The Solar Eclispe Trip

The Eclipse Trip August 20-22

Airplane vs. automobile? Time saver vs. flexibility. I opted for the former since I had just come off two long driving trips to the Pacific northwest.  

A mid-morning Southwest flight to Salt Lake City via Oakland (Southwest had very few non-stops LAX to SLC. In prior winters, they had 7 or 8 a day.) Parked the car at the airport in Park One which I used to do regularly, but have not done in years. It now has a dozen electric charging stations, but they appear to all be in the valet parking area.) The flights were full and on-time. Even handed out peanuts and on the first flight they appeared to be handed out by a father and son volunteer team. They were not wearing airline uniforms.

A problem arose when I went to pick up my car from the off-airport, Fox Rent a Car, via Priceline. There were no cars. The Manager explained that about 25 renters had not returned their cars per their reservations. I wondered if some people decided at the last minute to stay for the eclipse, or more devious, always intending to view the eclipse, attempted to avoid the awesomely inflated car rental rates by stating that they intended to return the car before the eclipse. The manager promised to honor the reservation by renting from another company and absorbing the difference. So, we got back on the shuttle bus and headed back to the Budget counter at the airport. The clerk there claimed to have no record of our reservation, but said that she had a car available for $350. I could not reach the Fox people, nor anyone at Budget since none of their phone numbers get you to a live person. So back on the bus back to Fox. They checked and verified the reservation, but could also not reach Budget by phone. So, this time the Fox clerk (who was on temporary assignment form Las Vegas) came back with us to the airport. The Budget clerk claimed that she had not received the reservation and that reservations normally take 50 minutes to appear in the system (this had now taken more than 1.5hrs). The Fox clerk took us back to his office and gave us a big black Jeep SUV. I suspect that someone else did not get a car.

Because I delayed searching for them, and when I did late in the week all locations were sold out, we did not have the special glasses needed to view the partial eclipse (You could view the total eclipse without glasses without harming your eyes). Making one last chance we stopped at two 7-11s outside the car rental site. The first was sold out, but at the second we got the last two pairs of glasses, albeit at an exorbitant price. Dynamic pricing, but it made the experience much more enjoyable!

We drove up to Layton toward our reservation at the Comfort Inn. I feared that it too would be a problem, but there were no issues, other than John Oliver’s show came on at 9:15pm.

We got up at 5:30 the following morning to make sure that we got up to southern Idaho in time for the “Great American Eclipse”. By now radio, TV and the newspapers were filled with eclipse information. At least it drove Trump off the news, at least temporarily. Ate a quick breakfast and got on the road, I-15 by 6:45. To my surprise, the drive did not present much congestion. There were a few occasions when traffic slowed, but that appeared to be caused primarily by the presence of a police car in the median.

As we approached Idaho Falls after 9 we began to see groups of people hanging out in parks and open spaces. We decided to go to Rigby, a small town about 20 miles northeast of Idaho Falls since it was squarely in the middle of the path of totality. After driving through town and not seeing an obvious public restroom, we parked at South Rigby Park by about 9:45. There were a few thousand people there, but it was next to the Rigby Rodeo Grounds, and not crowded. There were lots of dogs, mountains of food, and more photography equipment than is probably in the Kodak Museum.

At about 10:05 the moon began to move over the sun. At first it looked like a small bite had been taken out of the sun but the dark spot steadily grew large. I was surprised that there was no noticeable decrease in light until near the end of the process, although the color of the light began to be whiter and wintery. By about 11:20 the sun was just a crescent and the air was very noticeably colder. Right on time, at 11:33 there was a flash of white light and then darkness. The sun was completely obliterated by the moon. Surrounding the sun was the corona, a very white, almost cloudy protrusions of varying shapes and sizes from the sun that ringed the moon. It was a cool event, but not life altering or he most momentous event in one’s life as some speakers on radio had said. The crowd ooed and awed, but no wild shouting or emotional outbursts. The dogs did not seem perturbed.

It was over quickly, 2 minutes and 17 seconds, but it seemed quicker. The sun’s partial reappearance was marked by a flash of white light, that was a signal to put the glasses back on, and quickly the sun appeared as a small crescent. It took almost 1.5 hrs. for the sun to fully reappear.

The crowd quickly thinned out, and the highway adjoining the park, which had almost been deserted, quickly became a slow-moving parking lot.

Hoping to wait out the heavy traffic before starting our drive back to Salt Lake City we ate a picnic lunch at the Park. That probably was a mistake since when we did get on the road at 1:30, we quickly encountered heavy traffic, to the point of gridlock. I got off the main road to circumvent downtown Idaho Falls and the highway intersections. I took some back roads and encountered some traffic, but once south of Idaho Falls the only alternative to I-15was state route 97 which was a single lane gridlocked mess. I-15 quickly got very crowded to the point that there were several 5-10-minute stretches when traffic did not move at all. I took 3 hours to go 30 miles. Traffic lightened up after Pocatello, but after the I-15 84 interchange in Oregon there again was heavy traffic. The trip took 7 hours (twice as long as going up there) and we did not get back to Salt Lake until 8:30 and as a result my plans to have a night in Salt Lake City were dashed. We walked around the Mormon complex before it closed at 10 and then had difficulty finding a restaurant open at that hour. Fast food again.  

The Salt Lake Plaza Hotel was very nice and we used its shuttle to return to the airport in the morning. Uneventful flight home. A lot of time and effort to see the total solar eclipse, but it was worth seeing, once. I do not understand those people who chase these events all over the world.