Eclipse 2017

So, did anyone else check out the eclipse? By chance, my small town was in the path of totality, so my mom, sister, and I camped out at work to watch it. It looked pretty awesome, I have to say. But I've always thought space/astronomy shit like that was cool. @Derek, did you have a good view of it? I think the southern and western parts of the state got the best of it.

I'm a little bummed I didn't appear to get any awesome Heroes powers, though. I'm so freaking lame.

 

Really cool! We reached totality at around 1:26 pm. For maybe the half hour before, it started getting sort of hazy out, just a weird quality to the light that I can't really explain, and then when it happened, it got dark. Street lights came on and everything. My dad said birds were flying to rest on power lines by our house where they usually sleep, and someone else I know saw bats flying around.

Here's a Facebook link to a local news station out of Nashville showing the darkness: Link!

I've been trying to find a good picture from my area of the total eclipse, but they're all crap. NASA took this one from out in space, and that was pretty much how it looked for me, just farther away. When you're wearing the glasses, they go totally black and you have to take them off, so when I did and saw that, it was pretty amazing.

Then of course, like everyone else in the country, we had to listen to some Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse of the Heart". She must be making a killing off this damn eclipse, ha ha.

Edit: Found some decent local shots: Here, Here, and Here

 

@Derek, you're right, it was like a photo filter. It definitely looked differently than it normally does at dusk when the sun's going down, at any rate.

I love 80s music, so I didn't mind listening to Bonnie Tyler. It's just that I think it's the only song people could think of that mentions the word "eclipse", so everyone's been playing it.

I know my city definitely cashed in today, though. They were charging bullshit rates for parking in the park and at a few other areas in town, hotels were maxed out, and I heard, renting out last minute cancellations at $900 a night, and there were even people renting out spaces for tents in their back yards. I never really got to see how overrun we were with tourists, though. I stayed the hell away from the town square and everywhere else I thought people might gather.

 

@Derek, I guess they're saying we had 25,000 visitors for the eclipse. I think the town proper has a population around 8000, so there was a pretty big crowd descended on us.

I don't know why we were so popular. We are right off an interstate, and have a lot of restaurants and hotels, so that probably helped. I do know that there were so many cars parking to watch the show, a bitch who owns one of the local cemeteries decided to take advantage and was selling parking spots in the cemetery. Like, there are pictures of people camping out in their folding chairs on top of where people are buried. A lot of locals are in an uproar about it.

 

@Derek, I'm not terribly far from Bowling Green. I'm assuming 8000 is correct; I don't actually know, I googled "population in _____" and it came to 79somethingsomething.

Yeah, people apparently weren't parked with their cars on top of actual graves, but they did have their chairs out amongst them. It was pretty ballsy; I almost admire the lady for her dedication to money. But people are complaining because they've seen pictures of people sitting over their relatives, and I guess the owner is being a total bitch about it.