August 21st - solar eclipse in Virginia, next one will come in 2024 (from Russian immigrant)

It's a little late for solar eclipse review, but better later than never. I would like to share my experience of watching it in Virginia.

It happened on August 21st (Monday), it seems like half of the VA didn't work that day even though the visibility in VA and DC was only 80%. Me, my husband, brother and a friend decided to drive to Shenandoah National Park and watch it there. On the way to the park we decided to stop at the Walmart and get those fancy solar eclipse glasses. To be honest I didn't even know about the existing of "solar eclipse glasses" until August 21st, it's always surprising to me how Americans are getting prepared for these kind of events/phenomenons. When I lived in Russia we used to watch solar eclipse through an X-ray film or beer glasses (but beer glass should be the darkest in color as possible). Back then we didn't have solar eclipse glasses, but it was back in 90s...

Anyways, back to Walmart - all glasses were sold out weeks ago. I wasn't disappointed since I had couple X-ray films with me I brought from Russia. Back home when you do your X-ray, you are allowed to take it home. So I had them all stored in one place, in case I do major physical check up here in US.

There were a lot of people when we got to the park , and entrance fee was pretty expensive - $25. We thought about turning back, but it was kind of too late and this phenomenon was last seen 38 years ago in US...

Most of the people watched it through solar eclipse glasses, others made some carton boxes, but I didn't notice anyone watching it through an X-ray film, I guess it's against the safety rules...
Since it was a social "event", everybody was pretty friendly, some people came to me and asked if they can use my X-ray films, we talked, I also asked if i can use their fancy glasses :) There were some people who didn't bring any tools to watch solar eclipse, they were hoping to see something through regular sun glasses... Unfortunately, they just wasted their time, because 80% in VA it's not 100% like in South Carolina.

By the way, you still can purchase solar eclipse glasses, posters, T-shirts, solar eclipse atlas, books, wait - EVEN eclipse themed organic wines! Here is the website in case you missed that phenomenon and couple images we took in Shenandoah.