7166137's blog: "Eclipse 2017"

 had planned on driving as far as Missouri to see the eclipse if the clouds were going to be in play. As the day got closer, I decided to stay in Tennessee, east of Nashville. I didn't have to leave as early as I had originally planned. At 8PM Eastern, I had the last thing packed in my truck and headed out.

I have been everywhere in Virginia, I decided to get a little more North Carolina places out of the way. The direct route for that would have taken me across the James river on the Ferry to Scotland, but I learned this is shut down at night. Plan B, changed to the western extreme, so I drove the Blue Ridge Parkway across the state line, then a bunch of back roads. I would sleep an hour or two here and there, waking up in the city of Boone, then crossing to Tennessee on US Route 321. I saw a cool lake from the mountain tops, that eventually descended to it. Because it's high elevation, the tops of the trees weren't in fog, rather they were low clouds. This lake was one of the few places I got out to walk around and take a few photos. Maybe I should have done that more, but with mobility being an issue, that would have left me with fewer places to visit.

I then decided to get to each county north of Interstate 40, west of Knoxville, east of Nashville. I saw a lot of great places to take family day trips. A one-lane bridge across a dam, and at one point, a 14% grade down hill. That's the steepest I ever saw that was marked. Thank goodness it was only 3/4 mile. I got to the last of those, then headed south east of Interstate 65 to get some more places. This area is very flat. Then it was east on US Route 64 toward Chattanooga. I noticed there were no street lights at all, so I pulled over to look at the sky at night. It was incredibly clear, the Milky Way was so well visible, there were litereally tens of millions of visible stars. Too bad it would take a very expensive camera to be able to take photos.

I spent the night in the small town of Monteagle, and dressed with my Fubar T-shirt for Eclipse day. Early breakfast at Waffle House which is were my new profile photo was taken. The staff there got the biggest kick out of my shirt, there was one Army Reservist working there, and one other who was going to join the Army in a few months. From there, I ventured around the most central part of the state. The Walmart at Sparta is on the centerline of the eclipse. Their parking lot was jam packed. I saw churches putting out canopy tents inviting people to use their parking lots to have a good place to view it. I could see clouds coming, and I still had a couple hours, so I decided then to get the rest of the central part of the state, then find a spot just east of the Eastern/Central Time Zone Lines, near the small town of Dayton. I just found an area that had about 30 people, a few families. Not too crowded.

I got my tripod out with the camera on top, put on the glasses and saw it was already half way in progress. The family closest to me had a Naval Reservist so we talked a little about Naval stuff, a little about atronomy, and I mentioned how I had seen that partial eclipse on a ship at sea. At about 75% eclipsed, I stared looking for planets. Mars and Mercury were very close to the sun and were never visible, but far off to the left was Venus, and far off to the right was Jupiter. I had checked that in advance and told the others around me what they were. They can now say they saw Jupiter and Venus in the middle of the day without any aids.

The start of the full eclipse had a very pronounced "diamond ring" appearance on the left side, then for the nearly 3 minutes, the corona was so large. Sure, I observed it, but I also "experienced" it. When I say experience it, I mean more than just the sense of vision. Sense of touch as the temperature dropped enough to notice, and sense of hearing in hearing the spoken reactions by everyone else. I kept my mouth shut to listen to them. The family had 3 generations with three different types of reactions.

The choice was to spend the whole time photographing it, or being able to actually see it. I took a bunch of photos at the beginning and then one "selfie" with my phone, then just watched it the rest of the time, and hopefully I got one good photo when it ended, a second diamond ring looking thing. I took my time getting my things together, and was last to head out.

Because I was south of the centerline, the vast majority of people were heading south. US Route 27 was a total parking lot southbound, and northbound was normal to light. There was one county in the very center, just west of the Time Zone line that I had yet to visit, so I went there. If I had driving across that county, instead of the route I took, that one county would have taken a full hour to cross. I did more than just enter it and turn around. There was one road that looped back to the highway I was one, so I drove it. This was a high elevation plateau that was full of apple orchards, tomato and squash farms, and nursuries. It took the better part of an hour to drive the ten miles on this loop, and if I want to find a quiet place to retire, I would consider this spot.

From there, I went east because there is one county along the Georgia border, Polk County, that I had to get to. I tried to find a place to eat in Athens, but didn't what looked like what I wanted, so I just drove toward Polk County. In the very small town, Etowah, I did find that spot. A small diner. By now it was more than 3 hours since the Eclipse ended. I got lucky that there was one seat at the counter, while others were waiting for tables to open. They were very busy, and I talked to the people on both sides. The guy to my left drove there from Pensacola, totally opposite direction. The other family was from a lot closer. The wait staff told me they closed the businsess down for three full hours, which most of the town did. They also told me this was their busiest day since it opened. 

I sat in the 2nd to last barstool

I'll write more about the rest of the trip after I have dinner tonight.

Below is a website mob-rule.com where I document each county I visit. The light blue and one purple are counties I have visited in the past. Every other colored one was new on this trip, with the yellow Rhea county where I was for the eclipse.

When dinner was done, I was one of a very few still there, so I was able to talk to the staff a bit about the locality and how this was a real cool place to dine. I then drove south to get to Polk County, which is very rural, and saw some great scenery, small towns, fields and mountains. The only part of East Tennessee I had never visited was the extreme north east, so I drove all back roads to get to the edge of Union County, where I spent the night. At sunrise, I didn't look but probably should have found place to eat, but I settled for fast food. All the Green Counties above were visited that morning. All incredibly scenic, and sparsely populated. The one sign I saw a lot was warning truckers to find alternate routes because of up coming switch backs. Some great scenery at the top of every hill and mountain, and plenty of places to just get lost. 

From Johnson County, I re-entered Virginia and had three options. East on US-58 which is a great drive, but I had already done that. Northeast, to the Blue Ridge parkway, the first 50 miles would have been new, but it too would have taken a very long time. I decided to go north to Interstate 81. When I got to Wytheville, traffic was totally stopped, so I decided to drive some back roads to get around it. A lot of drivers were trying to take US-11 north, so it too was a parking lot. Instead, I found one back road after another. It took time, but I wasn't staying still. When I came back to I-81, I wondered how far I would have gotten if I stayed on, but didn't worry about it. I was moving at full speed, at least a little while.

Approaching Christiansburg, just south of Blacksburg, which is a big college town, there were signs warning of all north bound traffic stopped for a massive wreck. So, I turned that into an opportunity to find a place to have an early dinner. County Kitchen was easy to find, but the ouside didn't look like an eatery. Inside, it was very clean, the staff was great, and the food was awesome. Great experience. I told them they should have a lot of business with the traffic problem, but it doesn't look like an eatery until you're passing it by. I stayed three hours, the evening crowd was showing up, so I decided to head out.

Getting northbound, was a parking lot on US-11, so I would take that to US-460 that would have taken me across the state, almost to home even. When I got close to I-81, I decided to take a chance and get on it northbound. It was moving, faster than the alternate route. Google Maps showed the slow down would end about 25 miles up. The place of the crash was completely clear when I got to it, but I think people were so used to being stopped for so long, that they forgot that the goal was to drive full speed. About one mile at a time, we would get up to almost 50 MPH, then come to another stop for a couple minutes. Close to where the traffic did start to speed up, I needed fuel, so I took care of that, and after that, the remainder of the drive home, about four hours, was normal speed with normal traffic.

I still have not yet looked at the photos from my camera. I intend to do that later today.