8 teenagers. 2 tents. One very long 7 hour drive. This was what my weekend consisted of. A few months ago, my friend Henry told us about the solar eclipse that would be happening later in the summer and asked if I wanted to go see it with him. I said yes of course because it sounded like a very fun experience that I could live out with my friends. The only problem was that we live in Minneapolis where totality would not be visible. The closest place to us where the path of totality occurred was St. Joseph, Missouri. Only a short 7 hour drive away from home. 7 other friends wanted to go see the eclipse so we all decided to make a trip out of it. Here is what happened.
Sunday August 20th
11:30 am- we set out for our day long travel. 7 of us were crammed into one mini van because we were going to pick up our friend Max at Iowa State University in Ames.
3:00 pm- we arrived in Ames, walked around the campus, and ate a meal at Jeff’s pizza which was very delicious.
5:00 pm- we divided ourselves up into 2 cars and set off for Missouri.
9:00 pm- traffic was not the best and we took a long stop in Ames, so we made it to St. Joseph later in the evening at our Airbnb, which was basically someone's front yard that we camped at.
Monday August 21st
8:00 am- we woke up and checked the weather and saw that it was likely going to storm and be cloudy. Not ideal at all if we wanted to look up at the sky for the eclipse.
10:00 am- we ended up going to a coffee shop where we ran into a man who gave us eclipse pins which was very kind of him, good thing he had 8 of them.
11:50 am- we went outside to see the beginnings of the eclipse, where a sliver of the moon was visible in front of the sun. That could be seen only if we were wearing special certified glasses. (Thank you Henry and Justin.)
12:00 pm- it started raining and clouds were moving in fast, we headed back to the campsite.
1:06 pm- this was the exact time when the moon started to completely cover the sun, reaching totality. This would only last for 2 minutes and 38 seconds. Everything around us became dark and we could hear cicadas because they thought it was nighttime. The temperature also dropped as the sun was being covered. The darkness felt like it was only 30 seconds long even though it was over 2 minutes. We could see fireworks in the distance as well. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy and rainy for us to see the eclipse happen, but it was still very cool to see the world become dark and to see the sunset and sunrise within the span of 2 minutes. Once the moon started uncovering the sun, roosters began to crow, believing that morning had occurred.
1:30 pm- we set off for Minneapolis. Traffic was so horrible that it added an extra 5 hours onto our trip. This was a mixture of people leaving Missouri and construction that was occurring on the main highways.
12:30 am- after a very long day of driving, I finally made it home, only a short 11 hours later.
Even though the trip was short lived, it was filled with many great memories and experiences that I will never forget. Hopefully I have the opportunity to travel east see the next total solar eclipse in 2024.
