2017 Eclipse

So, being a mother to 4 kiddos, the oldest 2 of which LOVE science and being only barely south of the edge of totality... we made a trek up to Wyoming to see the eclipse.

After arriving at 4 am and sleeping in the back of the car... I can still say it was totally worth it!

I got to wake up after just 3 hours of sleep to these smiling faces :)

But really... it was okay leading up to totality; kinda cool to hold the glasses up and see the sun becoming more and more eclipsed, but once we hit totality it was a whole new level of unbelievably cool!

Here is a short video I took during that time.

You could look right at the sun and see the purest white rays coming out all around the moon. 

There was a 360 sunset at noon.

And even though we were surrounded by several hundred people who had also traveled to see it, it was oddly quiet, almost silent even.

This was the photo of the sun I took with my phone during totality... but truly nothing could do justice to what we saw and experienced in person.

Here are our munchkins enjoying the special day! (Hannah got cold and is in the car, you van see her through the windshield).

In Hannah's defense, it did notably drop in temperature during totality.

The other cool thing that happened is kind of hard to describe, but when the shadow of the moon passed across us there were visible waves that looked like they were moving along the pavement almost like water. So cool.

Yes, we are parked on the side of the freeway.

We stayed the night (what hours were left of it) at a rest stop off the freeway, but by morning there were several hundreds of cars there, parked EVERYWHERE. It felt rather, apocalyptic. People in tents all over every spot of ground available, lines hours long for the restrooms, cars with fuel and provisions strapped to them... it felt like just around the corner you'd expect to see a missing persons board and a first aid tent!

So, with that many people there, we knew as soon as the major event was over the freeway would become a parking lot!

So, we moved out to the very end of the on-ramp and parked. We watched the partial eclipse and all of totality, but as soon as that passed we packed up and peeled out!

We literally saw the freeway fill up behind us!

I am so glad that we took the opportunity to go and see this rare event!

Wish I could have captured the coolness better!