The Event of a Lifetime

Seven months ago, Ellyn made our reservation in Glenrock, WY at the Platte River Campground. At that time, she had checked with several campgrounds in the Casper, WY area and everything was full. Platte River was parking people in an open field with no services and still had room available. This was very fortuitous for us. It was probably the best of all places for us to be for the Great American Eclipse. We arrived on site on August 17th, quite early for the eclipse on the 21st, and just about the first camper to arrive in the field. There was one RV way down toward the river and another near a house to the west, who actually had service hook ups, but we were all by ourselves initially. Over the next few days, RVs, campers, and tenters moved in. By the time eclipse day arrived, there were an estimated 500 campsites, and probably more than 1000 people were ready for the event of a generation, for many, of a lifetime.

The view from atop our RV looking toward the Platte River.

Eclipse morning, the RV parking area.

Eclipse morning, the camping area towards the river.

By arriving early, we had lots of time for exploring the area and enjoying the little town of Glenrock. We quickly found out where the town got its name. This was a spot along the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails where people forded the river. Not too far from the campground is a large rock just off the road know as the “Rock in the Glen”. There are names and dates carved into the rock in many places form the people who came through the area on their way west. Geoff climbed up near the top of the rock and realized this would be a great place to view the eclipse. The rolling hills across the river would be covered by the moons shadow and you could probably get a great video of it rolling in and out.

We also got to know the town a little bit and the very friendly people in it. They seemed really happy to see the massive influx of people and the business it was bringing in. They had some local events set up for the weekend approaching the eclipse as well. There was a Prairie Days event in the town park and a Quilt and Art Show in the local Recreation Center. We took in these two events briefly and enjoyed them. We saw a recreation of the Pony Express and a fashion show of period dress for women in the 1800s.

Geoff had signed up in March for a project headed up by UC Berkeley and Google to enlist amateur photographers across the entire path of the eclipse to send them their photographs during totality. Then they would put them together into a single video showing the whole 90 minutes of totality. There had been video conference calls and Google Group for discussion of various aspects of the project and ideas on how to photograph the eclipse. Geoff had been very active in this project for many months and had worked hard on making sure he would be able to get good pictures and also be able to enjoy the eclipse itself. One of the key organizers of the project was i Casper, WY about 20 minutes away from Glenrock. She called for a meet-up on Friday before the eclipse in a bar in Casper. We went and had a great time talking with her and the other photographers who showed up. There were about 12 of us there and a Google video crew showed up and took video of us in our discussions. They ended up paying for the food we ate at the bar and the bar must have thought this was great publicity for them because they paid for our drinks.

So the day finally arrived, after many months of planning and many miles of travel. It was time to perform. Geoff was up before dawn and had all his equipment set up with more than two hours to go. There was not a cloud in the sky and the temperature was supposed to be in the low 70s at the start of the eclipse (first contact or C1 to the “umbraphiles”). The cosmos waits for no one so, right on schedule, the moon began covering the sun. Over the next hour, the sun slowly disappeared and the light became noticeably dimmer and the air cooler. Geoff had a timer running to give him alerts at key points during the eclipse. He did have some problems with the program on his computer that was running the cameras, but he discovered what was happening and had things working smoothly by the time totality occurred.

Finally, the sun was totally covered and the moon’s shadow enveloped us. A whoop went up from the crowd and cameras were clicking like crazy in every direction. The sun’s corona was bright in the sky over our heads and a twilight glow lit up the horizon in every direction. There was so much to see and so little time to see it. We can barely remember now what we were seeing. Suddenly Geoff’s timer indicated that it was time to look away from the sun and put your eclipse glasses back on. The solar disk started to peek out from behind the moon again and the landscape lit up again.

Again, it became a waiting game, this time until final contact (C4) at around 1:15 PM, about 3 hours after it started. Geoff’s cameras continued recording the fading eclipse phases until finally the inverter connected to the battery running all of the electronics stopped. At this point, Geoff disconnected his cameras and started reviewing what had been recorded. He was not disappointed. He started showing his results to people around him and they loved it. Over the next few days, he continued handling these pictures and uploaded all of his totality images to the servers for the Megamovie Project. Here is a sample of the images he captured.

Departure Time

After more than two months in Boston to welcome Henry and play with Simone, the time has come for us to head out to the rest of our Summer Adventure. Henry is now 7 weeks old and starting to respond to attention with some tentative smiles and almost a laugh. Simone is becoming such a little person and is picking up more and more of the nuances of language structure. We were surprised on several occasions to find if her using adjectives and adverbs at the correct point and getting her tense and pronouns correct. It is fun to see how a young mind parses language without very much real instructions but just by observation. Of course, this means it is increasingly important for the adults around her to be careful of their language because she will parrot anything she hears.

While we were in Boston, we did get an opportunity to fly to Portland Oregon for a few days for the first Birthday of our second Grandson, Marty. It was great fun to catch up with the West Coast fam and do see Marty’s advancement towards walking. He was getting very close. And we got some time with Oliver too. It was fun to take him to the local McDonalds and see him happily climbing the indoor play area that he could barely negotiate when we took him there last Fall.

Now we are taking about a month to drive the RV from Boston to Portland via some sight-seeing and visiting with friends and family along the way. Our first stop was in New Jersey, where we met up with our Florida friends, Dave and Myra at their daughters house. We were there on Friday for a delicious Shabbot dinner after taking a refreshing dip in their pool on a hot day. The drive was a short one but the worst part of it was getting through NYC. Geoff is hoping that is the worst of the traffic on our trip.

From there, we headed west through Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and into Kentucky. We are here now and planning to take a tour of Mammoth Cave tomorrow. But on the way, we stopped off for lunch near Lexington, KY, and visited with our nephew Robert, his wife Katie and their daughter Emily. It was great of them to move right into our path across the country just in time to see us. We have now had opportunities to visit with all of our nieces and nephews in the past two years. It is great to be mobile.

After Cave Country, we are heading to St. Louis, Missouri and Boulder, Colorado to visit with long-time friends in both places before moving to our choice viewing spot for the Great American Solar Eclipse on August 21st (only two weeks away at this writing!). We will post more about our trip after that event.