Two minutes under the shadow of the moon

Flashback

I still flash on it. The visual memory of my first total eclipse. I remember watching the sun through my solar glasses and seeing the last red bit of crescent disappear to nothing and taking the glasses off. I can still see the coronal mass ejections hanging in space above the sun before falling back again into the sun. I think back on what I saw and consider the scale of what I saw. I can still see the black disk of the moon in front of the sun. I can vividly recall seeing Venus off to the right of my field of view. I looked to the horizon and saw the light shining on earth beyond the shadow. It was a mini-dusk in the middle of the day.

I had a chance to see an eclipse back in 1991, in Hawaii no less, but it was cloudy, and a mere 300 yards away, they got the full show in clear blue sky. But I did not know it until after it happened. For the next 26 years, I patiently awaited an opportunity to see another eclipse and finally it came. On Monday, August 21st, 2017, I finally got to see a total eclipse of the sun. My pilgrimage to Rexburg, Idaho was, at face value, to see the eclipse, but it became something more than that. Even for all the trouble, the travel, the planning, the traffic, it was still worth the trip.

What's the plan, man?

We planned almost everything out. My wife researched and bought the solar glasses, ISO certified as safe to use from B&H Photo. A month ago, we went to Idaho Falls and stayed for the night. While we were there, we saw the Snake River hydroelectric project and stayed the night to look around. We even went to the zoo for the kids.

But when I talked with the Idaho Falls tourism bureau, they were all over the eclipse. They had the glasses, books, and other knick knacks. While I was there, I learned of a website, eieclipse.com. There, I found a map of totality and quickly zeroed in on what is in the center of the path of totality. There was a thin blue line running down the middle. That was where I wanted to be. Rexburg just happened to be just a mile or two north of that line. I explained what I found to my wife, @athomemom, and we decided to go there.

The next morning, we went to Rexburg and found a nice park with playgrounds, tall trees and a big green field. That field seemed like the perfect place to view the eclipse so we staked out a viewing area at Porter Park in Rexburg a month in advance.

We had reserved a hotel room in Pocatello for the eclipse, but decided that it would only be a 3 or 4 hour drive going home, so we didn't need the room anymore, or so we thought.

A month goes by quickly when you're busy. I had arranged to have that day off. We bought what we needed for food, and as it happens, my mom had planned to visit that week so she came along for the ride and the show.

Getting there was the easy part

On the day of the eclipse, we left the house at a little before 4am and drove all the way to Rexburg, only stopping at a few rest stops as the need arose. It was early and traffic was heavy, but it was not congested to the point of stopping. As we got further and further away from the big towns, traffic thinned. We arrived in Rexburg before 9 and parked the car on a side road near the park.

From there it seemed like any other morning in the park. A cool, sunny day, even a bit chilly, but as the sun rose, so did the temps. The park already had people staking out a place to sit and watch the eclipse. We set up camp and while we did that, our kids were getting to know the other kids in the park. Before we knew it, my older daughter already made friends with another girl. They were playing together as we waited. To simplify things for me, we moved our camp over to the other camp with the girl so that it would be easier for us to watch the kids.

At 10:15, the moon started to take a bite out of the sun. I could see it with my glasses, but our new friends had a telescope trained on the sun and they were projecting an image of the eclipse onto a large paper pad. Others had phones and telescopes imaging the sun. There was a nice cluster of professionals taking video and pictures.

Wait, where's my little kid?

As the moon slowly occluded the sun, we were all looking at the sun with our solar glasses. Then one moment, I looked and my younger 2-year old daughter wasn't where I saw her just a few minutes ago. I couldn't see her anywhere. 30 minutes before the totality, my mom, my wife and myself were all in a mad search for our daughter.

Our new friends still had their heads on. The mother of our daughter's new friend, having heard of our distress, was already on it. She found the police van and talked to the police. There she learned that our daughter had wandered to the playground and got lost coming back. So she sat at a blanket nearby, not really sure who she was with.

The people sitting on that blanket didn't know who she was, so they took our daughter to the police van. The police then put her back on the playground. The mother of our new friend found our daughter and I picked her up and carried her back. Tears and sighs of relief were ours with our daughter back in our arms. I am so grateful to our new friends for their help!

Totality

With 15 minutes left to go before totality, we all settled down to watch. I had my older daughter in my lap and my wife had our younger daughter firmly in her grasp.

The light grew dimmer by the minute. The temperature was dropping. The shadows took on a different sort of hue, kind of blue. Everyone got quiet and waited. We watched through our solar glasses as the crescent of the sun behind the moon grew thinner and thinner. And then, it was gone. For almost two minutes, we enjoyed the spectacle of the sun's corona, the nearly night sky and the sight of Venus during mid-day.

The dimming of the sunlight during the eclipse was eerie to say the least. I kept thinking of all the images I've seen of the surface of Mars - it was kind of like that. And when totality hit, it was like a mid-day twilight. I remember looking at the moon with the fire of the sun behind it until a spark appeared and then totality was over. I had to put the solar glasses back on for the remainder of the show.

The grass was now cold in the park. The air was cold and some people re-considered their decision not to bring a jacket or a sweater. I sat for awhile considering what I had seen and enjoyed the dim light of the sight as I had seen, before totality. As the light grew closer to daylight, I took my kids back to the playground for they wanted to ride the swing, the slide and climb where they could.

As my kids played on the playground, I used the solar glasses to check on the sun again, tracking the transit of the moon across the sun. We stayed until the end of the eclipse, then said our goodbyes to our new friends and then we left.

The mother of all traffic jams

We expected that traffic would be heavy, and had no problem waiting in line to get to the highway. Once we got on the highway, traffic was slow. Very slow. We'd move a little and then stop for minutes at a time. We tried alternate routes, but no matter where we went, if we were going south, there was a wall of cars ahead of us.

It was the mother of all traffic jams as far as I could see. At one point, on a side road, I had to stop and ask a stranger if I could use their facilities in their house. That side road was only a few miles, but we spent about 40 minutes just milling through that road to get to the end and get out.

In all, it took about 10 hours to get home, and I still had to work the next day. We left shortly after the end of the eclipse, around 1:30 and got home around 11:30. This wasn't even a natural disaster and the highways were jammed. As I drove home, I could see all the jockeying for position, people driving on the shoulder, people getting irritated. But I was using every resource to stay focused and to let the feelings pass. I didn't allow irritation to surface for that would drain my energy.

On the way, we watched the sun set and I realized that we had watched the sunrise, the eclipse and the sunset all in one day of driving.

An eclipse is better with friends and family

Even with all that trouble, I'm already planning on the next eclipse. It will be different next time and we will be a little bit older by then, too. I also learned that going there with my family made the experience that much better. In 1991, I didn't have a family of my own. I watched it on my own in a sense, even though I was with my dad and my sister and his significant other at the time. It was tense and we weren't really talking then. I was hoping to reconnect with Dad through an eclipse then. I did not enjoy that experience.

This time, bringing my family and letting my kids make new friends brought new friends for me, too. We're already planning a lunch date with our families together. I intended this experience to be a gift for my family, a memory that we will never forget and that we can talk about again and again if we want to. I wanted my daughters to have a memory of the black disk covering the sun for their own set of treasures in life. I am grateful that my Mom could see it with us, too.

The solar eclipse was the greatest show on earth. I'm looking forward to my next one in a few short years.