#eclipse trip

Poptart wore his eye protection, and this is what he saw!

TL: DR, The eclipse was clouded out and therefore a bit underwhelming, but still neat, and the rest of the trip was fun, too!

I arrived at my campsite on Friday afternoon, amid snow flurries and sleet:

Luckily, I was staying in this snug little hut, a Pennsylvania state park "camping cottage." They're smaller and less quaint than the rustic cabins that I usually get, but because they're prefab, they have them at some of the parks that don't have full cabins, including the one where I was staying, 20 minutes outside the path of totality.

The hut has 3 of these little radiators, along with two sets of bunks:

Sophie always decides to sleep on that green blanket on the floor when we go camping, even though I make up a bunk for her. That ended up working out this time, because my dad decided at the last minute that he wanted to see the eclipse, too, so he came up Sunday night. I'm not sure who among the three of us would have had the hardest time getting up to a top berth.

Besides the bunks, you also get a table and chairs:

The cottages are located right on the park's little lake:

This was a less-than-a-minute walk from the cottage, and I could hear the frogs from my bunk!

The weather cleared up by about mid-day on Saturday, so we hopped in the car and drove to the path of totality to scout out viewing spots. Here's what we decided on, at Long Point On Lake Chautaqua State Park:

We walked out to the titular Long Point:

Which was very windy, but a nice view!

After that, we drove up to Lake Erie and had a look around, visiting two lighthouses, each with a little municipal park nearby. Here's the Dunkirk Lighthouse:

I got there a little too late to go on the tour inside, but I was mainly there to look at the lake, anyway. It's a very big lake. What's eerie about it, Lake Erie, is that it's sort of like the ocean--it has waves, and you can't see the other side--but it's like a normal lake in how it smells, and what the plant and animal life is like, and all that:

It's kind of disconcerting.

Also mildly disconcerting was how this little beach, a municipal park of some kind, was directly under the shadow of this factory:

There's also interesting driftwood, smoothed into odd shapes. This one looks like a dragon skull:

Then we drove up to the Barcelona lighthouse:

Which was also closed, in this case because it's falling down, and you can't even get a good look at the outside because it's all fenced off so it doesn't fall on top of somebody. (The vertical stripes on the tower are something they're apparently using to brace it up, and the whole other side is blocked off with orange construction fencing.)

It has a much cooler beach, though:

There were these crumbling slate cliffs, and little waterfalls coming down them!

Sophie enjoyed sniffing things, and drinking the lake:

When we got back to the hut, she was ready for a nice rest:

Eclipse Trip 2024 || Burlington, VT

Burlington is one of the few places I think Ken and I could agree to move to. (I love Atlanta and would move back in a heartbeat but Ken won’t go south of here; I don’t really want to move time zones and go west.) My uncle and his husband live here (I always say “my uncles” but then people think it’s a big chunk of my family, but no it’s just the one couple) and we visited them once pre-pandemic. They showed us around and I talked for ages about moving up there. I still love it.

We originally planned to go to Ohio and do Cedar Point, but it’s not open this early in the year. So last April, a year out, we paid like $300 a night for a holiday inn express in south Burlington. It was completely booked, along with everywhere else. It was hands-down the busiest I’ve ever seen a hotel breakfast. Every seat at every table full!

I convinced Ken to agree to a glass blowing class and it was a highlight for sure! We made cups! It’s one of those crafts that I just don’t know how anyone gets into unless they have a family member who does it. Like, the entry into it just seems so tough. But a one-hour class was a really good insight into it.

On Sunday we scoped out potential viewing spots. We picked a park on the lake 3 miles from our hotel so we could walk there and back and not deal with parking. We were there around 4:30, so later than the eclipse would be the next day, but could still get an idea of where the sun would be in the sky when thinking of potential spots to sit and watch. It was funny, us and everyone else walking around, whispering because we didn’t want to share our thoughts about where we planned to be.

Ultimately, it was busy but not insane. We were still quite a bit south of downtown and the university campus, which I think was much more packed. We picked up bagel sandwiches to bring with us and had little portable camp chairs. We got there a bit before noon, and totality was at 3:26. I loved seeing all the dogs. The feeling of community during totality was really cool.

Now that we’ve experienced it, we both say we’d travel under 3 hours to see it again (not the 10 hours we traveled this time), or further if it was somewhere we had family or otherwise already wanted to visit. But we wouldn’t plan more eclipse vacations just to see more eclipses. We’re both really glad we did this one though!

The drive home took 12 hours instead of 10. Since the eclipse was a Monday, travel in was spread out between some people coming in Saturday and some on Sunday, but basically everyone left Tuesday and it was bad traffic. Then we stopped at Panera and discovered they changed the menu and no longer have any of Ken’s favorite items!