Hello folks, and welcome to Snapshots with Steven! On this blog I'll use photos to help tell stories of interesting experiences, starting with my trip to see the recent total solar eclipse.
It was late July, about a month before the August 21st solar eclipse, when I decided I was going to travel down to see totality. I've always thought it would be incredibly cool to experience a total solar eclipse, and since this one was only an 8 hour drive away (without traffic) I figured it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Initially it was going to be a solo road-trip, but later on my mom decided she would like to come as well. The day before the eclipse (Sunday the 20th) is when we drove down, and
Madras, Oregon was our destination.
The above photo is of Mt Hood, taken out the windshield of our car as we were driving along Highway 26. You can also see that the traffic is flowing smoothly, which was the case for pretty much the whole drive down. Our only slow down was around the Seattle area, and that likely had nothing to do with the upcoming eclipse.
Madras was a very popular place to view the eclipse, as it was centered on the path of totality and it had the best odds to have clear skies. It's estimated about 100,000 visitors flocked to the Madras area for the eclipse, which is a lot for a town with a population of less than 7,000. There were quite a few places to camp in and around Madras, but the two biggest were Oregon Solarfest and Solar-Port (which is where we camped).
You can begin to see the size of the Oregon Solarfest campground above, but what's visible was really just the tip of the iceberg. The campground, which was set up in a field just north of town, seemed to stretch on forever.
Solar-Port meanwhile, was located in a field right next to the Madras Municipal Airport. It consisted of three large fields, one for RV's, one just for cars, and our field which was for folks with both cars with tents. Half of our field was packed (the half nearest the entrance), but we choose a spot at the other end where it was less crowded. Since we were next to the airport we had a great view of all the planes flying in, and there were many planes flying in both on Sunday evening and Monday morning.
One of the airplanes actually photobombed a photo I was trying to take of the sunset. Okay that's not true, I meant to take a photo of the airplane, but with so many planes flying in it could have easily of happened. The photo also shows how uncrowded our end of the field was, but the other side was much more densely packed.
The partial phase of eclipse (when the moon first starts to cover the sun), began at 9:06 am on Monday morning. It would take over an hour before totality (when the moon completely covers the sun) would arrive at 10:19 am. At first not much happens during the partial phase (except for there being part of the Sun missing), but as it progresses things start to get weird, shadows look much sharper (instead of fuzzy), it gets noticeably darker, and the temperature begins to drop. The temperature drop wasn't subtle either, it was almost chilly by the time totality arrived.
And hey look, it's me! That photo was taken near the start of the partial phase, when there was only a small divot missing from the sun. I'm keeping a good eye on the eclipsed sun through my cardboard eclipse glasses.
Totality was breathtaking. The sun just disappeared, and in its place was a beautiful ring of light glowing in the sky. It was such an unfamiliar experience, I think it basically hypnotized me for the first twenty seconds or so, all I could was stare at it with my jaw dropped. I was expecting totality to be an incredibly amazing sight (which is was), but I wasn't expecting it to affect me the way it did. It all lasted for only two minutes, but those are two minutes I'll never forget.
This close up view of the eclipse sun was taken by NASA photographer Aubrey Gemignani, who was also somewhere in Madras. It's one of the best photos I've seen of the eclipse, but it still pales in comparison to what it looked like in person. You could see much more detail in the sun's corona (the sun's atmosphere), extending even farther out from the sun. With a camera, the bright spots of the corona tend to drown out the fainter details.
During totality the whole sky looked completely foreign as well. The entire horizon was lit up in a surreal 360° sunset/sunrise. The sky got darker from there on up, and above us it appeared almost as dark as the night. One planet was clearly visible overhead, which I believe was Venus. It was just so strange to experience darkness in the middle of the day.
The above photo by Stan Honda was also taken from someplace in Madras. It shows the sunset/sunrise along the horizon, which wrapped around all 360°. Once again though, the view was much more impressive in person, the sky was darker than it appears in the photo, and the sunset/sunrise looked more vivid.
Totality ended very suddenly. One moment there was darkness, and the next moment it was light out again. The sky turned back to its normal blue, shadows reappeared on the ground, it was almost as if totality was just a dream. Immediately after totality ended people starting to jump in their cars and leave, trying to beat the onslaught of departing traffic. We left fairly quickly as well, but not before I snapped several more photos of the partially eclipsed sun.
This was one of my photos from shortly after totality. It was taken with just an old point-and-shoot camera with a pair of solar glasses covering the lens. There are much better photos out there, done by professional photographers with proper camera set-ups, but I wanted to have a few photos of my own as well.
The traffic after totality was a nightmare. It took us about 2 hours to get the 3 km from our field onto the highway (we went home on Highway 97 instead of Highway 26), which is normally a 5 minute drive. The traffic got slightly better after that, but it still took us around 8 hours in total to get to
Biggs Junction, which should only take about an hour and a half. We knew the traffic would be terrible though, and it was still totally worth it.
I didn't think to take any photos of the traffic myself, but the above photo (from
KOIN.com) shows what the gridlock was like. This was looking south into Madras, and the vehicles were barely moving in either direction.
Eventually the traffic did ease up. In total our trip home took about 16 hours of driving (split up by a brief stop for sleep at a hotel along the way), instead of the 8 hours it would take with normal traffic. But the terrible traffic is easily forgotten, what I'll always remember is the eclipse itself, the beauty of the corona, the uniqueness of the sky during totality, the sudden drop in temperature, and in general how remarkable the whole experience was.
This photo was taken after the worst of the traffic was over. I believe these wind turbines were just south of
Goldendale, Washington, but I could be mistaken.
So that was my trip to see a total solar eclipse, I hope you enjoyed hearing about it! Also, I highly recommend experiencing at least one total solar eclipse in your lifetime, it's an incredible sight to witness first hand. The next total eclipse happens on
July 2nd, 2019 in Chile and Argentina, but if you live in North America your best option is probably the
April 8, 2024 eclipse which passes through Mexico, the United States, and eastern Canada.
By the way, I don't plan on updating this blog very often (it could be years before another post, if there are any future posts at all), so don't keep coming back checking for new content.
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