Eclipseland.

Stacey and I traveled to Tennessee, a little ways north of Nashville, so we could see the 2017 North American total eclipse.

Not to overhype the experience, but it was awesome. Life-changing, even. I’ve been fascinated by astronomy since I was a kid, and seeing the moon block out the sun for a couple of minutes is just mind-blowing for me. Also, it’s beautiful in a way that I’ve never seen captured in a photo.

So I’ve been looking forward to the 2024 American eclipse pretty much since I saw the 2017 one.

Stacey planned ahead and booked a couple of hotel rooms, so we could go to Texas or Arkansas depending on the weather. But as eclipse day got nearer, the forecast for both Texas and Arkansas was rainy or at least cloudy, and that sort of weather can ruin a good eclipse.

So we, along with our friend Kelly, drove up to Clarksville, Tennessee the day before the eclipse. Then we woke up early on eclipse day (Monday April 8), checked the latest weather forecasts, and hit the road.

We were heading toward Metropolis, Illinois, which was in the path of eclipse totality and is also a town that seems to have fun playing up its Superman-adjacent name. But as we drove farther north and west, the weather forecast looked slightly sunnier in Cape Girardeau, Missouri (which I do not know how to pronounce). Plus Cape Girardeau was supposed to get around four minutes of totality. That’s a pretty long time as total solar eclipses go. So we rerouted to Cape Girardeau.

Turns out Cape Girardeau is a lovely town on the Mississippi River. There were plenty of people there watching the eclipse riverside, but it wasn’t too crowded.

The weather cooperated. By the time totality hit, there were only a few high, wispy clouds in the area, nothing that interfered with anyone’s enjoyment the eclipse.

I tried to take a few photos, but, like I said, even the best photos I’ve seen don’t capture the vibe of a total eclipse. When the moon blocks out the sun, the moon is impossibly dark. The sun’s corona shines out around the inky black moon, but it’s not too bright — you can comfortably look at that with your naked eye. The horizon looks like it does right after sunset, but it’s that way 360 degrees, in all directions. The sky where we were at was a very dark blue. Not like night, really, but dark enough that we saw Venus and Jupiter shining through. And, I think, one bright star. But it all happened so fast, that star might have just been a slow moving airplane.

Here is a fun photo that Stacey took of she and I enjoying the pre-totality part of the eclipse.

And here’s another photo that captures a little bit of the vibe — I think you can even see Venus in the photo, below and to the right of the moon/sun. This photo doesn’t do the actual moon/sun justice — when you see a total eclipse in person, the moon and sun are impossibly large in the sky. It seems that way to me, at least. Anyway, my photography is the only thing I have to complain about — everything else about the eclipse was totally awesome.

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