Eclipse Trippers

Oh, the eclipse.  I hadn't heard a lot about the eclipse down in NorCal.  No one was talking about it.  No one really seemed to care.  I wasn't planning on trying to go see the eclipse at first because the path of totality was 11ish hours away from us and for the kids it would be the third day of school.  Then I happened upon this article.  Basically it says "close" for an eclipse is not close enough.  Get to the path of totality!  So we headed to Oregon.  Scott was supportive of my plan to go even though he would have to miss another day of work.  It was totally inconvenient.  The kids had started school only two days before and would have to miss the third day of school (and possibly the fourth if traffic was really bad).  And we had just gotten back from vacation on Tuesday night, school Thursday and Friday and then left for our eclipse trip on Saturday morning.  The kids were quite road weary by then.  Matthew especially didn't want to go because he had perfect attendance last year and this would ruin his chances this year.  We told him we were sorry, but that he was going.  :(

I ordered eclipse glasses online a month or so in advance.  Scott gave a few away because people in our area started caring about it more a couple days prior but there were no eclipse glasses to be had by us.  Glad we ordered some.

The drive up to Oregon on Saturday was a little heavier traffic than normal, but not too bad.

We stayed with Scott's parents Saturday night.  They entertained the kids most of the day Saturday while Scott and I ran some errands.  Where they live was 99.7% of totality, and had I not read that article I would have thought that was close enough.  But it wasn't in the path...close but not close enough.  Originally I was planning to just drive south on Monday morning and hope we could find a parking lot to park in near Woodburn or Salem.  But my sister's father-in-law lives in Salem and generously let us stay with him, even with our whole brood.  So Sunday night we drove down to Salem.  Traffic to Salem the night before was not too bad either.

My sister's in-laws were so nice and welcoming!  They had snacks and soda ready for the kids and made us waffles in the morning. 

We're all ready to see the eclipse!

Seeing the moon start to cover part of the sun through the eclipse glasses was cool

That's my sister's father-in-law in the background.  He got some nice pictures of the eclipse.

Thank you Ivan for having us!!

It was a beautiful clear day.  Not a cloud in the sky.

It's hard to take a selfie with eclipse glasses 'cause you can't see anything.

That's my brother-in-law's brother.  He gave the kids all little Legos for the ride home.  

The kids were thrilled!

Crescent shadows

Here is the thumbnail sun just before totality

And then THE BEST PART:  TOTALITY!!!

It seemed to happen pretty quickly after that

It got darker and cool

As the eclipse moved into totality you could hear gasping, shouting and cheering all throughout the area.  I'm not even sure where those other people were or how close they were to us.  It was like we could hear the whole town gasp.

Then this amazing hole in the sky

This picture is terrible (taken with my phone) and in no way does justice to what we saw.  And even the really nice pictures you see (like from NASA) that people got of the eclipse don't quite do it justice.

I am not exaggerating when I say it was one of the coolest/most amazing/jaw dropping things I have ever seen.    We were watching that thumbnail until it slowly moved into totality.  It was amazing how much light that sliver had still been letting through and then how much darker it was during totality.  You can't see the corona through the eclipse glasses, it's not bright enough, but it is safe to look at it with the naked eye (only during totality).  The collective gasp and the cheers are something I'll always remember.  It was so cool.  I guess there aren't that many things in life anymore that just make me gasp, or shout out, "WHOA!" but this was one of those things.  It got as dark as night.  The temperature dropped.  It was amazing, beautiful, moving.  And it lasted two minutes.  I'm really glad we got to see it.  It was worth all the trouble.

And yes, we sat in a considerable amount of traffic driving back south.  The worst of the traffic was between Salem and Eugene and then it lightened up a bit.  It took us about 14 hours to drive what would normally have been 10 or 11 hours.  So it could have been much worse. One of our friends  from church went to Eastern Oregon and got home about 6 hours after us.  They had worse traffic coming that way.  We were home in time for all of us to get some sleep before heading into work and school the next day.  Matthew only had to miss one day of school.  On the drive home Matthew said he was glad we took him out of school for the eclipse.  He said it was worth ruining his perfect attendance.  I'm glad he thought it was worthwhile.  It was.  Maybe we'll go see the next one in Texas.  Who knows.