quote:

Originally posted by armored:
My wife and I had planned to pack up the 3 dogs and ourselves and head south to southern IL. When we read about the possibility of cloud cover and the extreme heat and humidity we decided that the mix would not be good for the dogs health.
We headed to Lake Michigan and took the Odyssey ( 200' boat docked at Navy Pier) for the lunch, prime rib buffet, 4 cocktails each, eclipse cruise.
It was cloudy but the water was calm and the temp. cooler on the lake. After lunch we headed upstairs to the observation deck to try and see the eclipse. The ship issued glasses to each passenger. We were able to monitor the event when ever the cloud cover broke, all while being served drinks, a very pleasurable experience.

We are around 6 miles west of Carbondale. The skies were clear here while it was cloudy in Carbondale. Perfect viewing from my front yard. NASA should have been here instead of at Saluki Stadium.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
I got a pretty good shot with my camera.

Mine was a bit better...

sure enough , the lady five doors down was out there on her front step , holding up her I-phone to capture .
no glasses of course , but she was squinting really hard

I "free-balled" it. Got the gear and my butt in the truck and headed North. Didn't have glasses (picked them up on the way) or a planned destination...except I *was* going to be in the path of totality.
Drove to CO and checked the weather/cloud cover in order to make the decision of head North to WY or East to NE.
North won out.

I drove to WY and ended up East of Glendo on Hwy 270...where I found a "campsite" that wanted $125 for me to sleep in my truck. No thank you.
Then I saw a sign that said RV-tent spots on a ranch. Pulled in and met one of the nicest families I have met in my life. $50 and great company!

WORTH IT!!!

The only thing that I dreaded was the ride home. Think Vegas or Phx rush hour traffic 60+ miles North of Cheyenne - if that isn't the middle of nowhere, it'll do until nowhere shows up.
Even with the traffic I was able to deadhead it home in 24 hrs.

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
I think it would have been kind of cool to see Venus and/or Mercury high in the sky instead of just on the horizon.

Did anyone here note either of the planets high in the sky?

Yes, we saw Venus, Jupiter, and Mars. Couldn't make out Mercury but then again it was hard to concentrate with the view of the eclipse. We were up in Gallatin TN and the view was spectacular. A handful of small clouds blocked the view a couple of times about 45-ish minutes into the eclipse, but from then on it was clear sailing.

Got to meet Destin and Matt the day before the eclipse in Wyoming. Both nice guys.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Awesome, Skins2881!

Well, first off she said yes. We (I) became stupid upon sight of eclipse. She forgot to remove her filter from camera, so we got zero pics of totality.

I was going to propose just as the "diamond ring" appeared, but we were wrapped up in the moment. Following day we visited Charleston and FT Sumter, but that wasn't very romantic of a proposal location.

Unsure how I was going to so it at this point, she gave me the perfect opportunity to ask her on the beach with crashing waves and romance in the air AND I got her to unknowingly take a picture. She wanted to take some timed pictures on the beach. Perfect!

I had now been carrying this thing around in my pocket for 30+ hours and I was sure she'd notice the big box in my pocket at some point. We took a number of pictures, but she was having trouble figuring out how to get the continuous picture thing going where it snaps ten or so of them. Which I was hoping I could use to capture the whole thing.

She asked OK, you want to do some goofy pics now? I said yes, but let's do one more serious one. I had at this point figured out the approximate time from when she started running over and when the camera snaps.

She ran over and 1.5 seconds before the shutter opened I got on my knee. She had a look of bewilderment on her faces, she thought one more serious pic before the goofy one. Then she saw the box/ring and tilted her head to the side like a puppy trying to figure something out.

I simply asked will you marry me, no long prethought-out speech leading up to it. She said yes!

We went back to check the camera, and it got the picture! Success! I got her to unknowingly take the picture of me proposing. She then asked, did I ask her to marry me, and did she say yes? It was cute, I actually had to think about it for a second too to make sure I remembered to ask, and she said yes. Quite a rush of emotions. Knocks the brain out of gyroscopic balance for a moment.

No pictures of yet of the eclipse, the ring, or the proposal. Just got a new phone the day before we left, which I had the high quality pictures of the ring on it from our well regarded forum jeweler. Also her camera takes pictures in AWR format and she needs adobe to convert to JPEG or PNG. So there will be an engagement thread with pictures once we return.

Here's what I got so far. This is her camera display screen at the moment of the "diamond ring", with her diamond ring resting on top. We will be printing the eclipse picture and taking this same picture in higher quality, which I think will look super cool.


.

Congratulations Skins!

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:

quote:

Originally posted by MattW:
We got lucky here, it was heavily overcast but we headed over to Sullivan's Island. Got into Poe's with no wait then hit the beach. About 20-30 minutes before it started the sky's began to open above us. The rest of Charleston still looked overcast, North Charleston was a lighting show with heavy rains. Life altering it was not, but still a cool experience.

Watched it from Ilse Of Palms. I was so mad we had planned for this trip since the beginning of the year. Then some clouds were trying to screw with my plans. Then THREE minutes before totality the sky magically opened up for us. It was beautiful, we are already talking about plans for 2024.

I've planned for months to ask my girlfriend to marry me today. Right as the "diamond ring" appeared as the sun poked back out around the moon. We were both enjoying the moment so much I decided it will happen some other time this trip. There goes our cool engagement story. Got too caught up in the moment.

Not sure if Ft. Sumter is very romantic, but that might end up being the spot instead tomorrow. All that planning down the drain.

Glad it went well for you guys!

Congratz to you Skins on your engagement!

I live about 30 miles NW of where you were (not N. Charleston ), and all I saw was a severe thunderstorm from noon to 3:00.

Here are three photos that my Dau#4 took from within the path of totality at Idaho Falls, Idaho. She took them with her I-phone using a hobbyist telescope and filters. She didn't take the filters off at totality, so didn't get any shots of the corona at totality.

This one shows a sun spot in front of the leading edge of the moon as its disk transited from upper right to lower left in the photo





This one shows Bailey's Beads





This one is totality

Congrats skins.

Now that you've got that out of the way, stop by before you leave. I've got a GFI that's died and I've been to busy to swap it out

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:
Snip

rofl