Last week Wendy and I traveled to Indiana to see the total solar eclipse!
Seven years ago we went to Nebraska to see our first total solar eclipse. For that trip, I did a ton of research ahead of time: reading books, attending lectures, scouring over maps, and making a lot of lists. I was determined to be prepared for any eventuality. If you recall, that trip ultimately culminated in an epic 4-part series of blog posts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (the actual day of the eclipse), and Part 4.
Although I was still excited for this year's eclipse, I did not do nearly as much preparation. In 2017, we picked Nebraska for our viewing location because, historically speaking, it had the best odds of clear skies. Since that worked out well, I decided to follow the same line of reasoning for this year's eclipse. The historical cloud cover maps said south-central Texas was the place to be for clear skies, so around this time last year I booked a hotel for us in San Antonio, which was just inside the path of totality. I figured we could drive a bit closer to the center to get an even longer totality experience.
Right after I made the reservation, though, I started to think about backup plans. Bill had mentioned possibly going to Indiana to see the eclipse, since it wasn't too far from Abby and Matt. The historical data said the odds were not good for clear skies in April in Indiana, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to make a backup hotel reservation since it could be canceled if needed. So I looked around and was able to find a hotel in Columbus, IN, which was just south of Indianapolis and would get roughly 3 minutes of totality. I felt better having a backup plan.
As the eclipse got closer, plans came into better focus. Wendy's family was going to drive north from Kentucky to a town called Vincennes, IN, and watch the eclipse from a golf course. Vincennes was almost right on the center-line of the eclipse path, and would get just over 4 minutes of totality. Plus, it was only a 2 hour drive from our Indiana hotel, so it was feasible for us to drive there the morning of the eclipse, and watch it with Wendy's family. That pretty much sealed the deal and made Indiana become our eclipse destination. I canceled our San Antonio hotel.
The week before the eclipse the forecasts were predicting around 50% cloud cover for Indiana, which wasn't great, but it turned out San Antonio was looking even worse! So I was thankful I was going to the better spot, and I crossed my fingers and reminded myself cloud cover forecasting was very difficult to do.
Sunday morning, the day before the eclipse, Wendy and I drove down to Indiana. It rained during the first leg of the trip, which was not an auspicious start. To our surprise, though, traffic wasn't that bad. However, when we pulled into a rest area in Indiana there were so many cars that we had to wait in line to find a parking spot! It turned out there were plenty of spots at the end of the lot, but no one pulled forward far enough to see them. The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful, and by late afternoon we were checked into our hotel. The city of Columbus was going all out for the eclipse, and had tons of events going on. We heard about a renaissance fair, and saw a bunch of people out jogging as part of a 5K run.
That evening we went out to eat at a place called Hot Box Pizza, which was surprisingly good. Afterwards, Wendy remembered she had recorded a Nova episode about solar eclipses on our DVR at home, but had forgotten to watch it before we left. I discovered the entire episode, called "Great American Eclipse" was available on YouTube, which the TV in our hotel room could access. So we watched that, and it was pretty good.
Before going to bed, I checked the forecast again. A popular website among amateur astronomers for cloud cover forecasts is cleardarksky.com. It showed two different models for Vincennes. One said the sky would be completely clear, the other said it would be completely cloudy. Go figure!