Total Solar Eclipse -- I'm Still Speechless

I am very rarely speechless, but getting the opportunity to witness a total solar eclipse left me, well... speechless...  At least I was consistent in my "planning" and wasn't fazed by this sign on the drive up to South Carolina!

Gretchen and I headed out to Charleston on Saturday and being the beach lover she is, we immediately went down to the water.  I'm clearly an Emerald Coast kinda guy, but a beach is always a beach.  We finished the day up with a nice view at dinner at Harbor House on Patriots Point.  I was reminded of the time Connor and I "camped" that that big carrier with his Cub Scout Pack years ago.

On Sunday, we checked out Charleston a bit around lunchtime.  Fun town for sure, but clearly a hot & muggy day for the both of us.  Here are a few photos of our wandering around.

Later in the day, we drove up to Columbia which is where I went to Army Basic Combat Training so many years ago at Fort Jackson.  I decided to not bore her to tears and ask her to go on post with me.  She did remind me that I dragged her and the kids there several years ago.    As they say, the memory is the first thing to go (or is that the hair on the top of our heads?).  We had a nice anniversary celebration dinner and finished up the day talking about how excited we were about the eclipse we would see the next day.

We were greeted with a fairly cloudy day as forecasted, but I promised myself I'd enjoy the weird expression of the cosmos no matter what.  We finally started seeing the tell-tale signs of the moon creeping into the path of the sun.  I tried to put my solar glasses over my iPhone to take a few pictures, but they did NOT turn out well (as expected) and I KNEW folks like Mark Streit, would do me proud with some photos.

This is exactly what I was able to see with my eyes through my solar glasses.  In fact, it was all that I was really expecting and told myself I'd be grateful if that was all that I saw the rest of the day; especially with the 50% cloud cover we were having in Columbia.  What I was not ready for was the eventual totality.  I have read and heard others' explanations of what happened, but nothing really prepared me for what I saw and felt.  I was totally blown away.  Yes, exactly as folks predicted, the sky went very dark all around us when the totality occurred and you could do exactly what they told us -- look directly at the eclipse with your naked eye.

The moon no longer was some little flat circle like I saw in my glasses, it was a full sphere.  It was not just jet black, but had many deep variations of blackness from different parts of the dark side of the lunar surface pulling in tiny bits of light.  The ring around the moon wasn't the orange and red starbursts that most of the pictures suggested, but was a brilliant, almost blueish, white light.  It jetted out to many different points as it peered over the mountain ranges on the moon.  In a word, I was truly speechless...

The best picture I have found that looks something like what I saw is this one (courtesy of The Atlantic).

For those that did not get to see this event with their naked eye, I guess I should say that it simply looked like that picture above, but it was so much more.  So much more depth and clarity.  So much more exciting and spiritual.  So much more, well... just SO MUCH MORE!

I'll be heading back to my adopted home state of Texas for the next showing of this on April 8, 2024.  Wanna come with me!?!?