“Did you want to come with me to see the eclipse?”, my brother asked.
“No, not really,” I replied.
“Oh, you’ve got to go,” he said, “It really is spectacular.”
“You’re taking your daughter out of school for the Eclipse, aren’t you?” my mother questioned.
“I hadn’t planned on it.”
“Oh, you really should, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
There was more berating from my family, but you get the picture. I thought I had seen an eclipse before. I remember there being one when I was a kid. Well, what I remember is looking through one of those cardboard box things at it and being none too impressed. Me and my cousins decided that if we wore six pairs of sunglasses we could take a peek at it and be okay.
Still, I wasn’t all that impressed.
But I gave in to the berating. There was much discussion of where to go to see it. We weren’t in the totality zone, but there were places in southern Oklahoma and Arkansas that were in the path and that weren’t too far away.
Everyone kept an eye on the weather as well. It would stink to drive several hours to see the eclipse and then it be too overcast to actually see it.
The day finally came and my parents decided to drive to Russellville, Arkansas. Mom has family there and they were throwing a party. My brother wanted to go a little further, and a little more south to Mena, Arkansas, where the totality was supposed to last a little longer. We decided to head that way, mostly because it involved backroad and non-Interstate driving and I’d heard bad things about Interstate cloggage after an eclipse.
I thought it was a three-hour drive, but it turned out to be closer to four. We made a pitstop and the roads were pretty twisty, and there was traffic. Not too bad traffic, but traffic just the same.
We made it about an hour before the eclipse started, and it would be about 45 minutes after that before the totality. Had this been better planned we would have gone up into the mountains of this part of Arkansas and gotten a prettier view, but instead we wound up in the parking lot of some strip mall.
There was a pretty good crowd there, but it wasn’t overly full. There was an excitement in the air. People were wandering around greeting each other. We talked about where we were from and if we’d seen one before.
There was much excitement around a couple of trees. When it gets close to a full eclipse the shadows turn to crescent moons. We all kept putting on our glasses and staring at the sun.
“It’s getting real close” someone would say and we’d all agree.
Then finally, it did come.
It was awesome. The sky turns dark, not full dark especially in that parking lot with lights all around, but weirdly dark for the middle of an otherwise sunny day. Through our glasses, we could see the sci-fi image of a dark ball around the sun, with light peaking out from the edges.
I tried to get a photo, but again being unprepared I wasn’t able to snap much. What you see above was with my phone through those eclipse glasses. Still, it’s kind of cool I think. But no photo will do it justice.
Getting home was an even longer drive. Coming to an eclipse everybody leaves at a different time. People drove in yesterday and the day before. But once it is over, everybody leaves. We chose backroads again and the traffic was heavy but steadily moving. My parents weren’t so lucky. They are still stuck in traffic on I-40.
So, it was about 8 hours of driving for an event that lasted about ten minutes.
Worth every ounce of it. If you didn’t get a chance I highly recommend the next one. If you did I’d love to hear your experience and see some photos.
themidnightcafe.org 
I remember a total eclipse in 1984. Of course, there wasn’t an internet, then, so a lot of the information about it came from newspapers and magazines. My high school, at that time, allowed students to eat outside if they chose, but THAT day, they corralled us all inside, because a lot of the information the administrators had read was very faulty. I had, on the other hand, had read all about the occurrence in Scientific American and Astronomy magazine (probably not typical for a 14 year old). When the time came for its totality, actually a few minutes before, I crawled out my classroom window. I looked directly at it when the time came (there was no such frigging thing as “eclipse glasses”, or at least no one knew about them at the time, and I suffered no ill effects. The one very strange thing that I remember was the quality of light at that time. One thing that was (and still is) very odd to me is that there were NO SHADOWS. I got into major trouble for crawling out the window…not so much because I had done it, I think, but that there were 15-20 other kids that followed me out. I do know, for a fact, that I would do exactly the same thing now as I did then. It was an experience I will never forget.
That’s terrific. It really is a beautiful, strange thing.
25 years ago we travelled from Johannesburg, South Africa to Lusaka, Zambia to see a total eclipse. A our 2500km one way. It was completely worth it. I think it lasted about 6 minutes. We met Indian and American tourists who would travel all over the world to see an eclipse.
Again, an experience that needs to be……….. um, experience
Hi Mat, We are lucky enough to live right in the path of totality. I been hearing the hype for months and was fairly skeptical. That coupled with the perpetually cloudy weather we get here didn’t get me too excited about seeing much. I was wrong. We sat in the front yard and watched the entire thing. It was just like it was billed, even more so. The corona was awesome. I haven’t seen anything like it in my 73 years. I won’t soon forget it. Glad I got to witness it. Cheers, Mike
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I’m so glad you got to see it. It really was fantastic.
Great write-up. We are in Atlanta, so we got like 87% totality I think, but nothing like the 2017 one where we had almost total eclipse.
I’m glad you got to see it. Time to listen to some Pink Floyd now.