The Eclipse

Since we were in the path of totality for this solar eclipse, this event has been hyped up around here for months. It seems every town around us was having all sorts of festivals and gatherings. I didn't think too much about it ahead of time, but was grateful that we'd get to see it. Well, this experience was way more amazing than I anticipated. And the weather on April 8th was spot on, perfect. The week before rained every day and the week after rained every day, so these clear, sunny skies and high 70's temperatures were a such a blessing. 

We have some tall trees in our backyard, so I ended up setting up our spot in the valley between our house and church. Perfect view from there. 

I took SO many pictures of the sun, but my iPhone didn't really capture much spectacular. In hindsight, I should have thought to charge up my Nikon, which takes much better pictures. 

The moon started the process of moving in front of the sun around 1:50pm. Initially, Curtis and Bella brought out some homework to work on, but that didn't last much beyond the first 30 minutes. 

This family selfie was a hard picture to take because, with the glasses on, you couldn't see anything except the sun. I just clicked my phone button numerous times and hoped we'd capture something good. 

You really needed the glasses in order to see any progression. With the glasses on, it looked like the image on the left. Without the glasses, it looking like the image on the right. Even when there was just a sliver of sunlight with the glasses on, the sun still gave off so much light that you couldn't tell there was a moon blocking most of it. 

But as it got closer to 3pm, the colors became more unique. It almost looked the the sun had a dimmer switched that was turned down lower. There is no filter in these photos. I'd just never seen it look quite like this outside before, especially at 3pm in the afternoon! 

Finally, the moon was fully in front of the sun. We were able to take off our glasses and view what looked like a glowing ring in the sky. In my memory, I can hear the kids and Andy cheering and commenting in awe at the sight. There were also two planets visible when the sky went dark. One of them can be seen in the lower right portion of the photo. I'm not sure which planet that was.  

It was one of the most surreal experiences to be out there at 3pm with a dark sky. The temperature also dropped about ten degrees. And one of the neatest things was what looked like a 360 degree sunset as the horizon all around us was bright while the sky was dark. 

Due to my camera settings, the sky looks brighter in my photos than it actually was. For that brief 3-4 minutes, it felt like nighttime. Even the animals and insects started making their nighttime sounds. 

Later on Facebook, a man from our church shared his photos of the progression. How fortunate we were to experience this firsthand. I will never forget it. 

I felt a little sad when the sky started to brighten up again. I would love to have been able to sit in that experience for a bit longer. But the weather warmed up again and I spent the rest of the day sitting outside and reading my book. 

Such a beautiful, incredible, and relaxing day.