Night of the eclipse
After I heard about the upcoming eclipse, I knew I wanted to camp in the desert that night, and get up early to watch. I made plans with the friend I'd arranged to meet up with at the RTR to connect back up and camp together that night so that we could watch it together. While we were each off doing our own thing between RTR and the eclipse, she injured herself hiking (just a strain, but a very painful one that flipped the tables on us -- I was suddenly the more mobile one of the two of us).
Her new campsite was everything she wanted except the cell phone service was poor. She could text and make short calls (calls would frequently be dropped) but she could not use her phone as a wifi hotspot to do research online. So she texted me and asked if I could find her a chiropractor in one of the nearby towns. We managed all the logistics of that, and I met her at the chiropractor's office after her appointment Tuesday morning. We had lunch and then she led us both back to her campsite.
Aside: I would never have gone down that road to the campsite without someone leading me. Even though it was clear that it was a camping area and there were RVs dotting the landscape as we went in, the "road" was rocky, there were turns that led into areas that were not passable except by ATVs, and I simply have no experience at this camping on unmarked public land thing. I know it's possible to get that kind of experience -- my internal jury is still out on whether it's the right thing for me.
As dusk approached, I saw my first bat on this trip (I like bats 😍). It flew about 10 feet up over us, darted around, then took off. I watched the sky for a bit after that, but it's the only one we saw.
My friend had been camping with a few people she had met at RTR (and I had met them too, but much more briefly). We all gathered around the campfire that evening before the eclipse and made music with whatever we had. (My friend drove over to the campfire because she had trouble walking that far.) Two of the guys had didgeridoos, there were makeshift drums, a kitchen timer with a bell, hands clapped on thighs, and our voices. It was spontaneous and silly and fun.
I hit the sack early so that I could wake up for the beginning of the eclipse at 4:51. We sat and watched the moon slowly go behind our shadow. The stars got brighter and they spanned all the way to the horizon. To my surprise, the moon never became as red-orange as I remember from viewing previous lunar eclipses. I figured everything would be more vivid out away from city lights, but it was not so. The stars were indeed brighter (including a few shooting stars), and the sky was unobstructed, but the moon was barely tinged with any color at all. It turns out that a number of atmospheric factors can contribute to the color a moon appears during a total eclipse: http://earthsky.org/space/why-does-the-moon-look-red-during-a-total-lunar-eclipse including humidity, dust, etc., and the right conditions were not present in the desert that night.
It was colder than I realized while we were sitting there. First I added an extra layer of clothes, and then after the moon was fully eclipsed I went back in my van to warm up inside my sleeping bag. My plan was to warm up and come back out before the moon started to come out of the eclipse. Alas, as soon as I was toasty warm, I fell back to sleep and didn't wake up again until the moon had nearly set behind the mountains. I threw on my shoes and coat and went outside to take a photo.
The moon was setting really fast! When I first looked out the whole partially-eclipsed moon was visible above the mountains. By the time I was able to get outside, it was partially set. This is the first picture I snapped after I got outside:
Her new campsite was everything she wanted except the cell phone service was poor. She could text and make short calls (calls would frequently be dropped) but she could not use her phone as a wifi hotspot to do research online. So she texted me and asked if I could find her a chiropractor in one of the nearby towns. We managed all the logistics of that, and I met her at the chiropractor's office after her appointment Tuesday morning. We had lunch and then she led us both back to her campsite.
Aside: I would never have gone down that road to the campsite without someone leading me. Even though it was clear that it was a camping area and there were RVs dotting the landscape as we went in, the "road" was rocky, there were turns that led into areas that were not passable except by ATVs, and I simply have no experience at this camping on unmarked public land thing. I know it's possible to get that kind of experience -- my internal jury is still out on whether it's the right thing for me.
As dusk approached, I saw my first bat on this trip (I like bats 😍). It flew about 10 feet up over us, darted around, then took off. I watched the sky for a bit after that, but it's the only one we saw.
My friend had been camping with a few people she had met at RTR (and I had met them too, but much more briefly). We all gathered around the campfire that evening before the eclipse and made music with whatever we had. (My friend drove over to the campfire because she had trouble walking that far.) Two of the guys had didgeridoos, there were makeshift drums, a kitchen timer with a bell, hands clapped on thighs, and our voices. It was spontaneous and silly and fun.
I hit the sack early so that I could wake up for the beginning of the eclipse at 4:51. We sat and watched the moon slowly go behind our shadow. The stars got brighter and they spanned all the way to the horizon. To my surprise, the moon never became as red-orange as I remember from viewing previous lunar eclipses. I figured everything would be more vivid out away from city lights, but it was not so. The stars were indeed brighter (including a few shooting stars), and the sky was unobstructed, but the moon was barely tinged with any color at all. It turns out that a number of atmospheric factors can contribute to the color a moon appears during a total eclipse: http://earthsky.org/space/why-does-the-moon-look-red-during-a-total-lunar-eclipse including humidity, dust, etc., and the right conditions were not present in the desert that night.
It was colder than I realized while we were sitting there. First I added an extra layer of clothes, and then after the moon was fully eclipsed I went back in my van to warm up inside my sleeping bag. My plan was to warm up and come back out before the moon started to come out of the eclipse. Alas, as soon as I was toasty warm, I fell back to sleep and didn't wake up again until the moon had nearly set behind the mountains. I threw on my shoes and coat and went outside to take a photo.
The moon was setting really fast! When I first looked out the whole partially-eclipsed moon was visible above the mountains. By the time I was able to get outside, it was partially set. This is the first picture I snapped after I got outside:
If I'd known it was going to move that fast, I'd have taken a pic through my windshield. When I got outside, I took a short video of it setting. (Sorry it's so shaky -- no time for a tripod.) https://youtu.be/iyxMkzJjPdQ
I turned around and took a photo of the sunrise on the other side of the sky:
After the sun was fully up, I made tea and sat outside with the sun on my back to drink it. My fleece hat has some pink and red on it. At one point, I saw something out of the corner of my eye and discovered a hummingbird checking out my hat. When I turned my head to face it, it figured out that I wasn't food and zoomed away.
It's too bad that the bees outnumbered the bats and hummingbirds in the air at that campsite. I'm glad I had the experience of being there for the eclipse and the wildlife, and I'm glad I left when I did.
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