I did not sleep well at all the night before the eclipse. It took me a long time to fall asleep. And then, unbeknownst to us, our hotel room's alarm clock was set to go off at 6am. That was... an unpleasant surprise. I never really got back to sleep after that.
After breakfast at the hotel, I loaded up on caffeine, and we started the 2 hour drive west to Vincennes. Along the way, we saw people preparing for the eclipse. There were several parking lots full of RVs, and some people out setting up telescopes. The weather went from partly cloudy, to totally cloudy, to "we can't see the sky because of all the fog", and back to partly cloudy. Wendy was texting with her family along the way, and we arrived at the golf course around 11am, just a few minutes after they got there.
We found a spot underneath a shade tree and started to get settled in. Wendy and I brought 2 folding chairs, which we hadn't used in a long time, and it was at this point we discovered mice had thoroughly chewed up one of them. Yuck. I threw that chair into a dumpster. Thankfully, Bill and Beth were ultra-prepared (as usual!) and had an extra chair we could use, so everyone had a place to sit.
There were already a lot of cars parked at the golf course when we arrived, and they just kept coming. The staff did an impressive job packing a bunch of cars (and a couple of school buses as it turned out!) into a fairly small space. Thankfully, people could sit anywhere they wanted on the golf course, so everyone spread out and it didn't feel crowded despite a lot of people being there.
We had about 4 hours to kill before totality, so to pass the time, we:
- sat around and chatted
- ate the picnic lunches we all brought
- waited in long lines at the bathrooms
- took a walk around part of the golf course
- rolled down hills:
The golf course offered a catered lunch, but we did not take part. I grabbed a moon pie at one point, though, and I discovered that wow, moon pies are not very good. I must have known this back in 2017 because our hotel gave us free moon pies, but I apparently forgot what they taste like, because it was not good at all.
Amazingly, the entire time we were at the golf course, the sky was almost totally clear. There were a few very thin, very faint clouds, but there was no doubt we would be able to see the eclipse. How nice!
Finally, at 1:47 PM, the moon made "contact" with the sun, starting the partial phase of the eclipse.
As it progressed, the effects became noticeable. Our shadows got sharper:
And you could see evidence of the moon covering up the sun:
In the few minutes before totality, the sky grew eerily dark, and we were able to see Venus, Jupiter, and the star Capella. Then we saw the "diamond ring" effect, and then totality began! It was very cool and awesome and hard to describe. It was absolutely wild that the sun turned black. The corona was easily visible, and very impressive. I think it might have been more impressive than in 2017. We also saw a Bailey's bead (a tiny bright speck of sun caused by hills and valleys on the moon).
Totality lasted for about 4 minutes and 6 seconds, but it went by fast! It did not feel like four minutes. Just like in 2017, I set up a digital camera to record reactions during the eclipse. The video is embedded below, which starts about a minute before totality. (At the beginning you can hear a motorbike in the distance, but thankfully whoever it was took a break when totality began.)
One thing I did differently for this eclipse is I brought along a compass and checked it periodically before, during, and after totality to see if the compass needle changed at all (at one point in the video you see me run to the camera where I grabbed a flashlight so I could check the compass). This idea came from Gregory Little who has done a lot of research on Native American mounds. He organized a small citizen science project to get people to check for any magnetic changes at Native American mounds during the total eclipse. Obviously I was at a golf course, not a mounds site, but I decided try the experiment anyway. (Although there actually is a mound in downtown Vincennes, the Sugar Loaf mound.)
I did not observe any changes in the compass. Later I learned that some people used a video camera to record their compass during the event, and Little said five people detected a small half-degree blip in the compass needle right at the start of totality. Interesting! Now I wish I'd aimed my camera at the compass, and somehow attached a flashlight for when it got dark. (Maybe that will be a project for the 2045 eclipse!) I'm not sure how valuable my observations were, but I did send them to Little, and to say thanks for participating, he sent me a free t-shirt:
(He joked that he even autographed it to "make it worth less"!)
Shortly after totality ended, Wendy's family headed out, since they had a long drive back to Kentucky. Wendy and I stuck around a bit longer, but then we drove the 2 hours to our hotel. There was a lot more traffic on the way back, but it wasn't too bad. We were both starving and exhausted by the time we got to our room, so we ate our leftover pizza (hurray for hotel rooms with refrigerators!) and sat on the couch reading/watching TV for the rest of the evening.
The next day, Tuesday, we drove home. Traffic was heavy, due in part to construction and accidents, so it took about an hour longer than it would have normally.
And that was our trip! I'm so happy we got to see the eclipse. It was a lot of fun to share the experience with Wendy's family.