Eclipse Adventures
2024-Apr-09, Tuesday 09:17![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Yesterday, ![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
sashagee and I woke up at 3:30 a.m. to the sound of Dark Side, threw on some clothes, and climbed into the car with my father to drive five hours down south before the roads got really awful. We stayed off the interstate, taking state route 47, briefly risking I-74 to cross Urbana, then took state route 130 further south. After a stop in Olney (about which more later), we kept going, looking for an even further south and smaller town, and ended up in the central park in West Salem (population 786) with maybe half a dozen other people. We watched as the light dimmed, and looked up with our eclipse glasses as more and more of the sun was covered, until the last bit disappeared and we took off our glasses and looked up at the black sun:
It was astounding. The light faded, but not in the way you're used to. We know instinctively how sunset works--the light fades in one direction as the sky lights up in the other, turning to reds and golds and purples. During the run-up to the eclipse, it faded all at once, gradually getting darker and darker as one by one the birds stopped singing. As the moon fully covered the sun, the crickets began chirping. The temperature dropped. The streetlights came on. The sky above was black but with golden light all around on the horizon, like nothing you've ever seen. I could easily understand why our ancestors took them as a bad omen or thought it was the end of the world.
That bright spot on the bottom is a solar prominence, an arc of plasma many times larger than the Earth. We could see it with our unaided eyes.
The full eclipse only lasted four minutes but it seemed longer. I stayed in Chicago for the 2017 eclipse, which was 87% coverage, but that just meant the sky got a bit darker. It was nothing like this. On the way back,sashagee said that if we won the lottery she'd want to become one of those people who chase eclipses around the world and you know what? I would too.
We got there around 9:30 a.m., having made excellent time since we got up so early. My father apologized for dragging us out of bed, since there were many times fewer cars on the road than he had anticipated, but it turned out to be a good thing. After a quick stop to use the bathroom, we looked for White Squirrel drive and went to the city park.
So, the big draw of Olney are these:
They're on the city logo, they're on the street signs, they were on a ton of people's t-shirts, but there weren't that many even at the park. We saw two, this one and another one that spent most of its time hanging out in the bushes, as well as a larger bunch of grey squirrels that were bullying the white squirrels. My father took this picture with his fancy camera he brought to take photos of the eclipse. And it's a good thing we got there early, because after we looked at the squirrels, we walked to downtown and got breakfast at a place called Ophelia's Cup--lots of Shakespearean art on the walls--and when we walked back, there were about 10x as many people at the park and not a squirrel in sight.
sashagee really took to the squirrels. She kept pointing out squirrel art, we went to a place called The White Squirrel Shoppe where she would have eagerly bought out the entire store but limited herself to one bag, and took a ton of pictures. For example:
That was outside of the courthouse--closed for the eclipse, of course.
She got a squirrel eclipse t-shirt to remember it by, and would have bought a white squirrel plaster replica to put on the stairwell but they were out. We didn't bring Laila andsashagee wants to bring her back to see the squirrels, though, so maybe another time!
sashagee and I woke up at 3:30 a.m. to the sound of Dark Side, threw on some clothes, and climbed into the car with my father to drive five hours down south before the roads got really awful. We stayed off the interstate, taking state route 47, briefly risking I-74 to cross Urbana, then took state route 130 further south. After a stop in Olney (about which more later), we kept going, looking for an even further south and smaller town, and ended up in the central park in West Salem (population 786) with maybe half a dozen other people. We watched as the light dimmed, and looked up with our eclipse glasses as more and more of the sun was covered, until the last bit disappeared and we took off our glasses and looked up at the black sun:It was astounding. The light faded, but not in the way you're used to. We know instinctively how sunset works--the light fades in one direction as the sky lights up in the other, turning to reds and golds and purples. During the run-up to the eclipse, it faded all at once, gradually getting darker and darker as one by one the birds stopped singing. As the moon fully covered the sun, the crickets began chirping. The temperature dropped. The streetlights came on. The sky above was black but with golden light all around on the horizon, like nothing you've ever seen. I could easily understand why our ancestors took them as a bad omen or thought it was the end of the world.
That bright spot on the bottom is a solar prominence, an arc of plasma many times larger than the Earth. We could see it with our unaided eyes.
The full eclipse only lasted four minutes but it seemed longer. I stayed in Chicago for the 2017 eclipse, which was 87% coverage, but that just meant the sky got a bit darker. It was nothing like this. On the way back,
sashagee said that if we won the lottery she'd want to become one of those people who chase eclipses around the world and you know what? I would too. We got there around 9:30 a.m., having made excellent time since we got up so early. My father apologized for dragging us out of bed, since there were many times fewer cars on the road than he had anticipated, but it turned out to be a good thing. After a quick stop to use the bathroom, we looked for White Squirrel drive and went to the city park.
So, the big draw of Olney are these:
They're on the city logo, they're on the street signs, they were on a ton of people's t-shirts, but there weren't that many even at the park. We saw two, this one and another one that spent most of its time hanging out in the bushes, as well as a larger bunch of grey squirrels that were bullying the white squirrels. My father took this picture with his fancy camera he brought to take photos of the eclipse. And it's a good thing we got there early, because after we looked at the squirrels, we walked to downtown and got breakfast at a place called Ophelia's Cup--lots of Shakespearean art on the walls--and when we walked back, there were about 10x as many people at the park and not a squirrel in sight.
sashagee really took to the squirrels. She kept pointing out squirrel art, we went to a place called The White Squirrel Shoppe where she would have eagerly bought out the entire store but limited herself to one bag, and took a ton of pictures. For example:That was outside of the courthouse--closed for the eclipse, of course.
She got a squirrel eclipse t-shirt to remember it by, and would have bought a white squirrel plaster replica to put on the stairwell but they were out. We didn't bring Laila and
sashagee wants to bring her back to see the squirrels, though, so maybe another time!
no subject
Date: 2024-Apr-10, Wednesday 21:11 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-Apr-11, Thursday 07:58 (UTC)Wow, the white squirrel is beautiful. I see squirrels in the tree outside my sitting room window, it would be marvellous if they were white instead of grey!
no subject
Date: 2024-Apr-16, Tuesday 14:19 (UTC)