2017 Eclipse Party!

Donna's brother Bill and his wife Linda drove to York on Sunday to join in an Eclipse Party! We celebrated a bit early with Roger and Mary, our friends from Texas, and had a great burger party All the fixin's were available thanks to the girls' hard work!

Monday morning we set up outside about 11:30 CDT to watch the eclipse. This event has been promoted to the nth degree; thousands of people are expected to stop what they're doing and experience a dramatic, historic, event.

So, just as we were about to see first contact, the clouds rolled in!

Remaining ever vigilant, Bill and Linda were ready with their solar glasses!

Mary and Roger were ready....

And Donna was prepared as well.....

But I remained skeptically confident that this was all a great scam...

 So there we sat, waiting...waiting...waiting...

And then it began! With just a small bite, the moon began to devour the sun! The clouds cleared just enough for us to photograph the event through one of the lens on our special glasses.

After teasing us with a bit of clearing sky and the hope of seeing the famous Diamond Ring,

The skies clouded up again, and we were denied a look at the most spectacular part of the eclipse!

During the two plus minutes of totality here in York, NE, the most eerie thing happened: the birds stopped singing, the temperature dropped several degrees, and the wind quit blowing.

Conversation ceased as we all absorbed what is a most natural unnatural event. The skies darkened to dusk and the silence was deafening.

 As we glanced about the campground, we could see daylight off to the east as totality raced toward South Carolina at 1500 miles per hour!

And then reality began again...

As totality receded into the east, the doves began to coo, the breeze wafted through the campground once again, and we all did a reality check...."What just happened?"

B and L compared their picture collections.

And a somewhat dejected Gawie had to admit that "that was quite a show!"