Cornerstone No. 188, page 11
Sun day driver
My fifth total solar eclipse story (see
archives for Siberia 2008,
Shanghai 2009, Easter Island 2010, and Svalbard 2015) and still no end in sight
to the 'sun day' pun titles. Sorry about that. The 'driver' part was significant this
time round, because we took in the solar eclipse of 21 August 2017 as part of
what I've called the Wild West road trip, a 3,000-mile-long clockwise circuit of
Wyoming, beginning and ending in Denver.
The logo for the Great American Eclipse shows its path right across the United
States, from Oregon to South Carolina, with a maximum duration of 2 minutes
40 seconds near the state line between Missouri and Kentucky. For us, the
eclipse came at the very end of our trip, and once again the weather was
perfect, though we did change our plans at the last minute when cloud
predictions for Carhenge in Nebraska looked unpromising. Instead, we joined
up with a group I've travelled with previously on a ranch near Douglas,
Wyoming.
Having a car gave us the freedom to choose where we watched the eclipse, but
did have its downside too. In a record migration, the state of Wyoming more
than doubled its usual population of just over half a million during the eclipse,
and a good number of those migrants headed south back to Colorado as soon
as totality was over. A journey that would normally take three or four hours
ended up continuing for over twelve, and we didn't arrive at our final overnight
stop near Denver until after two in the morning. 400 km of the I-25 highway
between Wyoming and Colorado turned into one enormous traffic jam. The
awful traffic was predictable; exactly the same thing happened to me 18 years
ago after I saw my first eclipse in Germany.
Surely a couple of minutes of darkness can't be worth standing in traffic for
hours on end? But of course it can if you get to see the wonder of creation that
is totality. A few days previously we had an overnight stay at an Airbnb in Cody,
Wyoming. As Airbnbers will know, it's customary to introduce yourself to your
future host when you make a reservation. I explained at the time that 21
August would be my seventh total eclipse. Weeks later, I received this reply
from our host:
'When I saw that this is your 7th total solar eclipse, I thought: "OK, everybody
has their weird thing they're into." Then yesterday I saw my first, and I totally
get it. I've seen partial solar eclipses before, but to be able to load up the truck
and drive to a favorite picnic spot and experience that was amazing. I figure
now if I'm planning any travel, I'll keep an eye on future eclipses...'
What else can I write about this eclipse that I haven't written before? Our
Wyoming ranch was over 1,500 m up, high in the mountains south of Douglas,
so during totality we had a kind of 360˚ sunset that I don't recall seeing