Eclipse 2017 in Tennessee

Like so many in the U.S. we got caught up in the eclipse excitement today! We spent the day looking up from sunrise to sunset and everything in between! You’re going to laugh when you see the camera filter I used for this series of photos!  Hey, but it worked!!

Our family headed to Tennessee to enjoy the eclipse with my sister and her family.  A trip all the more amazing because we got back a week ago from five weeks in Germany, Austria and Hungary.  We just barely got over jet-lag and did our laundry before driving the 11+ hours to my Sis’s house!

She lives to the west of Nashville.  The day before the eclipse we went into Nashville, saw the Parthenon and went to see Shakespeare in the park, Anthony and Cleopatra. (It was awesome, by the way!)

This morning (Aug. 21st, 2017), we got up before sunrise to get ourselves out the door early and head into the zone of totality. The sun was rising across the valley just as we were heading out!
We decided it would be fun for the kids if we went to the county fair… it had rides (unlimited rides for $10!), cold drinks, air conditioned buildings (the heat index was 107, so we took advantage of those craft displays!) as well as the festive atmosphere for the eclipse. We went to Lebanon, TN to the Wilson County Fair.

I was all set to take pictures with my very fancy camera filter!! The toilet paper tube fit snugly onto the zoom! 🙂 We glued (and taped) a solar filter sheet onto the end.

Then we started watching the event unfold! I took dozens of pictures, but have just selected a few…This series is as we neared totality:

We were really awed when totality arrived.  It went quiet… the cicadas stopped and the crowds just went “Ahhh… Wow!”  It really was a neat moment (2 1/2 minutes):

One more picture, just because it was just so awesome!

As the eclipse ended, the fair set off some fireworks and played Here Comes the Sun!

The eclipse shadows were really cool!

Afterwards, we thought it was really cool that we could actually see sunspots (see the 3 dots in the pictures below). I took these pictures after Totality:Then we headed off to watch my niece in her soccer game.  (They won!).  We had a beautiful sunset which more or less brought the day to an end:

Right after I share this post with you, I’m going to fall into a deep sleep for sure!

So, that was Eclipse 2017.

Hope you all had a very special, memorable day today too!  ~Liesl

In the next few days, I plan to go back in time and start sharing some of our photos from our summer trip to Europe (I know my family and some of my friends have been waiting anxiously to see some of those trip highlights. Sorry guys!)