Journey to the Center of the Totality! | April 8, 2024

Ready? Play a Little Tune for your Trip

Humble Beginnings

Back in February, a dear friend of ours sent us a message:

Now, we all live in central Kentucky, but I'm originally from Illinois, and I haven't been home to see my family in some time, so I checked the map, and...

Would you look at that! The north edge of the totality path is right along Effingham, IL, which is the town that I say I grew up in for lack of having a hometown that anyone can locate on a map! How serendipitous.

So the planning began. Originally, Jude and I forgot to ask for days off (oops) and had to get shifts switched last minute, and we weren't able to book rooms at the slightly nicer hotel in my hometown. We sent my dad over to the less grimy of the two others to ask about rooms and made plans to crash at the shed at my family's bluegill stock pond if all else failed. In the end, though, we managed to secure two days off work, a cheap-ish hotel room, and a couple of authorized drivers for the trip down! Success!

Heading Out

Before traveling out, Jude and I had been spending the week with our nephew, Leo, who stayed with us over his spring break. We originally planned for his mom, Meagan, to pick him up on Friday, but she was actually in Paducah visiting her partner, so it made more sense for Leo to just hitch a ride with us and for Megan to meet us along the road, so the first stage of our roadtrip was with family!

On the morning of the 7th, we packed up Leo and his things (many stuffed animals and blankets) and headed over to Frankfort to get Cav and their slightly-newer-than-mine car. They kindly donated an old laundry basket to the too-many-plushies cause, and we loaded up their car for the trip.

One of the interesting things about traveling with both Leo and Cav was is that they're both (like Jude and I) fandom types from one stage of life or another. It's always interesting to see how fandom changes over time, but you don't often get to see different fandom lifestages rubbing up against each other, and especially not with Leo's era of fandom-ness, since he's only barely a teen at this point. In particular, Leo's fandom works differently (much, much more focus on cosplay and user creations) and he has a diminished sense of protectiveness over his fandom activities. I'd love to talk to him about it in detail someday, maybe do some comparative fandom studies.

Overall, though, Leo wanted to watch his own videos in peace and quiet. By contrast, the drive was not quite peaceful and quiet. Cav is a self-decribed eastern Kentucky maniac driver, who seems to feel that acceleration is for suckers and turns should be as pinpoint as possible, especially if the car is full of squishy, bruise-prone folks. There was a disconcerting rubbing sound emanating from somewhere around the rear tires, and they managed to miss no fewer than three exits (one of which brought them nearly into a driver-side collision with a very sweet-looking old woman in downtown Louisville, which was a location we weren't supposed to visit and which I cannot recall how we got to). Oh, and they backtracked us to Lexington after setting the GPS to Mt. Vernon, KY instead of Mt. Vernon, IL. That part's kind of my fault, actually.

At some point Cav hit the trunk release with their foot while wiggling around for no good reason, and we started hearing an open door alarm. They announced it was the trunk, which didn't look very open at this point, but as they headed for an exit, the hatch began flapping up and down. Leo, who had placed a delicate cosplay mask on top of his backpack in the center of the trunk, watched with bated breath. Eventually, Cav slowed down sharply at a stop sign right before turning to a local gas station, and the trunk snapped neatly closed! We pulled over anyway just to be sure Leo's hard work wasn't roadkill somewhere further down the interstate, and everything was fine.

Eventually, I traded them for the driver's seat at a stop somewhere around Corydon, while we were waiting on an order of the soggiest case of White Castle sliders I've ever seen. Jude, who was getting motion sick, hopped in the front and stayed there for the rest of the trip. Things were uneventful until we got near Mt. Vernon, where a sudden deluge made us wonder if the sky would be clear enough to see the eclipse the next day... the rain cleared up right as we drove into Mt. Vernon, though, and we met Meagan at a park several hours later than we initially told her we'd see her!

Meagan, her two younger children, and her partner had traveled up specifically to pick up Leo--Mt. Vernon was the closest that our path took us to Paducah, KY--but it had been Pokemon Go family day, so they were entertained while they waited for us to arrive. She took one look at the car and identified the source of the concerning rubbing noise (and moved it so that it wouldn't obstruct a tire for the rest of the trip)! Also, her youngest asked us if we were going to see the "solar apocalypse" the next day. Meagan begged us not to tell him what the word actually was. We unloaded Leo and his belongings, wished them a happy apocalypse, and were on our way again!

Once we got back on the road, Cav put on a podcast we'd been meaning to listen to--an episode of This Podcast Will Kill You about encephalitis lethargica (give it a listen if you want some nightmares!). We continued into Illinois, and left the interstate at Farina, about 15 miles from my home town.

But Farina was still in the storm we'd been skirting that afternoon, and as we drove down the (to Cav, horrifyingly flat, astoundingly open) highway to my hometown, our phones alerted with a tornado warning. For those of you who don't know, a tornado watch is an alert that conditions are favorable for tornado formation; a tornado warning is a notification that either a funnel cloud or an actual tornado has been spotted. Technically, a watch means "get to shelter NOW..."

But we were in a field, and it was raining, and we were only 10 minutes from town by that point. I made Cav keep an eye out the back window--they eventually saw the swirling funnel cloud, and kept an eye on it until we reached town--and floored it to the county line. "If it touches down and heads this way," I said, "we'll pull off and jump in the ditch. That's the safest place, and there's nothing around to fall on us." Nevermind that the ditch was underwater. It turned out to not be an issue in the end, and we rolled into my parents' driveway without being ripped into the air and thrown around. After a brief meet-and-greet with my parents and their elderly setter, Bristol, we drove to our hotel to check in.

Later that evening, we met mom and dad in Effingham for a late dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We weren't terribly hungry (thanks, White Castle in Corydon, IN), but Jude managed to decimate a shrimp taco dish, while Cav and I picked at our delicious food sadly. After leaving at the end of open hours, we made out way back to our hotel and spent the evening hanging out before passing out in the coldest hotel room in the region.

Solar Apocalypse Now!

The morning of the 8th, we woke up to an even chillier hotel room, and made quick work of showering and checking out before heading into town for breakfast at The Open Door, my favorite local restaurant and a previous favored haunt. The Open Door is a cute little country diner with a rotating special, challenge plates, and a mismatched novelty coffee cup collection (we were given morning brew in a partially-matched set of quilt-themed cups). My favorite fixture is a plate called the Cook's Garbage Can, which is a mystery dish defined by that day's short-order chef. Sometimes it's a test dish, and other times it's an off-menu alteration. This time I lucked out with a lovely pepper and sausage southwest omlette with a side of deep-fried avocado slices. Cav had a BLT, and Jude had some tasty biscuits and gravy (the hyper-local favorite dish, aside from hamburger horseshoes). It was so nostalgic being in the diner again.

By the time we finished up, it was time to drive out to our viewing spot. My dad, who's lived in the region his whole life and who frequently travels to off-beat places for his hobbies, suggested that we try Halfway Tavern for a viewing location. It's a historical building off the highway just outside of the small town of Iuka, and it was quite close to the center of the totality path. We were a little worried that there would be a bunch of people there, but apparently everyone was gathered at Stephen A. Forbes State Recreational Area, so we were actually alone when we got to Halfway Tavern! My parents and I parked next to each other, threw a tarp down halfway in the shade of a large pine, and waited for first contact.

And despite the storm the day before, it was a beautiful, clear day:

(credit to Cav for these photos, by the way)

The first contact was... strangely subtle? Dad had an app that announced solar events when they were about to happen, and we barely noticed first contact until around 30 seconds later, when a little black bump ate the lower right edge of the Sun. We kept looking up excitedly, waiting for more and more of the Sun to disappear, and watching the light around us dim. At some point, another couple arrived to see the totality, and we lent them our glasses so they could look up.

The totality was astounding. It seemed as if the moon was moving quicker and quicker to cover the sun, despite the gradual creep it had shown earlier in the day. There was an unexpected moment where the sliver of the sun was covered--suddenly my glasses didn't work, and the world was in twilight. Jude pointed out that there had been a sunset a few minutes earlier, when the sun was around 7/8 covered, and now we could see the sunset all around us in a ring: forward, behind us, and to both sides. In the sky the moon was a grey coin, and the rays of the sun radiated from its edges, stark in the dim eclipse light. Thin clouds had formed in the cooling air before the totality, but they were insubstantial and didn't block the view in the slightest. Venus and Mercury had popped into view nearby. The birds had stopped singing, as had the frogs; a barn swallow that had been flying, confused, around us was suddenly gone. Dad said there would be a sensation of wind, but we didn't catch it. Everything was still, except the people at our observational site, who were frenzied.

Iuka, near the center of the eclipse path, was forecast to have around 3 minutes and 18 seconds of totality (per Nasa's interactive eclipse path tracker), but it still felt like only an instant despite receiving about as much totality as we could get without travelling to the Southwest. As soon as it began, it was over. There was a brief moment where, the Sun emerging from behind the moon, we could all look up at it and see it bare-faced before the rays were too bright to bear again. The day seemed instantly brighter, almost to its usual color, even when the sliver of the sun was as small as it had been before totality, and the couple who watched the eclipse with us drove away. As Cav pointed out, the birds quickly came out in morning formations, and I noticed the wispy clouds had burned away.

Photos from Friends

Jude and Cav both took photos of the minutes leading up to the totality! Here are some of Jude's:

It's kind of hard to see the changes in the light here! It's surprising to me how subtle the dim light was--at the time these were taken, it was QUITE dark, so it's fascinating that his phone compensated this much. Interestingly, the dimness reminded me of the dimness of a photo shot in manual with the wrong shutter speed--dark, but an overall, flat dark, not a twilight dark until the very end.

Jude also got a short video of the totality:

Cav also took a bunch of photos. Here's their pre-totality view:

And some images from the totality:

That last photo includes Venus! Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter were also visible, but Saturn and Mars were pretty faint.

Finally, Leo got a pretty sick photo of the peak from where he was in Paducah--there wasn't quite a totality there, but as you can see, they got quite close!

Other Photos

Of course, we don't know too many astrophotographers, so more photos are in order! Cav and my dad managed to notice a red dot at the bottom of the eclipse while it was in totality (something I wasn't able to see myself--should have looked through the binoculars while I had a chance!). The Courier Journal's Matt Stone got a nice shot of the eclipse that shows it pretty clearly:

According to an interview in the Indy Star, these are solar prominences, hot gas trapped in the magnetic fields above Sun's surface like clouds of water vapor on earth. Butler University's Brian Murphy, a physics and astronomy professor, says it was likely post-eruptive--a solar flare!

Speaking of the Indy Star, the paper's Joe Timmerman captured a pretty spectacular timelapse from the Indy Motor Speedway:

Lots of good shots out of Indianapolis! Here, check out Bobby Goodin's (Herald-Times) shot of William Shatner watching the totality:

Down in Texas, where the totality was longer than anywhere else, Ronald Erdrich of the Abilene Reporter-News got this rad shot of the totality over the Hood County courthouse:

And Jack Gruber for USA Today got this hella ominous shot of the partial eclipse over Washington Monument:

The next day, I found this cool little iframe showing a visualization of the eclipse totality from a chosen location on the map. If you want to see what we saw, enter ZIP code 62849, Iuka, IL. Check it out:

I wish it was embeddable--don't you miss the days of universal embedding?--but NASA has a really lovely visualizer. Uniquely, it shows views behind the moon, and views of both the moon and the earth, so you can see a more celestial view of the actual science behind the spectacle. Check it out!

Speaking of NASA, they had a livestream of the totality. Here's the replay, starting from their broadcast in Carbondale, IL, which is about an hour away from where we watched the eclipse in Iuka. The presenter mentions that Carbondale was unique in that the last eclipse crossed the same region. I've been very lucky to live in this region! Although, last time I was in Charleston, IL, which was off the totality path, so... I digress. Take a look.

NASA also took a timelapse of the progress into and out of the totality in Dallas. Take a look--the photos we took don't do the color change justice!

Heading Home

During the 2017 eclipse, I had the displeasure of working in my local gas station back in my southern Illinois hometown, and the evening traffic was a nightmare. My boss and I had wound up staying almost an hour after closing time trying to clear out customers, clean the bathrooms, and scrub the coffee pots while eclipse viewers from Chicago flooded back north. I didn't want a repeat (though I thought we might have it easier this time, since we would be crossing through the totality path and exiting to the south, where there was likely to be less traffic), so we planned to stay in Illinois for a little longer.

First we went over to Mt. Vernon, where we hit up a local antique shop at Jude's request--he's a collector of disconcerting antique horse pins, and we had fun despite not finding any there. After we said goodbye to my parents, we headed over to the local dispensary. Recreational weed is still illegal in Kentucky, and medical uses aren't approved until the start of 2025. Apparently they were, as expected, pretty busy that day.

It was interesting to see the dispensary. I had still been reporting in Illinois when recreational use was signed into law, and I remember sitting in on a couple of discussions about dispensaries in the towns I covered. One of the counties I worked in moved--by rather overwhelming measures--to not seek a dispensary location, despite having interstate properties and a quite poor tax base, and I'll never understand the moral grandstanding behind that. They looked so much money, and so much good done with that money, in the mouth and said they'd rather not have a couple stoners come in off I-57?

In Illinois, there are a couple of taxes that can be levied on cannabis sales that sit on top of everything else--municipal, state, and everything. The County Cannabis Retailer's Occupation Tax (CCAN), for example, can be up to 3.75% in unincorporated areas, or 3% in municipalities (which are allowed to levy ANOTHER tax of up to 3%). Anecdotally, we paid taxes amounting to nearly 21% of purchase price. The facility was modern and very clean, with ID checks at the door, clear secure premises, and a foolproof, order-only purchase system. This is a shop that's making cash hand over fist for the little town it's in, and if Mt. Vernon's cute little road signs and fountained pond in the park are any indication, it's done them quite a bit of good.

That said, I couldn't help but be a little unsettled by the whole experience. It occured to me that the people who made weed so popular in the first place weren't represented in the shop, and they weren't benefitting all that much from the dispensary law (the state did enact a cannabis expungement law, though minor offenders having their records wiped clean isn't the same as profitting from an industry that you grew). There was a little token sign behind the counter about supporting diverse voices in the cannabis industry, but that was all. It was very cold and corporate, and white.

After we hit the dispensary, we drove over to a Rural King. There isn't one in the city we currently live in, and I was craving some of their bulk candy, so we dropped in and decimated the snack aisle. I picked up a bag of free popcorn--stale and cold and utterly enchanting, to nobody's surprise--and advised everyone to avoid the free coffee. Jude stumbled on a display of seed pearl onions, which Cav loves pickled, so we picked up two small bags to be brined later. I got a bottle of Faygo Rock 'N Rye in granny's honor (it IS the best flavor, she's so right) and a bag of Bavarian almonds, and we checked the traffic, which was all heading north. We were on our way back to Kentucky!

Jude and I finished off our previous episode of This Podcast Will Kill You on encephalitis lethargica and started in on another, which was about Eastern Equine Encephalitis, or Triple E Disease, which is absolutely horrifying. We stopped in the same town I somehow always stop in, Lynnville (I think it's the first Casey's on the way to Illinois/the last one on the way to Kentucky, which is what draws me in) for a pit stop and a driver switch. Jude and Cav got to experience a Casey's pizza (sausage)! While we waited for fresh slices, Jude pointed out a photo on the hot case of what he thought was mac and cheese pizza, which was a seasonal offering in late fall at some point. I asked if it was still seasonal and...

The attendant said it hadn't been a menu item for years!!

Somehow, I missed out on breakfast pizza again this trip. I'll have to grab some early next time we come to town.

Cav got back in the driver's seat of their own car, and immediately both missed the on-ramp and managed to pop the trunk release with their foot. I bolted my iced coffee to avoid spilling it in their backseat (bad idea) and settled in for a bumpy ride. They put on an episode about a deconstructionist view of the book of Revelations for the ride, which I couldn't hear that well, so I played 2048 instead.

We hit absolutely no traffic. There was a lane closure just past Louisville for a stopped car on the shoulder, which produced a slow-down (there was construction in the left lane), but nothing like what I experienced in 2017. We were back in Frankfort by 11 PM Eastern time, where we cleaned out Cav's car (and said a tearful goodbye to my leftover torta, which had been marinating in the trunk all day), said hi to Simon, and parted ways.

Jude and I got back to Lexington not long after. Kat, who watched Pavel for us, said that he had been a good boy, and he was happy to see us--happier still to get his dinner and cuddle with us in bed. Jude and I fell right asleep, though I woke up several times (revenge of the junk food). Maybe I'm at the age where I need to not eat pure garbage when I go on vacation...

Jude had work the next day, and I stayed home to clean up, put away our snacks, and prep food for the upcoming workweek. In Lexington, it was rainy, a bookend to the storm from the day before the eclipse. I'm just happy it stayed clear long enough to see the sights!