I was watching through the lenses as the last spec of on the sun disappeared (and everyone around us cheered). I took off the glasses and looked at the ring. I looked at my daughter. I looked back and the ring. I took a picture of my daughter. I tried to look back at the ring but a single blast of light peaking out from behind the moon made it blinding.

We didn't wait long to get back on the road and being in a rural area at the northern edge of the path of totality we didn't really have a lot of problems with traffic. It did get backed up a bit as we drove through Dundee and Newberg. A handful of bikes passed us there. Overall it was not nearly the worst traffic I've experienced on that same road, not much worse than a typical Sunday afternoon with people coming back from the coast.

We're in Paducah. Yes, Hoptown had a HUGE influx of people. Motels and campgrounds have been full for months. They have been renting parking places on farmland that is not planted for folks coming from outside the area.

The eclipse was very cool and we enjoyed the time we spent watching it. The brewery had blocked off some of the parking area and added picnic tables. They were giving away Moon Pies and someone in the parking lot had a boom box going with "Dark Side of the Moon" playing. Lol. It's an odd lighting effect that continues until it's totally dark. When totality was at hand, you could see some of the stars. There is an old smokestack on the building and the pigeons flew in to roost.

We have heard of some traffic problems on I-64 and I-65. Glad I took the day off and happy we decided not to travel out of town, I mean, how many people can say they rode a bike during a total solar eclipse? Taking the day off also gave me time for the traditional ritual performed before viewing an eclipse...painting the guest bathroom.

Drove down to Carbondale to see the total. It was pretty awesome. There was some suspense due to the weather (which was over 100F heat index). It was clear until about 20 minutes to full eclipse when a large cloud covered it. Beg awww from the crowd. Then right before the full it poked through a hole in the cloud with a great cheer from the crowd, the light switch was turned off and for 2 minutes + the full eclipse was available and it was night out. There was a little haze in front of it at the beginning turning to clear by the end, when we could see the diamond ring when the sun was coming back.

Pretty awe inspiring I must say. The darkness was truly amazing and can only be experienced in a full eclipse - any sliver of the sun showing obliterated the darkness.

Traffic was good going to Carbondale but utter hell coming back. But it was worth it.

It was funny how the media kept calling it a "once in a lifetime experience." It happens in the U.S. again in 7 years. And doesn't it happen somewhere on Earth every few years?

Anyway, it was pretty cool to see. It was a little darker out, like looking through a tinted car window maybe. And the temperature was noticeably cooler.

Up and down our office park it looked all the buildings were doing fire drills. People were standing outside looking up, sharing glasses and boxes, and chatting. We saw the crescent shadows from a tree too.

Apparently there were enough people in Hoptown that the phone service was a bit overloaded. This tweet was put out by the police department.

...throughout the "event". My life wasn't affected in the least. Life had resumed its normal rhythms by the time I left for home. I rode my bike...

It must've been great to have been a Druid, you know, full of wonder and all that...

looking pretty good in Britain

For all you sour grapes, it was totally worth driving 2.5 hours to see. A total eclipse really is different from a partial solar eclipse. It might have been a prettier picture on-line from a telescope, but watching it on a screen vs. seeing it live is like watching a bike race vs. going for a bike ride in the country.


I'm not at all sure it was worth driving 4.5 hours back home.

I was also amazed at how bright the sun got immediately after totality ended. One second, you are viewing it without any eye protection. And the next, you have to put your eclipse glasses back on. We had a little over 2 minutes of totality with clear skies.

We went to a rural area where I take my dog chukar hunting. It is really remote, but there were still lots of vehicles. Not crowded by any means, but many more people than I usually see out there in the boonies. The Eclipse Traffic Armageddon they were predicting never materialized either. Other than a few slowdowns at freeway interchanges back here in the valley, it was an easy drive back to town.

If I were close enough for a same-day road trip like that, I would have brought bikes and books, and killed time either reading or napping in the car, or ditch the car somewhere and explore by bike (probably even scout mtb trails and be there to watch the eclipse), wait out a few hours of traffic, maybe even drive back overnight.

Becoming a bike commuter has made me extremely traffic-intolerant.

Ditched work for a bit and met the wife and kids at the planetarium for a half-hour show before we got our 93% totality. We bought the eclipse party tickets in June. Pictures were terrible except for the ones of the shadows. Nice to work at a university with a planetarium.

my son did OK w just his cell phone




guess I'll be eating cereal for a while ...

They turned out really well, I'll bet the clouds helped

That's only a bit worse than what we had in Chicago. I saw a bit of the eclipse trough a break in the clouds, but we weren't anywhere near totality. The cool thing was that total strangers were passing around their glasses..... it was a "shared humanity" moment.
Loved your "hi-tech" monitoring method. I'm thinking of a solar array on my south-facing/no-trees roof.
Steve

Heh. Probably how my four year old would remember it.

Of course it is back to the usual perfect summer weather today.

I took 3 days off (Friday to go to Portland for an event and stay the night), and Mon/Tues. Drove to eastern OR Sat, camped in a national forest and left yesterday am. It was totally worth it. Of course, camping in a desert w/ only the water I brought (all those creeks on the topo map totally dried out) and a trowel for latrine facilitation is something I would do anyway. This was just an added excuse/benefit.

I like this picture I got but it is not too fancy. The three basic elements were the black silhouette of the moon, the sharp brilliant white corona, and the blue sky. Everybody's picture has the black silhouette, but there is a real tradeoff between capturing the sharpness of the corona (vs the diffuse extended corona) and the blue sky. So this is way overexposed for the corona but the blue, while still darker than it was, is enough to remind me.