rsmurphy wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2024 8:37 am

jfv wrote: Wed Mar 20, 2024 10:23 pm Gonna be on a boat in the middle of an ocean for the preceding lunar eclipse and also hopefully will see the comet.

Pretty sweet. Can you talk about it a bit more? Dish.

Lunar eclipse? Overnight on March 24-25. In Chicago, will be at its fullest at like 2 AM.

The boat? Western Caribbean cruise visiting Honduras and Mexico on Royal Caribbean. I've been on one other one ~ 2005 and didn't really like it, but wife & daughters convinced me to do another one for what will likely be our last Spring Break vacation with all four of us (oldest daughter is headed off to college later this year).

rsmurphy wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2024 8:37 am

For the solar eclipse, one of my daughters gives a shit, as do I. Wife and other daughter do not. So the one daughter and I will be driving down any way we can towards either Carbondale, Indianapolis, or Cleveland the morning of.. depending on the weather forecast.. and we’ll see what we see.

Good luck with traffic on the way back! Nightmare.

Yeah, sort of expecting it. Trying to plan out alternate routes that avoid the interstates, but I'm guessing it probably won't help much.

Yeah, the boat. Thought it might've been one of them fantastically awesome eclipse package deals like hoping on a plane. Either way it sounds like a great experience: large body of water, inky blackness, lunar eclipse, loved ones...that's how it's done.

Have a parking spot reserved in a city park in southeastern Indianapolis on Monday and plan to drive from Chicagoland early that morning. Will probably grab dinner nearby after the eclipse to keep an eye on how atrocious the traffic patterns will be before attempting to head back. Packing extra stuff in case we get stuck.

Best of luck to others!!

was in Noblesville Indiana yesterday and the show was very impressive. We took paths less traveled and didn't have many traffic hangups either. Was a great family outing

djimbe wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2024 6:24 am was in Noblesville Indiana yesterday and the show was very impressive. We took paths less traveled and didn't have many traffic hangups either. Was a great family outing

Yeah, we were not too far from you, just a little south. It was incredible; sunset in 360 degrees, birds singing like it was dusk, and the eclipse halo is something you can only really see firsthand.

It took us 5 hours to get down there, 7 hours to get home. I usually have good instinct on finding alternate routes, but I totally outsmarted myself by not listening to Google Maps and trying to figure it out myself. Also, waiting to start the trip back by an hour was not smart. Oh well, it was all worth it.

We originally planned for a state park but called ahead and they had filled up. So we ended up in Warren IN, a tiny little town kinda between Ft. Wayne and Indy. Found a reasonably-sized city park on the outskirts with enough room/space to spread out and have it be chill as we had to bring the doggos. It was pretty great + zero traffic issues going home, probably due to the fact that the nearest closest "real" city was already fully in the path of totality.

Not crap.

We didn't put any actual effort into it but enjoyed 90% totality from our yard. It was strange how much the temperature dropped even though it mostly looked like a typical sunny day. The birds were definitely thrown off.

Plans for being sat in the path of totality downstate were thwarted which left me with the rest of the local partial viewers. Originally we were going to camp on my friend's farm but scheduling, and most importantly, the weekend weather leading up to the eclipse wasn't cooperating. A friend and I decided to post-up in a park where I was delighted to run into former FM eliya.

It was cool. Nothing like totality but it was still pretty rad. And at the risk of sounding more like a cheeseball than usual I appreciate the communal aspect of watching an eclipse. Everyone is dialed into experiencing this awesome natural phenomenon that it reconnects us with our humanity. Not crap!

I just need another natural high. I caught a neon green fireball streaking through the night sky and two solar eclipses, onto the Northern Lights.

People got really lucky with that weather. Yesterday morning a deer fully impaled itself trying to jump my neighbors tall iron fence and was trapped there till the fuzz came and did a street execution. Then they left it there, bleeding out, until somebody from the village came to clean up. Quite a dramatic lead up to the planetary reverie.

zorg wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2024 10:30 am People got really lucky with that weather.

Absolutely. Near Indianapolis, there were only a few high, wispy clouds that didn't negatively impact viewing.

zorg wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2024 10:30 am Yesterday morning a deer fully impaled itself trying to jump my neighbors tall iron fence and was trapped there till the fuzz came and did a street execution. Then they left it there, bleeding out, until somebody from the village came to clean up. Quite a dramatic lead up to the planetary reverie.

Crazy. Did they put a bullet in the deer's head? And how long did it take to clean up?