Solar Eclipse Totality 2024
...a perspective-changing event!!!
Yup we…went. And in order to get as much Eclipsiality as possible, we went further afield than we anticipated we would. Days later, we are still awed by the whole d@mn awesomosity of the universe. AND the “it’s fine, everyone’s fine, it’s all fine” mentality of the U.S. state we went to regarding getting everybody out of the state when we all wanted to leave and couldn’t…
The Build Up
I know everyone calls it that, but “The Solarity” seemed more fitting, at least to one of us.
We decided kind of late where we were going to go to see the eclipse, but overall, we chose a good place (not the place that was “advertised” as the place to go to see it) and went prepared.
“We’ve” been waiting since 1970 for this one! And to make sure we did, we quintupled our eclipse-ical spectacles.
The Trip North
For those us brought up on the South Shore, “north” is anywhere on the other side of the Neponset Rivah, so it was a little bit of a jolt to find out that when we arrived at where we were going we were NINETEEN MINUTES from the Canadian border. But it was a nice day for a drive, and as the South Shore member of the RDM team is just a little bit like an Irish Setter, that member of the RDM team had an awesome four-hour ride in the car, looking out the window the whole way.
There’s North, and then there’s NORTH.
It wasn’t hard, getting to a place with really good visibility for the eclipse: just take Route 93 North to Vermont and get off anywhere that looks good.
Lovely, lovely, excited drive up. This is going to be a doddle!
The weather was perfect and drive up was pretty clear for most of the trip. Not all. Most.
We entered the “zone of totality” after three hours of driving, but kept going because we wanted to experience the maximum amount of totality!
Map besties: one for the length of the Totality, the other to get to a place that had the longest total Totality.
Setup
The reason we had the “hey nobody’s on the road but us!” euphoria on the drive up to our not-gonna-tell-ya eclipse location was because everybody who had decided on that same destination was already there. Lots of druidical types, big family groups, kids of all shapes and sizes; the lovely northern Vermont city was awash in eager, excited, possibly toked-out folks. Everybody was excited and happy and accommodating to each other. Really, it was kinda nice. Except..it was full of people. LOL!!!
After making our way into town and not being able to find any parking, we decided to head just outside of it and find a high spot that we (and a very few others) could call our own.
Shhhhhh – we COULD tell you where we ended up, but we won’t.
We just drove up the road we were on, and in less than 10 minutes we came upon a lay-by at the top of a hill next to a farm. Since we had brought with us food, chairs, and photographic gear for the event, we were able to just plop down the picnic blanket and set up. We were very excited that we found the place we found!
The gear:
The excitement builds. We’re gonna see the Totality! We’ll wave – maybe it’ll see us, too!
A few people (“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers/sisters”—always quote Shakespeare when you can) saw us setting up and decided they might set up there as well, and they did.
The partial eclipse started around 2PM, proceeded gradually, and Totality happened around 3PM. We were able to see with our solar-glasses protected eyes as well as through the solar-filtered Nikkor lens….right up to “almost totality.”
If you didn’t see it live, these three shots won’t “Wow!” you. If you DID see it live, these three shots will make you smile.
Total Totality
Three-ish minutes of total eclipsing.
A lot—A LOT—solar/lunar frontin’ and maxin’ going on in what was a teeniest blip of time to the universe.
It was awe-inspiring. The involuntary intake of breath, the automatic hand-to-mouth movement when witnessing a true wonder, the tears that you didn’t know you were going to shed when the Totality hit.
Day turning into night for a few moments. The birds going silent all at once. The humans looking at a sun they can never look at otherwise. It’s hard to describe to someone who didn’t witness it themselves.
The sky looked like that, then it looked like that, then it looked like THAT — all in the space of three minutes. In the middle of the afternoon.
It really did get “…as dark as night” when the Totality occurred. The difference between the sun being “almost covered” and completely covered…seriously , it was like night and day.
Two views of the Totality: The Corona, and The Diamond Ring (although The Ring occur when the total Totality was passed, and more sunlight was able to peak out).
And then being able to see a solar prominence going on behind the moon – an unexpected and absolute reward.
You have not seen a solar prominence until you have a seen a solar prominence during a Totality.
All of the eclipse photos taken using the Nikon D850/Nikkor 200-500mm lens were done in full manual mode (focus, exposure, etc). Since this was our first “totality” event, we bracketed and did our best guess on the settings:
- Aperture: f9 – f22
- Shutter speed: 1/400 – 1/5000
- ISO: 200
The Trip South
We had planned on staying the night, but were absolutely giddy after the eclipse and figured we’d get a jump on traffic and hit the road as soon as the, um, light show, was over.
Turns out, most people had the same idea. So really, for pretty much everybody, it was a NAGI: Not A Good Idea.
Looked fine. LOOKED FINE. Wasn’t fine.
When we started the trek back to the office, we weren’t worried – we had just seen the Totality, AND there weren’t that many cars on the road.
Photo 1: Looks like normal traffic. Photo 2: Oh wait, is that…is that…IS THAT A LINE OF AUTOMOBILES AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE?
We weren’t really that concerned (because THE TOTALITY), but in hindsight, we really should have been more concerned.
WHAT WE KNOW NOW – and you will thank us for telling you.
The shortest route—in terms of distance—back to the Boston area (which in this instance includes the entire state of New Hampshire) is a straight shot down Interstate Route 93.
The longest route—in terms of time—back to the Boston area (which in this instance includes the entire state of New Hampshire) is a straight shot down Interstate Route 93.
The time thing was unexpected, because we’ve been to Vermont loads of time and the drive-time has always been within the bounds of “normal.” It’s an INTERSTATE highway, after all.
Here’s what happened and why, to like 78,000 cars (could be more, could be less, nobody was actually counting):
Route 93 has a bottleneck. I almost wrote “huge bottleneck” but it’s actually, physically, a rather small one. So small IT HAS ONLY ONE LANE.
Franconia Notch (a famous NH local in its own right) is part of Interstate 93. It is what they call “a mountain pass.” It has one lane. It does not have a breakdown lane. It does not have any exits. You (and everybody else)drive it until you get to the end of it, and then off you go to wherever you’re going.
Most people who had gone to Vermont to see the eclipse chose either Interstate 91 (for going south to CT and beyond) or Interstate 93 (for going to MA, RI, ME, or the large cities in NH).
Every single car going down 93 had to drive the one-lane Franconia Notch road. Most of those cars are coming off multi-lane roads. So, multiple multi-lane roads must all funnel their vehicles through the one-lane bottleneck that is Franconia Notch. Thousands and thousands of cars. THOUSANDS.
What took six hours to drive up took us TWELVE hours to drive home. And for a lot of that, we were either idling or driving a maximum of three miles an hour (not an exaggeration).
NOTE: There were some concerns that we would run out of gas while waiting to get past the Notch, but our fears were put aside once we did the math. After 5 hours of idling/crawling, the car only consumed 1/8 tank of gas. We calculated that we could “wait” another 7 hours before we would be “in trouble.” Good to know 🙂
Into the inky darkness – for a long long looooooong time.
An unexpected discovery
Between the driving and the eclipsing, in all we were gone for 24 hours, every one of them spent awake. What we learned is that, if you decided months ago to stop drinking Diet Coke (because you drink too much Diet Coke), drinking a can of Diet Coke can actually keep you going for a full 24 hours!
A single can of Diet Coke: the only bright spot in that nerve-racking ( “Are we gonna run out of gas? How long have we not been moving? Do you know where we are now?”), never-ending drive home.
FinalThoughts
Totality 2024: a six-hour drive from Boston MA to Newport VT, a twelve-hour from Newport VT to Boston MA; a 3-minute and 25-second a total eclipse…absolutely PRICELESS!!! And we would do it again in a heart beat.
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