Now That Was Awesome!

We woke up to a clear morning: not a cloud in the deep blue sky! This is ideal weather for viewing solar eclipses, I would say. There's even a nice breeze to keep it cool. There is excitement in the air all around. A group of two sisters and all their families are camped next to us, providing lots of exuberance.

 

And just after 9 am, we donned our solar glasses, and saw a small chunk come missing on one side of the sun.

 

While waiting for totality, we amused ourselves and our neighbors by making pinhole camera images of the crescent sun with our hands, and looking at the crescents formed between the shadows of the leaves on a nearby tree. We could also see shadow bands, faint wavyness, on the white hood of Miss Travelaire. They think these occur because of the sun's rays traveling through turbulence in the earth's atmosphere.

 

Then after about an hour the lights went out! There was lots of hooting and hollering next door! I was surprised that the sun's corona was so bright and extended. It cast a lot of light so that it was not nearly as dark out as I expected. And although you could see planets and stars, it was more like you would see on a full moon night. And totality was far too short, just under 2 minutes. Now we have to wait 'I'll 2024 for another eclipse from Texas to Southern Ontario. Mm....not sure if I'll make it to that one!

 

I expected there would be a traffic jam after the eclipse; most people packed up and left right afterwards. Here is an Oregon traffic camera picture of Interstate 5 just north of us. I walked over to the highway, and sure enough it looked just like that, and the vehicles were moving at perhaps 1 or 2 miles per hour. We headed out after awhile, and drove some back roads up to a Lowe's store to park until the traffic subsides. It's now 4:45pm, and the interstate is still blocked up. The reason we picked Lowe's is that they have terrific WiFi. We discovered that on this trip; you can park well away from the store and still pick it up.

 

We decided to leave at around 6:30 pm; the Interstate seemed to be freeing up down around Salem, although it still looked jammed up further north. I figured it may clear up as we go. The problem with staying here is Oregon is really stingy about allowing overnight parking at places like Walmart, and there's no way of getting an RV site anywhere around here. Now, the GPS lady took over, and said no way are you going up Interstate 5. She knows what the traffic is like and redirects Miss Travelaire accordingly. So off we went up country roads, and during the process the GPS lady changed her mind several times depending on the traffic flow. So, we managed to find our way up to a Walmart store in Longview, Washington, a little north of Portland, going on Interstate 5 for only a 3 or 4 mile stretch. It took about twice as long as it would normally take, but at least now we are out of the traffic. And, I looked up the Coho ferry tonight, and they have space available on the 8:15 am ferry on Wednesday.