Total Solar Eclipse!

This past weekend, I went to South Carolina to see the total solar eclipse on Monday, August 21! And it was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had!!!

I made a weekend of it, but for now, I just want to talk about the day of the eclipse. (I'll write about the rest of the weekend in another blogpost.)

A friend from work, Heather, joined me on this adventure. We had talked about the night before where we wanted to see the eclipse and when we wanted to be there by. (Our hotel was not in the path of totality, so we had to drive about 50 miles to get into the path).

We woke up bright and early to give ourselves plenty of time to get to our chosen destination. Since we left before breakfast was available at our hotel, we looked up donut places in the city we were staying in. We found Sunny's Donuts just a couple of miles down the road and made that our breakfast that morning and can I just say how delicious my apple fritter was?! It was seriously so good! :)

Paris Mountain State Park just outside Greenville, South Carolina was our chosen place to watch the eclipse. We were worried about traffic getting into the path of totality as well as finding a good spot to watch the eclipse so we got there right when the park opened at 8. We got there and set up the blanket and chair that I had brought and then we had about 5 hours to kill.

Since we were in a state park, what else could we do but hike?! So hiking was what we did and it was awesome! It was beautiful! It was super hot and humid, but the scenery was amazing!

Lake Placid Trail. It was about a mile around and had pretty awesome scenery!

A dam at one end of Lake Placid! (When you see this picture of me, remember it was already hot and humid even though it was only about 8:30 in the morning.) ;)

Toward the end of the Lake Placid trail was a kind of rickety bridge and I decided I needed a picture of my feet on it. ;)

Mountain Creek Trail! There was an outdoor ampitheater along this trail and I thought it would be pretty cool to see a concert or something there.

Of course I had to get on stage and pretend I was performing. :)

I think this might be part of the Sulphur Springs trail but it might actually still be part of the Mountain Creek trail. I don't remember for sure. The Mountain Creek trail eventually turned into the Sulphur Springs trail. We hiked all of the Mountain Creek trail but not all of the Sulphur Springs one.

We hiked for about 3 hours and then we started walking back to the ballfield where we would watch the eclipse from and eat lunch and prepare for the eclipse to start. :)

Just seeing the partial eclipse was pretty dang cool. It was interesting to notice as the eclipse was getting closer and closer to totality, how the lighting changed around us (almost like a filter on my eyes or like I had sunglasses on when I didn't) as well as the temperature dropping. But it was also interesting to note how even when the eclipse got down to just a sliver or the diamond ring phase, how much light it still emitted.

Sometimes there were clouds that would come and cover the sun when it was still during partial and it would actually make it look really cool when we could still see the sun through the clouds. Even though the clouds made it look cool, we also worried a bit about the clouds being there during totality, but thankfully the sky was clear for that! :)

The total eclipse happened and it was amaaaazzzing! We could take off the eclipse glasses and look at the sun with our natural eyes without going blind. The moon (just for a moment) looked so big covering the sun except for the corona. The sky turned to dusk, I saw one star, the temperature dropped significantly.

People were cheering and clapping and I got goosebumps. I also had tears welling up in my eyes. I loved it all! It was so cool!

This picture was taken at 2:39 PM about a minute into totality!

We stayed at the park until the eclipse was officially over. It was pretty dang awesome!

On our way home, we hit traffic (which we were not surprised about). The gps took us on back roads for about 60 miles (because it was faster than getting on the freeway). I actually didn't mind seeing the countryside of South Carolina. It was beautiful!

Eventually we did have to get on the freeway, and it was really slow so we ended up stopping in Kannapolis, NC to sleep and let the traffic die down. We left early the next morning to drive the rest of the way home and thankfully had no problems with traffic.

The total eclipse is an experience I'll never forget! It was seriously so cool! If you ever get a chance to see a solar eclipse in totality, I highly recommend it. It was worth the time, money, traffic and heat and humidity to see it! :)