A Little Background

What kind of hippy thinks that seeing a solar eclipse is a life changing event?  That is exactly what I thought last year.  Lady Kit and I were making plans for our anniversary/solar eclipse adventure.  I definitely thought it would be a really cool event to see, but life changing?  Well now I am eating my words (even if I only spoke them to myself) with a bit of a caveat it wasn’t just the eclipse, but the trip as a whole.

Our eclipse adventure was the first vacation we had taken since 2012 and the first time we had been camping since then as well.  We both grew up doing outdoor activities (Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts), a middle school program that was learning by doing and an emphasis on the outdoors, and camping and hiking together.  Unfortunately along the way life intervened.  College and work kept us busy and made it difficult (or at least it felt difficult) to make the time.

Where to See It

August 21, 2017 was the date of a total solar eclipse crossing the United States from the West Coast in Oregon to the East Coast in South Carolina.  I had accumulated plenty of vacation time, she was going to have just finished her internship, and we had money to travel.  Oh yeah, and it was the day after our 6th anniversary.  This just seemed like the time to do it (the next total solar eclipse in the US isn’t until 2024).

All these thoughts were taking place in April and May 2017.  Apparently we were way behind the curve.  Hotels in Jackson, WY were going for over $1,000 a night, most places in the path of totality were completely booked, but we’re outdoor people we’ll just go camp instead…

Logging on to recreation.gov I realized that even camping was going to be difficult as any campground that took reservations was already booked.  I guess that makes sense looking back on it.  The people most excited about seeing a solar eclipse are also probably the same group that would enjoy nature (I just didn’t realize it was that large a population).

I got lucky with a campground near the outer edge of the path and didn’t open reservations until July.  Luckily I was able to snag one of the sites at that campground and then we made plans to also visit Crater Lake

Crater Lake

(one of places we visited with our middle school class, we’ve known each other that long).

It’s A Long Way!

That is probably an understatement.  At this time I was in Washington, D.C., Lady Kit was still back in California and we were heading to Oregon for this eclipse.  In order to get there I traveled 2,311 miles by plane from DC to California and then drove 324 miles to meet Lady Kit who had packed all our camping gear and planned our meals.  We then set off for a week (minus a day) in the outdoors by driving another 1,007 miles to get to our eclipse location (but stopping along the way at Crater Lake for a few days).

I traveled a total of 3,642 miles to see an eclipse!