Path of Totality

Yup. We did it. We joined the throngs headed into Wyoming to be in the path of totality for yesterday's total eclipse. :) Given that we're fortunate enough to live just a couple hours from the path, we opted not to stay overnight there but to just get up early and drive. We left home just after 6am...

We made a mental note that perhaps we should have driven through town before getting onto I-25 with the eclipse traffic but stuck it out...averaging about 25-30 mph from home to the Wyoming border. Just inside the border, we stopped at the first rest area as a precaution. I must comment here that it was a bit surreal...all of the women I saw agreed with me. We walked in and there was a long line--for the MEN'S room! No waiting at all for the women's. Weird stuff but lots of happy, if confused, women. :) 

After that, we got back on the road...

(Some boys were maybe more awake than others, lol.) It was a pretty quiet and uneventful drive. We pulled off again at the rest area just north of Wheatland, WY. I wish I would have taken a picture, but you'd really have needed an aerial view to understand the scope of how crowded it was. It took us completely by surprise (you couldn't see it from I-25, so you just got off the exit and were amazed). Apparently, that was one of the first areas within the path of totality and people had decided that was close enough. Cars were everywhere (well past just the parking lot--lining the road on both sides and in fields all around)...the lines for the actual bathrooms at the rest area were out longer than the parking lot (we opted not to stop, obviously)...but everyone seemed happy. We kept going...

Rather than head into Glendo, WY (which was our original plan along with thousands of others), we turned off on some back roads and ended up just SE of town...

It was a pretty nice spot...not crowded at all...quiet...almost in the middle of the path of totality. And, we even had our own hawk family...

We parked around 10am (yes, it took about 4 hours to make a normally 2 hour drive and we were delighted that it was that short) and proceeded to play some games and talk about the upcoming school year and eat an early lunch. We also kept regular tabs on the progress of the eclipse...

Yeah. Some of my crew may have been annoyed by my wanting pictures and decided to ham it up, lol. 

I'm sad we didn't really do much prep for the event...didn't do any of the fun activities I saw people posting online with shadows and Moon Pies and such. But. I did take a picture of our shadows...

...and I got our eclipse glasses weeks and weeks ago. So there's that. :) 

Anyhow, finally the totality was upon us:

And it was lovely. And totally worth the day. 

Again, we're sad we didn't plan ahead to bring better equipment for taking photos (we even have a telescope and DSLR camera and tripods and all that), but we experienced it together and enjoyed it. It got eerily dark...the bugs all suddenly came out...it got cooler...we could see stars. Happy sigh.

After that, we got back on the road fairly quickly. When we finally made it back to I-25, we saw this:

So we decided not to get on the interstate and managed to follow back roads for a good while, getting back on the freeway somewhere south of Wheatland and north of Chugwater, ahead of the bulk of the traffic returning from Glendo and Casper. (Must interject here that Apple Maps really should have a way to distinguish between dirt roads and paved roads and that it would be awesome if they could include exit numbers, at least for the freeways.)

Overall, I'm so impressed by how cooperative and pleasant everyone was and how prepared Wyoming seemed to be. At the Chugwater rest area on the way home, I even noticed that someone had lined the top of the stalls with rolls of toilet paper so that they wouldn't have to keep coming in to restock. ;)

We made it home (after just a few stops) at 5pm. (Yes, the return trip took about an hour longer than getting there.) We feel like we did pretty darn well, as I've been seeing pictures of some of the traffic in Wyoming that we managed to miss.

Pretty awesome way to start our school year... :)