We were in Anderson, SC. Drive there was uneventful - no traffic whatsoever. We got there early with plenty of time to go - scouted out a couple of the areas where we planned on viewing. Drove into town and hung around there for a little bit. Just before 1, we drove out to a deserted field and pulled into one corner to watch the show. What an amazing show! It was wonderful to view the sun with the glasses and the way the moon slowly ate away at the sun! The totality period was just unbelievable - the diamond ring effect was beautiful but way too brief a moment! 2 minutes flew by!
The best part of it was that there were no clouds. We saw some at the beginning of the eclipse, but they cleared out for the critical phase. I read later on that our alternate site had a huge cloud shading the sun during the totality phase, We sure lucked out!
We did encounter some traffic as we were headed out of there - but a small price to pay for the beautiful experience. We’ve resolved to make the next one - should be easier since that one passes through the new england area!
We were at post office yesterday. I bought eclipse stamps. The post office manager said he bought 800 sheets of the eclipse forever stamps, so I bought 10 sheets from him. He says he’s now down to about 300 sheets left. They’re the ones with thermal ink that show different phases of the eclipse. They’re very cool. That’s the closest I have come to viewing any eclipse–the one in HI 25 years ago, we just got rain and clouds, even tho we flew to totality.
We were in Sun Valley, Idaho and had a great view. We were glad to be above a lot of smoky haze, probably from the fires in Oregon. I got a good video of the shadow approaching from the west, and we saw shadow bands and Bailey’s beads that lasted a long time. The corona seemed huge this time.
Our group had no trouble with traffic from our hotel in Twin Falls to Sun Valley, probably because we got on the road at 4am. There was some traffic on the return trip.
I had a great time on the tour with my son, who will be going off to start college in 3 weeks.
This was our 4th total solar eclipse (not counting rain during totality in China 2009). We are already thinking about plans for July 2019 in Chile.
We were in Idaho, and it was of course fabulous and awe-inspiring and all the rest. Still didn’t see shadow bands (this was my second). There’s December 2020 (southern Argentina and Chile) and December 2021 (Antarctica!) just asking me to blow my children’s inheritance ;).
