After 2012’s annular Solar eclipse, we studied the eclipse calendar and found out that the next one, a total eclipse, will take place in August 2017, and not just somewhere, but in Oregon. The closest location to us would be in Salem, only one hour of driving from home. Super excited, we added the mark to our calendar to not forget about it.
So when August 2017 finally came, we weren’t ready that every newspaper and news channel would warn about approximately one million of visitors expected from other states. We were told that they will drink all water and eat all food, so Oregonians, especially those living in Portland metro area need to be ready for that. And also all roads will become a parking lot – since so many cars are expected.
All camping sites in the area of total eclipse were sold out ages ago, and all hotels booked out too. But we weren’t worried since we wanted to go wild camping somewhere in BLM lands. We didn’t care about using bushes as a bathroom. More important for us was to not be in the crowd. What we were actually worried about was the weather – the forecast 10 days before the eclipse promised 50% to 80% chance of rain.
The coworkers started hysterically laughing and joking every time someone expressed his wiliness to go and watch the totality – i.e. “good luck to spend a day in traffic”. Facebook and other social network were full of articles where people had tried to predict which roads would be used by visitors, and that they should be avoided by any case. The eclipse was called as ‘apocalyclipse’ – combination of apocalypse and eclipse.
We had our own plan, and decided to leave home on Saturday – that would give us more time to find a place to camp till Monday, when the eclipse will happened. To our big surprise, the roads weren’t busier than usual. The only one thing that was totally obvious is that every other car was with license plates from some other state. Near Madras we spotted the hugest ground camp I’ve ever seen. We suppose there were several thousands of people. We were so amazed that we didn’t even think to take a picture of that camp.
But when we left the highway and went deeper the BLM land, we saw almost no people around. So it wasn’t difficult at all to find the suitable hill. After setting up our camp we started to cook dinner.
One of those hills we picked up for camping
Sunset colored the hills in very bright colors
When it became dark we spent sometime outside, and then kids went to sleep ‘upstairs’ and us, parents, ‘downstairs’. The night was really quiet.
Mosquito dinner time
Already in the sunny Sunday morning we felt that anticipation, tomorrow will be the eclipse! We made pancakes for the breakfast and had a nice walk right before it became too hot.
And then everyone sat somewhere, doing whatever they wanted. Someone was reading, someone was drawing, someone was knitting and someone practiced to make a pictures of the sun. Guess who did what 🙂
Sun halo
Practicing to make a sun picture with the filters
Kids began begging me to make pancakes for dinner and I did so, however we wanted to make some vegetables with the sausages too. Everything went so well, we found quiet corner in our camp (to hide the stove from the wind), made a big pile of pancakes and yummy vegetables. however there weren’t enough space for all of us to seat and eat and we tried to move the portable table back to it location. During that move our pan with vegetables fell into the ground, spreading out its contents all over the place. Oh well. We mixed our usual dry-frozen food and ate those. It was a nice dinner still – pancakes survived! – for all of us and bugs and ants too 🙂
Another beautiful and colorful sunset
Soon after it got dark everyone went to the Dream country.
The Milky Way
In the morning we had a lot to do before the eclipse – to eat, to clean up after ourselves, to pack all our belongings (to be ready to drive home right after), but also to be ready for eclipse itself, have all cameras ready and so on. Eclipse was expected soon after 9 am and soon one or other family member looks to the sun through special eclipse glasses, checking if it is time. After one of that moments someone noticed that sun looks like something bites a piece of it. It did started!
First nothing changed, but soon we had a feeling that it did got darker. A little bit, like sun just hid behind the cloud, but at the same time we saw shadows and they were as black as usual.
It looks like a sunset is close. But it is only 9 am
Finally the Moon covers all Sun’s disk. And all that was shinning in the sky for a couple of minutes was the Sun’s corona. So beautiful and magical, and very unusual at the same time – no surprise people had been freaked out in the past. Everything went down, birds didn’t made any sound, all bugs, flies and other creatures hid somewhere, and it was super quiet – except for ours and our camp neighbors’ excited sounds.
This how the Sun looked like with bare eyes
This is edited – and prominents are visible!!!
Not as dark as I thought. But cold, yes!
Different cameras in work
Soon enough the first ray of sunlight once more fell upon the frozen earth, and the sun began to slowly emerge from the shadow of the moon. The changes in light levels reversed, the bugs and worms crawled back out and birds resumed their chirping. We waited until the very end of the eclipse before hopping into our car. There was still over 5 hours of driving ahead of us, and many others heading in the same direction. And we really didn’t want to get caught in traffic!
Surprisingly enough, we got home largely unaffected by the traffic, though there are stories of people who spent 8 – 10 hours on the road.