The Great American Eclipse

I told Randy I wanted to see the eclipse. At first he was skeptical. I don't blame him, he geninuely thought this was just something that happened frequently enough to see anytime.  It is not. It is amazing coincidence when the sun and the moon line up and block the light for just a little bit on earth. This happens about every 18 months somewhere in the world. The next one to happen in our area is in 7 years.  But who knows where a person might be in 7 years? So I did not want to wait.

First we flew to Atlanta days before the eclipse. We rented a car and decided to stay in Tennessee and see Graceland. Then we went to Arkansas to dig for diamonds, then we headed for the path of totality.  None of this was planned in advance except for the plane ticket and the car rental. We had no reservations and did not know where we were going except that we were going to go to path of totality.

Partial eclipse through the glasses

Luckily we have some friends in Tennessee who have an amazing property with lots of room and it's the highest point in their county. Plus it was just outside of Clarksville, Tennessee- so it was perfect. Everything fell into line, even the weather- which was 100% clear skies!!

The glasses where amazing. I can't figure out how or why anyone would even try to stare at the sun during the eclipse with out glasses. You can see nothing without them. The glasses make all the difference. I tried several times to take pictures with them, but they didn't really come out at all. The total eclipse was completely view able with out glasses. It was amazing. It was like being in a 360 degree sunset. There was dusk all around us, not complete darkness, but dusk. When the sun came back the birds began chirping again, the song they sing in the morning. It was really cool.

Partial Eclipse as seen by the camera with no filter.

We had a lot of fun with it, we made an eclipse box- it worked, we put white paper on the ground and watched the shadow waves, they looked like snakes and we even tried viewing it from the bucket.

The total eclipse was worth it. If you ever have an opportunity to catch one, do it. Just don't forget your glasses so you can watch the phases.

Total eclipse