“What do you think of traveling to see the solar eclipse in April?” questions my husband one evening early in 2024. I have not given the eclipse any thought, so I pause for just a moment.
“That might be kind of fun,” I conclude. And so begins my search on the internet for a place to stay. It seems that Indiana is the closest point for us to see the totality. I think I can just pull up a motel online and book a room but every hotel, motel, or place that normally takes guests seems to be booked for the nights from April 7 though the 8th. That’s weird. Later, we learn that many of these rooms have been booked for over a year already. We did not realize that this was such a big deal. My next step is to check out all the DNR state campgrounds within the area marked as the path of totality. Early April is a little cool for camping but if we make the back of the car into a bed, it should be workable. My search of campgrounds is just as fruitless as my search for motels. I finally find one at the very edge of the totality path in Marshall, Indiana – Turkey Run State Park.
Weeks of planning are finally followed by our day of departure. The cat scratches on the bedroom door at 3 a.m. I groan. I was so hoping for a good night’s sleep before our travels began. I can only snatch a few more snoozes before the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. By 6 a.m., we are on the road. It is cloudy, cool in the forties but dry. By the time we pass through Eyota and head down the entrance ramp to I90, rain drops begin to splat on the windshield. But the sky to the east displays a beautiful layered rose color as the sun sheds some rays under the clouds.
“There should be a rainbow somewhere behind us,” I comment to Dave. Sure enough, as we angle more towards the southeast by LaCrescent, Minnesota, Dave motions towards the right. The western sky is adorned with a bright beautiful double rainbow against the dark clouds.
Many miles are rain free as we traverse through Wisconsin but once we enter Illinois, the clouds dump torrents of rain in cycles. The Subaru Outback loses its “eyesight” vision for the adaptive cruise control system. It is back to old fashioned driving – squinting through the rain, slamming on the brakes, and praying that no one is stopped in front of me.
Even so, we make good time and arrive at Turkey Run Campground in Marshall, Indiana around 16:40. The sky has stopped crying by the time we back up to our site, but the weather radar shows more showers headed our way. I think if we hurry, we can get the tent set up before the next deluge. I have bought a tent that is designed to come off the back of an SUV and will allow us to have more space for dressing and eating if necessary. We have only set it up one time as a test run so do not really know what we are doing.
“This is a really bad idea,” emphasizes Dave, “If it is windy, everything is going to blow away.”
A loud crash and boom sounds over our heads. Drops of rain start to plunk on us. I frantically fish for the raincoats buried in the car and only come up with one. Dave puts on his new winter coat instead. We hurriedly spread out the tent and flip the car end over the extended tailgate and tie it to the car. Before diving inside we stake a couple of corners. This tent has no bottom, and the ground is saturated with water, so the tent floor becomes a squishy mud bog. Lovely. . . ! But we do have a dry place to sit out of the rain. The rain stops every so often for a brief respite. During one of these times, I throw together a supper of hard-boiled eggs, applesauce, and Kind bars. Soon the sky is grumbling again, and we head back into the tent.
The landscape here in Indiana is bright with budding trees covered with purple and white flowers. The temperature is in the sixties. The campground smells of wood smoke as families who have come to see the great eclipse tomorrow settle in around the campfire – even in the rain. A “full” sign is posted at the entrance.
Coming up with a plan to make our bed in the car and stow all of our other possessions considering the mud and the rain is an interesting proposition. This will be a challenging experiment. I blow up the air mattress and cover it with the sleeping bag and pillows. Even though we have an electric site, to avoid having an open car window for the cord, we have decided to run Dave’s CPAP machine with batteries. I place the CPAP between the two front seats. Sliding both front seats as far ahead as possible allows seven feet of room for our bed length. I survey my finished arrangement and realize this could be tricky to get in and out of for these late sixties people.
Looking around at the sloppy mud at our feet, I brainstorm as to what we can put down on the ground to stand on while dressing and undressing. We do not have a canvas or any such thing. I have visions of mud-covered pants and socks with that mud being dragged into the sleeping bag. How distressing! Balancing on one foot is also something neither one of us is adept at anymore. A plastic garbage bag is finally deployed by our little toilet as a spot to stand on to keep the feet dry. Now to try to balance on that three-foot square. Forget about bedclothes is the conclusion. If we can just get our outer clothes and shoes off without falling in the mud, we will have been successful.
Then comes the process of getting into bed. One soon discovers that there is nothing to grab a hold of in the back of the car. There is only about two feet left between the sleeping bag and the car ceiling – an easy entrance task for the twenty-year-old – not so much for us. I fold back the sleeping bag so that once we crawl into our hole, one doesn’t have to turn around and then try to get the feet down into the bag. The mind says this feat is doable but the body struggles. For someone who is somewhat claustrophobic, this two-foot space almost sets off a panic attack. I think for Dave this must be like squirming under a house trailer or through an attic in the course of his job. Eventually, we are settled and attempt to sleep. I don’t think Dave and I have slept in this close of proximity for a very long time and it forces a little more space invasion than we are accustomed to. I remember dreaming so I must have dosed through the night, which seemed endless. Dave slides out several times into the mud to visit our potty. The temperature also drops into the forties during the night leaving us cold and shivering in spite of being on top of each other. Rain spatters on the side windows a couple of times as the thunderstorms continue.
“Can we move our tent ahead ten feet onto the blacktop?” I petition Dave at the first light of morning. I dread trying to deal with the mud floor one more day. This he agrees to. Pulling up the few stakes we have in and untying the tent from the wheels is all we need to do. Then I drive slowly ahead, dragging the tent with me. A piece of cake! And such an improvement in our situation. How can one simple thing make one so happy? We have a solid footing and no mud upon which to stand and to store our stuff.
The morning is chilly, and the sky looks somewhat cloudy, but the sun is peaking through. The weather forecast calls for “partly cloudy” all day with the temperature climbing into the seventies. We can only hope and pray that the afternoon will be ideal for seeing what we came to see. We eat our breakfast which consists of yogurt for me and a banana and Kind bars for Dave. It is turning into a perfect day for camping with “mostly sunny” defying the official forecast. A scouting trip is in order to look for the best place to watch and photo shoot the eclipse this afternoon. This includes an investigation of a trail that leads to the main camp. It is listed as “rugged”, so we turn back after a short jaunt into the forest. We finally settle on the main parking area at the camp store as our choice for prime viewing before returning to our camp site to relax the morning away by reading.
Lunch is turkey salad and cashews around noon and then we gather our cameras, our chairs, and our books and amble to our chosen spot. Our goal is to claim prime real estate for our viewing experience. We plunk our chairs down in a parking space facing southwest around 12:35 and Dave sets up his camera. A few wispy clouds float across the sky but today is a perfect day to view the solar system’s maneuvers. The eclipse is predicted to start at 13:59. Right on schedule, the moon begins to slide across the sun’s face pushing up from the lower right. We view its progress through our special glasses while Dave snaps a series of photos periodically with his special lens. People begin to gather in the parking lot but there is no major influx or congestion as has been predicted by the news, maybe because we are on the outer most edge of the path of totality.
Finally, close to 3 p.m., the sky darkens as if approaching night. The birds grow silent, and a hush falls over the land. A ring of light spreads in a halo around the sun as the moon completely covers it. Ohs and Ahs go up from the crowd. Then just like that, it is over – hardly thirty seconds. The landscape brightens again, and the birds sing loudly. Dave and I are somewhat disappointed. We knew totality would be shorter here on the fringe of the path but did not realize exactly how short it would be. He thinks that he did not get any pictures of the totality. I know I didn’t. But as we look at the pictures later at home, his pictures are outstanding. Maybe, he missed a couple of seconds but not much. While the others around us leave, we sit and record the phase of the moon pulling away from the sun. Hot sunny skies return.
The evening is spent dining on a home-made salad for supper. Then we build a fire and relax while we watch its flickering light and listen to the crackle with contentment. Tonight, we can freshen up and change clothes in relative comfort.
Our last night goes much better than the previous one. We have a dry surface to land upon when literally sliding out of our tunnel bed. And the temperature is warmer. In fact, it is hot when we wiggle in but it soon cools off. Sleep comes easier. The sun breaks over the horizon around 7 a.m. and we prepare for the day which includes our journey home. We have this camping thing down to a routine now. I have discovered that my car mirror pops out away from the car allowing me to see myself while combing my hair if I kneel on the ground. These are the little things that make us happy.
We want to stop over at the main gate area of the campground before leaving and follow a trail to their suspended bridge. There are “only” seventy steps down to the river over which the bridge is suspended. It is a crisp sunny morning, a perfect day for a hike. The trails are listed as “rugged” and “moderately rugged”, so I don’t see us hiking very far. But I insist that we follow trail number three for a while. We amble back through a narrow canyon with overhanging rocks and formations. Alongside the trail, gurgles a small stream. This isn’t so bad of a walk. We meander along and Dave takes pictures for about ½ hour until we arrive where the trail converges with a trickling waterfall. We watch a lady make her way slowly down through the falls over the rocks to our location. That is definitely not for us. It sounds like quite a few of these trails lead through streams and up canyons. We turn back and make our way to the car. It is time to start our journey home. Our weekend has turned out to be a refreshing and spectacular viewing experience of one of God’s phenomenal shows.
Travel homeward goes along quite well except for a few miles of dead-stop for construction. There is no sign of the warned about traffic jams from the eclipse viewers trying to get home. We have no problem buying gas either. Maybe our little corner at the campground was isolated from the main crowds but the crowds we feared did not invade our space. By Tuesday evening, we are home safely. Our fears about driving ten hours only to have cloudy skies did not materialize either. Here at home in Minnesota, it unfortunately was totally cloudy.