“Shall we go to Texas to see the eclipse?” I asked the family. “It’s four minutes and twenty seconds of totality there.”
“Are you serious?” one of them asked.
“One of our Texas schools asked me to come for an eclipse talk the Friday before and stay for the eclipse.”
Then came the 1001 questions. One that I answered was “What if it is cloudy?”
“Well, for the 2017 eclipse, we picked a place, and God made it work out. This time we picked a place, and, if God makes it work out, great! If not, we can say we went to Texas. I am not going to chase it.”
We all agreed to go.
We left our place on April 4, the day after our 25th wedding anniversary! It was early spring in Maryland. We enjoyed watching spring progress as we went south. We made a short stop at the Mississippi River and arrived at our summer-like destination around 3:00 p.m. Friday. I spent some time setting up my display at school, and had the talk in the evening.
Because of the cloudy predictions, Sunday at church, I was frequently asked two questions—“Are you going to Arkansas?” and “What do you think the weather will be like?”
My answer was “No, we decided before we left Maryland that we are going to Texas, and it will be what it will be.”
As for the second question, my answer was, “I did not even check. It will be what it will be.”
And so Monday rolled around nice and cloudy! The sun peeked out enough for me to get our GoTo mount aligned, with a Coronado PST solar telescope on it. We also had an 8” telescope, spotting scope, and several cameras, all properly filtered and set up in the parking lot of the friends’ house where we were staying. I had along a thermometer that we set in the shade. It said 91° F. I also had a timer set for four minutes, giving us a twenty-second buffer.
As the event approached, family and friends arrived, about forty in all. I wished we had brought the rest of our telescopes! During the partial phases we had fun looking at the sun when it was peeping out of the clouds. It was not looking very promising for totality. “There’s another hole. I think it will find it,” was said and wished many times.
Two of my boys and their friends set up their cameras in the cow pasture on the other side of the fence from us. They had the tripods retracted all the way to make them more stable, but had to squat or lie down to use them. One said, “I should have brought a pillow.”
“There is a nice plush one over there,” someone said, pointing to a cow pie! Lots of laughs.
Still many clouds—it was not looking real good. The sky was getting darker, and our host turned off his dusk-to-dawn lights. The cows went to the barn, and the chickens went to roost.
When there was just a sliver of sun left, we saw a hole in the clouds, and hoped and prayed the sun would find it. The sliver went into a bump of clouds, and when it came out, it was TOTAL! It HAD found the hole! What a sight!
I started the timer we had set for four minutes, quickly popped the filter off the 8” scope, looked in, and was amazed at the sight. Beautiful pink prominences took my attention from the corona. My daughter said, “You can see them just looking up!”
I shouted to the rest to come take a look. The usual response was, “OH WOW.” Oh, I wished I had brought more telescopes!
I had told them earlier not to bother looking into the solar scope during totality because they wouldn’t be able to see anything. Well, one boy looked in and said, “You can see it in here.”
“What!” I said. “Let me see.” There in a black background was a broken ring of orange prominences. It was very interesting, and I wish I had gotten a picture!
About three minutes into totality, someone said, “Where did all the clouds go?” We looked around, and most of the clouds in that part of the sky were gone. By the time totality was over, most clouds had disappeared. We could hardly believe it!
Beep, beep, the timer rang. That meant we had twenty seconds left. I looked at the person coming to the telescope and, as he was getting close to the eyepiece, I saw a bright light on his cheek. I quickly pushed the scope down and looked up to see the beautiful diamond ring. This lasted longer than I expected. Then back on went the filters and solar glasses.
One of the boys said, “The rooster is crowing.” I looked at the thermometer, and it said 75°, a 16° drop!
As we watched the second part of the partial phase, the crowd thinned out. Toward the end it was just our family. Then the last crescent of moon slipped off, and it was over.
Someone suggested, “Let’s go look at the wildflowers.”
We piled into the van and drove around the countryside. There were beautiful fields of Indian paintbrush and Texas bluebonnets. We also saw a Texas longhorn cow. As far as birds, the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher and the Greater Roadrunner were the best. Some of our girls got six new birds for their lists. Later in the evening the clouds came back with a Texas thunderstorm, complete with impressive clouds and hail.
Tuesday we headed home but took a different route through Tennessee and Virginia. We were blessed with miles and miles of blooming redbud along I-81. Then we jumped onto the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia for a very scenic drive and a stop at a waterfall!
Was it worth the seven-day, 3000-plus-mile trip? YES! Very much so! Would we do it again? Yes! Of course! But next time I would bring more telescopes…and a pillow.