So here's some pictures of the eclipse itself and some pics of a few areas we visited.
On Sunday afternoon, we drove from St. Louis to a little town in the middle of the Ozarks called Ellington, MO, population just under 900. We checked into the only motel in town, which I actually booked back in November in anticipation of everything selling out if I waited any longer. Plus, they were practically the ONLY accommodation not jacking up their rates to an absolutely ridiculous level simply because of this celestial event (Poplar Bluff, MO hotel rooms, all big name chains, were charging minimum $500/night. This motel was $125/night).
It was actually really nice! We had to book two rooms due to their size; one for us and one for my parents who joined us. It was a little crammed with our 3 boys, but we managed.
Monday morning the main party in town was at the local high school. So we headed over there at 10:30am (3 1/2 hours before totality) in anticipation of bigger crowds. Well, no big crowds showed up and basically anyone who showed up was from out of town. There were maybe 100 people on this field behind the high school gym.
Here we are just as the eclipse was starting. I was hoping to sneak a picture in, but my mom noticed and had to do a pose:
My 15 year old was coming back from the Mexican restaurant food truck seen in the background:
Sidenote: That is Checo's Mexican Restaurant in Ellington. After living in Denver for 28 years, I do not have very high expectations from Mexican restaurants in the Midwest and especially those in southern Missouri, where it is unofficially the start of "the south." We ate at their actual restaurant on Sunday evening and we were thoroughly impressed! This was dang good Mexican food that could actually rival the authentic places in Denver and much of the southwest! If you do somehow stumble into Ellington, stop at Checco's!
And yes, my dad actually did enjoy it! I just caught him taking a break from looking up with the pictures.
So at this point, the eclipse was starting to look like this:
Further along, within 20 minutes of totality, it's getting noticeably dim and the temperature has started to drop at this point:
Time for the real show to begin!
2 minutes to totality:
At this point, planets and some stars were appearing.
We got 3 1/2 minutes of full totality!
Here is a 360 pano shot I got with my cell phone showing evening/morning "twilight":
Here is one I got with my phone of the totality:
(the blurred lights by the building are the lights from one of the food trailers. That one sold ice cream. The other "blur" kind of close to the sun was planet Venus. Again, my phone had trouble focusing when it was completely screwed up on the odd lighting)
All of the actual eclipse close-ups were taken by my Sony Handycam home video camera! Our cell phones wouldn't focus well on the eclipse because they were trying to adjust to bring in as much light as possible and it was all completely distorted. Amazing, all that technology crammed into our phones and they couldn't include a setting to adjust the darkness on the camera.
So totality passes and almost right away, the amount of sunlight returns to normal. Even just a sliver of the sun it's almost as bright as it normally is. That is one of the biggest things I learned about total solar eclipses. You need to experience the full totality or don't even bother. Even at just 98% coverage, it still is barely noticeable. Some people think that amount is "good enough." Trust me, it's not.
One final shot of the moon exiting the sun before we loaded up:
After we loaded up our stuff and left the high school, we decided to visit a couple of attractions in the area. First was Blue Spring. This is one of Missouri's largest springs and has a beautiful deep blue color. This feeds into the Current River, which is a popular river for kayaking and canoeing.
On the half mile hike to the spring, which my youngest may as well have thought it was an overnight back-packing trip.
Here's Blue Spring:
After Blue Spring, we headed another 15 miles away to Rocky Falls; which is along a creek that also flows into the Current River:
Next day, Tuesday, we checked out of the motel in Ellington and went 20 miles south to another town called Van Buren and visited Big Spring, which is the largest spring in Missouri at 288 gallons per day. Another really nice area:
There are a couple of small caves behind Big Spring:
On an unofficial overlook above Big Spring:
And then, we headed home and made it without sitting in traffic! We even stopped by Casey's for a pizza lunch!
So another total solar eclipse is in the books and it was a great one especially when the next two don't happen for another 20 years for Montana and ND (will HPG still be living there for that one?), and 21 years until the next cross-country eclipse.
