Total eclipse of the sun

Fun adventure! My friend Mike invited us to fly up North a couple hundred miles, to Douglas, Wyoming airport, to hang out on the ground, and watch the total eclipse go by. I guess I haven't had the energy, or motivation, or *something*, in recent years, to make the effort to do a lot of fun things I would've jumped on before. My hat's off to Mike, for providing this last minute opportunity, that was easy to accept.

We left early from Front Range airport, in the Denver area, to ensure that they would have room for us at the airport in Douglas, when we got there. We had a pretty flight up, on a nice clear morning. I've always enjoyed being in the air, when a lot of other folks aren't, as the airspace and radio frequencies are a lot less busy, and there's more time and energy available, to just enjoy the experience. We saw a great sunrise, although I only got one mediocre pic of it. There was a little haze, probably from wildfires upwind of us.

We crossed Highway I-25 shortly before landing at Douglas, and noticed that although the northbound traffic was heavy, it appeared to be moving well. That is, until just before Glendo Reservoir, where we heard over 100,000 people were headed for the viewing. They had closed the grass airstrip there, to make room for people to sit. We could see that the Northbound lanes of I-25 were completely stoppped for miles, before the Glendo exit, and we were feeling pretty lucky, to be flying over all that.

Here we are, the motley crew, immediately after arriving in Douglas. I was glad to have brought my windbreaker, as it started out a little chilly in the morning. The rest of the day was beautiful, though.




We got ourselves comfortably ensconced in our parking spot on the recently mowed grass at the Douglas airport, after about an hour and a half flight. We had bought our eclipse viewing glasses at the Boulder Planetarium, when Bob and his brother and sister and nephew were visiting in June. We figured it would be good to have them, so we could step outside and view the 92% eclipse in Denver. Little did we suspect at the time, that we were going to get to use them to view the total eclipse!


Although we enjoyed getting to see the various stages of partial eclipse, the total eclipse was amazing! For one thing, we were able to safely look up at it without any kind of filter, and see the corona around the outside edge. I tried taking a few eclipse pictures with my iPhone, using a cut-up eclipse filter, and was partially successful, at least until the total eclipse occurred. At that point, there was so little light, that the iPhone camera was completely unable to focus. So here is the series of partial eclipse pictures I took.

...but what we actually saw, was more like each of the images in this sequenced picture that was posted by the Smithsonian. You really need a *good* camera, if you want to take pictures like these!

I suppose I should've expected it, but I was pleasantly surprised, by the sudden coolness and stillness, when the moon's shadow came over us. What a really fun experience that was! And I'm so glad, to have been able to get up there and back home, in such a quick and fun way.