Solar Eclipse Success!

We traveled half an hour from our house to see the eclipse in the Path of Totality. Success!

Here’s some pictures I took right before the moon covers the sun.

My partial pictures are not quite as good because I was trying to figure out the best place for the filter.

We viewed the eclipse from Ochoco Wayside State Park, just west of Prineville, Oregon. The road up to the park was closed when we arrived there at 6:30 am so we hiked about 1/2 mile up the hill to meet more of our group who had arrived there earlier. Smoke from wildfires gave us an interesting sunrise from the 3,048 foot peak.

This is a pretty park that offers dramatic views of the landscape and the city of Prineville. Can you see long white buildings in the distance of the photo with lots of light yellow bunchgrass in the foreground? Those are Facebook data centers. Apple has data centers across the highway from them.

The gates to the park opened at 8:00 am but they limited how many cars were let in due to very few parking spaces. There were probably a couple hundred people up there and there was plenty of room for everyone. Meanwhile at the Global Eclipse Gathering at Big Summit Prairie, about an hour southeast of this park, they had a permit for 30,000 people but some estimate 70,000 showed up. Yikes! That event ends today.

Here are a few photos of people at Ochoco Wayside State Park during the eclipse. Special thanks to the rangers that were giving short informative talks on the eclipse and handing out free eclipse glasses. Junior Ranger buttons and booklets were handed out to the youngest participants at this event. It was a special experience and the crowd applauded and shouted during totality to show their appreciation.