Michelle and I drove to Kane, PA Sunday night, then on to Ashtabula, OH for the eclipse.
We left early Sunday and took a meandering route to Kane through the backwoods of Pennsylvania. Our original plan was to find a place somewhere south of Erie, but the weather forecast looked questionable. So, armed with hyper-local cloud forecasts from the Astrospheric app, we decided to drive west until noon, then decide. We arrived in Ashtabula by noontime, and there we actually saw the sun. Ducking into a park by Lake Erie, we found one of the last parking spots. It was a short walk to lunch, and then back again to await the celestial festivities.
Here are some pics from the trip:
Others have written about the unique experience totality represents. I’d seen a partial eclipse in Denver as a high school student, so the twinkly light preceding it was familiar. But totality was awesome in the fullest sense of that word. Time stopped, and a ring of fire replaced the sun we too easily take for granted. Lost in the reverie, I nearly forgot to remove the sun filter from my Seestar S50. But I did remove it, just in time to capture a single photo: A small token to help me remember what I hope others have a chance to see at least once.
As John McCutcheon sings, “everybody needs something bigger than themselves; we need to belong to something bigger than ourselves.”