The Eclipse

The total solar eclipse of the sun was yesterday, passing across the US. It was close to us, up in Wyoming, and Delaney really wanted to go, so we did. I’d purchased glasses a few weeks ago, and after returning home Sunday from India, I got up early and we left yesterday. It was around a 3.5 hour drive, and our plan was go go straight North towards Glendow, WY.

Lots of traffic on I-25 once we hit Fort Collins. We kept moving, but slow. Eventually, we hit WY, where I was couldn’t quite get the sign.

From there, Delaney kept checking the sun with glasses as we drove, and said at some point he could see the moon starting to eclipse. I couldn’t tell, but we pushed and stopped just before Glendow, pulling off on a side road with a lot of other people. The sun looked normal, but once I got the glasses on, this is roughly what I saw.

That’s a NASA photo, but it was amazing to see the moon slowly move and cover the sun.

What was incredible is that we couldn’t really tell the eclipse was happening. Even when things were around 70-80%, we just noticed a little dimming in the distance. Only when things were 90%+ covered did the sky him and then it went quick. It got cold as well, and from a 82-84F day, it got down to the 70s quickly.

There were some neat pics on Ars Technica, and this one is what we saw when we were in totality. Delaney was super excited by this and kept commenting on how neat it was.

What was interesting was that the distance looked like twilight. The mountains had the deep blue sky above them, fading to an orange on the horizon. It was really a surreal, amazing experience. I wouldn’t have gone alone, but I was glad Delaney wanted to go and it was a good day for us.

This ended up being an all day trip, with us getting home around 5:30. We did enjoy it, listening to some Revisionist History podcasts and talking about the topics. Lots of traffic, and amazing how many people went north for the event. I’d guess there were easily tens of thousands of cars packing I-25.

A good day with my middle boy, and that’s it. Today we head to UC Boulder to check him in for college.