line of totality

Paul took this with his phone camera through the telescope.

There was a lot of chatter on FB about how bad the traffic was going to be before and after the eclipse.  This is somewhere in Wyoming or Nebraska the day before the eclipse.  So much for FB chatter.  Nick chose this site because it's far away from any weather causing mountains.

Cheese

James and Timothy are bonding over french fries.

It was great to have the cousins together acting like cousins - not friends but not strangers either.

A large canal enters Lake Minatare near our campsite.

self applied mud treatment

Mud slinging for hours

and hours

The cousins have an evening mud game.

Timothy and Luke were out in it again the next day

Coffee before the eclipse with some Canadian friends of Nick and Sivanny.  We commiserated over the man who coughed up a lung at 5AM, threw his tent poles around on the cement, and seemed to leave in a hurry.  If he was looking for better conditions, he couldn't have found them.

We are all set up on the beach to view the eclipse.  Luke Townsend manning his telescope.  Everyone here was also at the wedding.

Not bad considering the ONLY thing that you can see through these glasses is the sun.

This is the shadow of the eclipse seen through the trees and onto the sand.

The boys with Nick, who organised this outing, and his new wife Sivanny.

As the sun disappeared, Luke said, "It's a banana."  Rightly so.

Total eclipse

The drive home on the day of the eclipse.  Thanks FB, not that I've ever relied on you for anything other than entertainment anyway.  To be fair, once we hit Interstate, we found traffic, but we clipped along at 75mph for most of it.  There were police and troopers out on the back roads keeping people moving away from heavy traffic and no accidents on the Interstates when we were driving.