Total Solar Eclipse (he said)
25 Aug 2017 by KentThe American West, mid-August, 2017 – I’ve been anticipating the arrival of the Great American Solar Eclipse since about the moment we saw our first total eclipse in Turkey over 10 years ago. The laws of physics prevailed (as if there was any doubt), and it finally arrived.
My first task was to identify the spot along the line of totality that would have the highest odds of clear skies. All factors (time of day, season, historical cloud cover) tended to converge over an area from eastern Oregon, through south/central Idaho, and into west/central Wyoming. Luckily, we could combine this with a visit to Heather’s Dad and his wife in Montana, plus a rendezvous in Idaho with our friends Brian and Susan, whom we met in the Bahamas during our 2016 cruise. We even got a quick flyby visit from my cousin and her husband who live in Calgary.
The plan was to rent an RV (thank you, Heather’s Dad!) and camp about an hour north of the eclipse centerline for a couple nights. We targeted the area north of Idaho Falls, Idaho, as our ideal viewing spot. This would (hopefully) put us in clear skies on the opposite side of the centerline from the large population centers of Utah, Nevada, and California. The last way we wanted to spend the eclipse was sitting in traffic outside the zone of totality.

A preview of totality
Note: Animation shot with my Panasonic Lumix and converted with ezgif.com.
Before the eclipse itself, we spent the night at a hot springs and campground in southern Montana, and the following day exploring the old mining towns of Virginia City and Nevada City. Saturday evening we met up with Brian and Susan at the RV park in Dillon, Montana, and it was just like old times anchored in the Bahamas, except that we were on solid ground and there wasn’t some mechanical system on one of our boats in the process of breaking.
The following day we visited the ghost town at Bannack State Park. This is a 5-star place to visit; you can wander through the town and explore the old buildings, plus at noon every day they have a guided tour of the gold-mine ore-processing facility that was the whole reason for the town in the first place.
On eclipse day we drove south and found parking without incident, with plenty of time to get situated. We had a terrific viewing spot at the base of the Menan Butte trail. As the moon began to cover the sun, the light dimmed – but not like at sunset, where everything gets an orange tint. With the sun high in the sky, the color cast remained neutral, but it was as if someone was slowly turning out the light.
Then, in an instant, it went dark. The sky turned a deep inky blue, the brighter stars and planets became visible, and it looked like someone had shot a hole in the sky; a pitch-black disk (the moon) was surrounded by a brilliant white fuzzy thing (the sun’s corona). There were a couple of red solar prominences visible to the naked eye, but since my poor camera was operating at the limit of its abilities, I couldn’t successfully photograph them.
The difference between a 99% eclipse and 100% totality is literally the difference between night and day. If someone shrugs and says, “oh, yeah, I’ve seen an eclipse,” then they really haven’t seen totality – it is one of the most remarkable sights most people will ever have a chance to see.
Afterwards it was a rush to get back to Montana, turn in the RV, and fly back to DC for a quick laundry and re-pack before our flight to Paris for our 2017 canal cruise. Our next report will hopefully be on our continuing adventures (7 years and counting) on the waterways of France.