2024 Solar Eclipse - MONDAY April 8 2024

You absolutely made the right move. We got into Syracuse Sunday afternoon to stay with a friend. Having two little kids limited our abilities to be flexible last minute or wing it without a plan. We saw essentially nothing throughout the whole event. Also hit no traffic on the way home too.

 

I'd like to like your post, simply for the words of assurance in my morning decision, but I don't want to come off as an ass toting, "Misery likes company" tool... I am still a bummed, but realistically it was just bad luck, teased by the optimistic forecast from last week...

I wonder how far north and east one had to go to get a good view. I was planning on driving up to Pulaski for the day, but would consider Watertown, but that was pretty much it. Watertown TV was stating, "Go to St. Lawrence County". There is no way I was going to snake 8+ hours into the Adirondack Park w/o a plan. And besides, I'd have to have made that decision well before sun-up. Such an experience would be like making a day trip to Sugarbush or Jay Peak from NYC. Drive up, ski, drive home. Just nuts....

 

Hey GF - Can I ask, where did you end up going camping for this? Was it a private rental, or did you just luck out on a spot to crash? If a rental, how was the campground / experience? I want to keep up on this stuff in that corner of the land. I didn't want to ask before hand to expose it or come off like I wanted to crash lol. Hope it turned out good for youtes...

Feel free to PM if you don't want to just post.
Thanks

 

no worries bud!
Sucks you didn’t have a good view weather is unpredictable.
I was lucky enough to stay home with kids and grandkids.
It was definitely something we will all remember. Feel kinda bad we had room more.

 

We decided to go to verona beach, at the east end of oneida lake. Decent crowd, its a state park, they had food trucks and a few little educational things. My son and i played a little frisbee golf picking different holes throughout the campgrounds, (water fountains, stumps) while we waited. There was cloud cover but you could actually see a lot of it without the glasses. In totality the crickets and peeper frogs started to sing so that was kinda cool. Traffic added about fifteen minutes to the ride home but we waited about an hour after before we left so it was at its worst i guess. Some guy proposed just off to the side of us right after totality , every body cheered again for them. All in all it was pretty cool but im glad i didnt have to drive very far to see it

 

I'll have to pull the stuff I took on my nikon and process those pics but neither my camera or my phone do any of yesterday justice. Fucking wild, and perfect weather with no clouds and 55°!

 

Went to SE Missouri, camped a,l weekend and caught a great 4 mins of totality. What a surreal experience. Would do it again for sure, despite the traffic on the return trip.

 

If my farm was in the path of totality, I wouldn't have made plans to travel, either. It was close to totality enough that I didn't need to make "grand"plans, and therein lay the rub. Any plan is predicated on meteorological luck. Going to Syracuse was my plan. I feel pain for those who actually paid handsomely for flights, hotels, and rental cars to be in places that had a "best chance" of clear skies, yet the long-shot came in, and they got rained and/or clouded out...

There's always next time...

 

I was lucky cause there is no next time for me!

 

Stateside... maybe yes. But elsewhere??

I'd love to be in the Outback for the eclipse in 2028.... Too bad totality is not passing over my truck's namesake.

 

It wasn't in play for a lot of people based on the expected weather. April in VT, clouds. April in Texas, clear skies. The weather didn't flip the opposite way until about 2-3 days ahead, while the snow was dumping down in VT.

I fully expected us to just have had a fun weekend camping in the woods, and not see the eclipse worth a damn.

I doubt it. This one was convenience. If it wasn't 4.5 hours away with a free campsite....TBD.

love the username. I would do it again, 12 hour drive home instead of 4.5, but worth it. Considering others were going WAY further, flights, etc - and we got an absolute gem of a display with not a cloud in the sky.

Looked at a map and the next few were Baghdad, Buenos Aires, and Moscow. Might be a little rough



Cheers y'all, that was a great trip. Way more photos to come.

 

Was that last one with the trucks at the camp site?

 

Yeah, we lined it up on Monday right before haha

 

You folks melted a lot of snow

 

I packed 3 jackets, 4 pairs of long johns, 3 pairs of gloves, 18 hats, snow pants, shemeghs...

I got a sun burn on my face because of how warm and sunny it was

 

Yeah when I hopped in the shower it was very apparent I got a little browner hahaha

 

Iceland and Spain are next in 2026. The path of that one is weird, in that it loops around the pole. I assume it is the result of the lineup occurring near sunset.

The next three in South America are annular - no totality

There are actually two in Australia before the next one in North America. The one in 2037 actually goes over the Red Centre, and my truck's namesake. The population of the NT will increase by two orders of magnitude for that one...

The timeanddate dot com website is pretty cool...

 

90d, 50 mm lens, hand held, zero prep, a little raw editing

 

Think how much worse that sunburn would be if it weren't for the eclipse.... .

Skiers wear sunscreen, always...

 

Totality from Lake Placid NY - was very fortunate to only have light cirrus clouds compared to what Buffalo and Rochester got
Images from our telescope, and the views around were amazing for April, just the right amount of snow! Now to get my underside washed up, salt is sticking to the woolwax like crazy


Some more pictures! 15 min intervals from first contact

Spoiler: More images