28 - Central Tennessee - Total Solar Eclipse

Sunday, Aug, 20th - This morning we dropped off the rental car and headed south on I-75.  Everything was great until we got to Cincinnati where we found out that the I-75 bridge over the Ohio River was closed for repairs.  So, we had to take the I-275 bypass around town adding 22 miles to our trip.  No further problems as we drove across Kentucky and into Tennessee.  The eclipse isn't until tomorrow so for today we pulled into a Flying J Truck Stop south of Knoxville where we will spend the night.  Nothing fancy, just a parking lot but the price is right, free.  Had dinner at the truck stop Denny's Restaurant.  Pat and I have avoided Denny's in our area due to poor service.  Well it wasn't any better.  We had to wait over an hour to get our dinner, but the food was very good so I guess that made up for it.

Monday, Aug, 21- Today is the big day. We pulled out of the truck stop and headed south on I-75. We pulled into a rest area just south of Athens, TN and lucked out.  Like most rest areas, there is a side for cars and a side for trucks.  The car side was packed with no space available but the truck side had plenty of room, and as we were driving an RV we pulled into the truck side.  There was a Tennessee State Trooper who was enforcing the no cars on the truck side rule.  We got there are 10:00 AM and the eclipse didn't start until about 1:00 PM so we got out our Kindles and got some reading done.

At a little after 1:00 the eclipse started.  For the first 90 minutes it was a partial with gradually less and less of the sun visible.  However, it was still too bright to look at except through eclipse glasses, and then it just looked like the sun with a chink taken our of it.  Finally at about 2:30 the total eclipse started and what a change.  You could take the eclipse glasses off and look at it directly.  With the super bright disk of the sun blocked by the moon, you could see the solar corona.  This is the gaseous atmosphere of the sun and it glows brightly so that it never gets completely dark.  It was truly spectacular and no photo can do it justice.  The whole sky glowed, you could see Venus and Mercury on either side of the sun.  Here is one of the photos I took.

After about 2-1/2 minutes, the sun started peeking out from behind the moon.  These next three photos show it gradually appearing.  The moon is not a smooth sphere, it has mountains and valleys.  If you look closely at the last two photos, on either side of the sliver of the sun you can see sunlight appearing through notches in the moon's surface caused by the mountains and valleys.

This was a once in a lifetime experience and I'm glad I got to see it.  Even Pat was impressed.  Total eclipses like this always come in pairs, seven years apart.  So if you missed this one you have one more chance.  On April 8, 2024 there will be another total eclipse.  This time the path will start in southern Texas, pass over central USA, along the USA-Canada border and exit in northern Maine.  There are a number of major cities in its path including Austin, Dallas, Little Rock, Indianapolis, Dayton, Cleveland, Buffalo and Burlington, VT.

Once the eclipse was over we hit the road again, heading south.  We stopped at Lake Allatoona about 40 miles north of Atlanta where the Navy has a campground on the shores of the lake.