Don's Tuesday Column

              THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   8/22/2017

                    A remarkable total eclipse

The quest for a place to view America's Great Total Solar Eclipse (I think that's a fairly good unofficial title) has been a major part of our summer travel plans from the time we saw that the "path of totality" would sweep through Idaho. It just so happened that we chose to return this summer to the Idaho and Yellowstone area after finding, in 2015, how meteorologically delightful it can be to locate our "cabin on wheels" to the 6,500-foot elevation of the area.

It's a quixotic story, with a bit of fun, that began in earnest when Barbara found that a college in Rexburg--located right on the center with 2 minutes and 40 seconds of total darkness--would reserve a space for us to park a car. That was a satisfactory "last resort" plan that allowed for researching the region. We found a wide spot on either side of Interstate 15 (motto: Helping Los Angelinos and Utahans provide Las Vegas a solid economy for 50 years) at the intersection with local highway 33. That looked promising as a place to show up on Sunday night, park, eat, drink, sleep and rise to greet the morning sun/sun gone/sun returns event.

However, what if the Idaho Highway Patrol closes those spots to parking and insists on traffic moving to prevent congestion? What if they've allowed parking starting on Saturday and it's filled up? Sure, we could just keep going west until we find another wide spot but that's obviously a bit iffy. Trips to Idaho Falls for errands showed us that their municipal plans were well advanced for accommodating a major influx of eclipse watchers. I must tip my hat to the public appeals by Idaho officials on radio spots to ask for help from the LDS (Mormon) community for foreign language speakers. However, being part of a herd is not our style.

We thought we hit on the ideal location when we found that the Warm River campground mentioned last week was on the northern zone of totality with over a minute of darkness. The quiet rural roads would let us travel south that morning for a longer viewing. Towns along the western side of Grand Teton National Park were reveling in their ability to organize local events to appeal to visitors wanting to get off the beaten path to cities.

Upon telling the camp host that our Sunday, August 6, check-in was for the limit of 16 days, he told us that we would need to leave on Saturday morning, August 19; "about 400 bikers" were showing up to use their group reservation of nearly the entire campground. Spaces they weren't using were not quite long enough for our RV and, besides, why would we want to subject ourselves to the bone-jarring, filling-loosening cacophony of hundreds of rumbling Harleys? Imagine our chagrin when we learned that the loud distraction would not be motorcycles, but rather the colorful lycra and spandex tights of a huge bicycle rally en route to somewhere south.

Then there was the option of showing up early enough to stay in campgrounds near the Teton pass between Victor, Idaho and Jackson, Wyoming, with over 2 minutes of total darkness. Campgrounds have limited space and many others might have the same idea; thunderstorms and clouds appear out of nowhere in the mountains. A local friend and craftsman, Roger, was at his Jackson, Wyoming, home when we stopped by in early August, but he was returning to Los Molinos so his kids could start school last week; watching from there was not an option. The national park itself is waiving the entrance fee to smooth the flow of tens of thousands of visitors wanting a special place for special sights. Refer back to our aversion to crowds.

Then we looked up Payette, Idaho, on our Google eclipse path map and found that Barbara's cousin, who we visited in 2015, is in the southern portion of the path with about a minute and 40 seconds of total darkness. A visit was likely anyway; a phone call was all it took to secure a viewing spot on August 21, on their property; camaraderie among friends at no charge.

Sitting at the Snake River overlook, west of Twin Falls, en route to Payette, provided an unobstructed view of Saturday's sunrise. At over 5,000 feet high, I had the chance to see the last sliver--the slimmest crescent I've ever seen--of the waning moon close to the horizon prior to the sun poking up. Eclipse watching goggles? Check. Will they allow for a zoomed picture of the partial eclipse when placed over the lens? Check. Clear sky in Payette? We hope.

As of yesterday, Monday, after the eclipse-darkened skies returned to normal brightness, we found it, on the one hand, to be a lot of effort and planning for a fairly brief astronomical phenomenon; but, on the other hand, it was a most remarkable experience. We'd seen several partial eclipses in our lives, complete with pin-hole viewing and the sight of a multitude of crescents on the ground from the partly-eclipsed sun shining through tree leaves.

As brief as it was, seeing the daylight fade to total darkness, with a 20-degree drop in temperatures, the quieting of birds that go into automatic night activities, and the little "diamonds" of light around the edge of the moon as the sun shines through its canyons--that was impressive enough that it is tantalizing to think of planning to travel to the site of the next total eclipse of the sun. Being able to use binoculars and see the details of the sun-darkened corona, and the streamers, loops and plumes was, in fact, well worth the trouble. We avoided the large gatherings of watchers: RV camps in Madras, Oregon, the "Burning Man" type of artsy, hipster villages near Mitchell, Oregon, or national park throngs. Readers will likely enjoy other personal accounts; 2024, America's next total eclipse, isn't that far away.