Looking into the Sun

How geeky am I? Sparky and I traveled into the path of the eclipse so we could experience the totality. We left on Saturday morning very early and geocached our way to Kentucky. We arrived in Henderson by dinner time Sunday and enjoyed a leisurely dinner at an excellent sushi restaurant (Tokyo Teppanyaki).

This is a photo of my plate. The Volcano Roll  At the bottom is made with salmon, cream cheese, avocado, and deep fried inside out – that is with the rice on the outside and drizzled with eel sauce.  The Spicy Crab Roll is in the middle. It had just a touch of sriracha so although it was a little hot it was also a little sweet making it a perfect balance! At the top is the Tornado Roll made with spicy tuna, panko crumbs to add crunch and topped with masago. Masago are Capelin fish eggs – a sort of caviar. It was so good!! Amazing for a little town.

This is Sparky’s plate. He was much less adventuresome. At the top is his Volcano Roll. In the middle he opted for the Futomaki Roll which was a variety of vegetables (cucumber, a pickled something or other that was a yellow-green color, and some other undefined vegetable) with crab and rice wrapped in nori (seaweed sheets).  And at the bottom he went with the California roll of salmon, cream cheese and avocado. He was happy with his selection and managed to eat it all!

The hotel was serviceable even if it wasn’t a new place. We left at 4:00 AM Monday to head to Madisonville, KY (about 40 miles south of where we stayed) which is where we were meeting Charley and Julie to watch the eclipse. We had anticipated that the traffic was going to be backed up. In keeping with the plan (A-Team style) we left our hotel before the birds were awake in order to give ourselves 6 hours to travel the 40 miles to Madisonville. It was quite the experience. There weren’t any other crazy people on the road. It took us about 30 minuted to arrive. Once parked in the hotel lot where our friends were staying, I reclined my seat and tried to nap. All the hype about people stopping on the highway and the resulting gridlock was way over blown.

Amazingly we were able to meet up with saintvi and her husband in Madisonville too! It was the perfect confluence of friends and eclipse events! We set up at the hotel on the large lawn where Charley and Julie were staying. Saintvi and Waldowalking had lawn chairs and Charley and Julie had a blanket.

We all had eclipse glasses and Charley had made 2 pinhole projectors and brought his telescope.

The guys set up the telescope and the pinhole projectors. This first photo is of the sun with a little notch taken out where the moon is just starting to slide over.

This one is getting close probably about 80% covered. The pin hole projectors worked great!

While we waited, we walked around and found 2 geocaches (an eclipse bonus!). There were lots of friendly people and we had a good time hearing their stories. We laughed and visited and ate our picnic lunch. When the moon started to slide in front of the sun we took turns looking into the projection boxes. The eclipse glasses were very dark – so much so that when you had them on and weren’t looking at the sun you couldn’t see a thing!

We waited, sneaking a peek through our eclipse glasses. It was very eerie to see the moon start to encroach on the sun and even stranger to have the sky go dark. We were surprised that the mosquitoes and cicadas decided to make appearances. Just before the totality, there were several hawks that decided it was dinner time and were circling looking for prey. Where we were the eclipse was only about 40 seconds. It was over so quickly. We really enjoyed watching it with our friends! That made the occasion even more special! This is where I’d post an awesome photograph of the total eclipse or maybe one of the moment just prior to the eclipse. However I couldn’t get my camera to focus and decided the experience was more important than my personal documentation…