Full Solar Eclipse!
August 21st 2017
Everyone had been talking about the eclipse for months. In Sugar Hill, GA, we would be experiencing 98 percent eclipse. The schools were taking an afternoon off and providing kids with glasses. We thought we might as well just stay and avoid crowds during the eclipse. Then, about one week before it was coming, Robert and I realized that since we are so close to being in the line of totality, we might as well travel to see it.
First we had to find a place near us that was going to be sunny. In South Carolina, for instance, there was going to be cloud cover. That wasn't going to do. We finally figured out that Tennessee was forecasted to be sunny. I scoured the internet and found out that a town named Sweetwater was going to have Eclipse festivities. It sounded good to us, so we planned on making the 3 hour drive.
Robert somehow secured glasses (it was nearly impossible to find them. He somehow tracked enough down for all of us and picked up those way overpriced glasses. Talk about price gouging!
Next we piled in the car and drove off. When we reached Sweetwater, we were underwhelmed. Every driveway and every mom and pop store were charging to park in their driveways. The walk to the downtown was going to be a killer. And it was soooo crowded. We caught a glimpse of the festivities and it was just a bunch of food trucks on the main drag and no where to really even sit down. Since we arrived a couple hours in advance, we really didn't care to just hang around the street and crowds in the heat. I had heard that a nearby farm was also hosting people for the eclipse, so we made our way down.
What a difference! The Dairy itself was set on the most picturesque land. Parking was free. We joined a couple hundred people spread out on the lawn with our lawn chairs, tent and cooler and just hung out.
They had a huge barn where they had bathrooms, some food trucks, including a snow-cone truck which we gladly purchased. It was SO hot!
We ate our picnic lunch. We visited the store and tried out all their cheese. The little boys chased each other around the grass. We watched the twins being silly.
Every half an hour the owners of the farm would drive through the crowd on a golf cart and throw out cheese curd to the crowds. It was hilarious. Ethan was pretty proud of himself when he elbowed his way through the crowd to catch one.
Mostly we just hung out and watch the moon slowly cross over the sun.
We thought this was pretty awesome. It was exciting to watch it happen and fun to be together as a family as it did. It started to get a little dark, but even when the sun was three quarters of the way across the moon, it wasn't too dramatic of a change.
You could see the sun slowly disappearing, but it wasn't until the total eclipse did things get crazy. It suddenly got as dark as late dusk. The mosquitoes appeared out of no-where and started buzzing around our heads. It was such an amazing thing that the whole crowd around us burst into clapping and yelling. We all jumped up to our feet and cheered along with the rest of them. It's hard to explain how exciting it was...like God's own rock concert. No one could look away or stop smiling. I don't think I've ever experienced a natural phenomenon like it. Our two minutes when by too fast.
Here are Robert's pictures. They turned out pretty awesome.
And then it was over. As soon as the 2 minutes of totality ended, the sky lit up and the mosquitoes disappeared. The heat returned immediately. After seeing the real thing, no one was really interested in watching the moon slowly move away from the sun. The crowd disappeared almost as fast as the mosquitoes.
We stayed for some ice-cream. (by the way...notice how Robert is holding two ice-cream cones? I accidentally ordered one extra and he never told anyone. He just quietly ate two.)
Then, at last, it was time to say farewell to our Sweetwater Farm. Although, Robert and I decided we could most certainly retire there.
