It came and it went and it was pretty awesome but now the hype and hoopla is over.

I drove up to Columbia to watch it. I was able to stay with my sister. Columbia was in the path of the totality. This was to be the first total eclipse I would be able to see in the 70 years of my life so I was looking forward to it. I was worried about the weather since thunderstorms, were in the forecast. No problem. There were some clouds but not where we were.

My sister was prepared and had got eclipse glasses for all of us. She had some friends who had come down from North Carolina to watch the eclipse as well. We drove over to a park by the Lake Carolina dam to get a better view of the event. Naturally there were a lot of people there watching as well. Party time!

It was interesting that as the moon was almost in front of the sun, the street lamps turned on. Then, it was on us. Totality. What a sight! The temperature dropped. It was in the 90’s but we really noticed how much cooler it got. I was expecting it to get much darker than it did. We only saw two “stars” which were both planets. One was Venus and I think the other was Jupiter.

Here’s a picture my Bil took at totality.

There were plenty of dogs at the park and none of them howled. I didn’t hear any crickets either, prolly because there were too many people there going “oooh” and “aaaah”. Suddenly, there was a brilliant flash of light on the right side of the eclipse signaling totality was over. Time to put the eclipse glasses back on.

It was certainly worth the drive up to Columbia South Carolina to see this awesome event. The next American total eclipse will be in 2024. After this one, my sister wants to travel to Carbondale Illinois to see it.