Eclipse Chasing: Fly 1,000 miles Out, Drive 500 miles Back – in Search of Good Weather!

August 25, 2017 – Eclipse chasing turned out to be fun, exhilarating and exhausting.  Fun, because husband and I were working together as a pretty darn good team toward a simple, science-based goal that millions of people were aware of, if not participating in.  Exhilarating, because, you know, the sun pretty much went away – even if it was just for a couple of minutes!  And exhausting because we did the best we could to pick the best weather location and the weather let us down.  We drove something like 1,000 miles in two days just to get to optimal weather for eclipse viewing.  I’ll tell you, that’s far!

We chose Kansas City for two primary reasons.  First reason:  it’s a big city (so easier [and maybe cheaper]) accommodations, flights, rental cars) very near the path of totality.  Second reason:  “average” sunny weather for this time of year.  You can’t see the sun disappear behind the moon through storm clouds.

So, for the path of totality, we had complete control – the path was very well-documented, we had access to many maps (online and in paper). We were large and in charge of totality.  But we had to have clear, sunny skies.  And the weather, of course, was pretty much out of our control.

With the eclipse on Monday, we flew into Kansas City the Friday before.  Flawless.  Picked up rental car – normal airport rental car counter glacial pace of service – but we got a pristine, 500-mile odometer, fully- loaded Chevrolet Equinox (SUVs are cheaper in Kansas City than compacts – everyone drives an SUV or a pickup truck in Kansas so rentals skew toward SUVs).  We had made reservations at a nice enough hotel – convenient to restaurants, big shopping mall, Walmart, Target, gas stations, interstate. Excellent. Chilled out Friday evening, dinner at a Missouri chain restaurant, “Jazz”, with live music and Cajun food.  (Yes, Cajun.)  That evening we started really getting the weather forecast figured out.  Not good for St. Joseph, Missouri an hour up the road where we had purchased a parking pass for the small civil/National Guard airport.  ($25 to park, $50 for tent or RV camping on the little airport.)  Weather, in fact, not good for about a hundred-mile radius around us.  We spent hours Saturday morning, fully dressed, sitting on the hotel room bed surrounded by maps, books, laptop and phones trying to figure out where the weather would be suitable so that we could drive to clear weather for eclipse viewing.  If you are not familiar with the geography around Kansas City – my own knowledge very limited, I confess – Kansas City sits on the Kansas/Missouri border. To the northwest is Nebraska less than 100 miles away, and due north is Iowa about 100 miles, as the crow flies.  To get out from under the stormy weather, places like Iowa offered no help as the line of totality ran northwest-southeast, so we needed to drive in one of those directions to stay on the path.  My goodness, the planning and re-planning we did sitting on that bed!  Drive northwest to Nebraska?  Drive southeast into Missouri?  We roughed out a plan that we might need to sleep in the SUV if we had to travel far – and that original “average” weather report was letting us down – sour weather and clouds predicted for hundreds of miles.  As it was only Saturday, we decided we’d let it go for a while, head out to explore and resume planning Sunday.

So where to explore?  We had tickets to get onto the St. Joe airport, why not check it out, just see what we’d purchased and probably wouldn’t be using?  Rosecrans Airport houses Air National Guard, has a 8,000 foot runway and two or three big propeller cargo planes (sorry, no can identify).  It is literally surrounded by cornfields, soybean fields, and the Missouri River.  We drove the circuitous route around the runway, circumnavigating the entire “base”, on tiny little paved roads where the security folks had covered up the “authorized vehicles only” signs temporarily (there’s an eclipse coming, you know).  It was easy to see that bringing in 5,000 vehicles (yup, that’s how many parking passes they sold) would take forever – and be horribly slow exiting, too.  But the food vendors were already setting up on Saturday, a few tents were there, a couple of RVs and emergency personnel were in place to help any eclipse viewers who needed it.  (Turns out St. Joe was 95% socked in at eclipse time.  And a little rainy.  I’m pretty sure they didn’t get hear the 5,000 revelers they sold tickets to.)

Saturday night it was time to take advantage of being in KC and get a steak.  We ended up at The Majestic – “downstairs” in the jazz club.  We’re usually pretty reluctant to get engaged in live music much (usually too loud for my pretty decent hearing) but the three-piece band (piano, clarinet, drums) played at a perfect volume, our steaks were yummy and our cocktails fabulous.  On the off-chance that we’d need to camp in the SUV on the way to some better viewing point we shopped that night at Walmart to purchase folding chairs, air mattresses, paper towels, toilet paper, a cooler, drinks and snacks.

Sunday morning became all about planning – AGAIN!  The previous night (Saturday) we had fooled ourselves into thinking maybe we could drive 3-4 hours to better weather.  By Sunday morning, none of the forecasts had improved and most had worsened for the areas within 350 miles.  (Which is not to say that those cities and towns didn’t enjoy some good viewing in the end, but we couldn’t take the risk.) We had to find a “sunny” forecast for Mr. Amateur Astonomer to be satisfied.  We’d come this far, we weren’t going to gamble on poor visibility.

After we did some planning and getting sad about these contingency plans we were going to have to execute, we made like tourists in KC on Sunday.  The Nelson-Adkins Museum of Art was great.  It’s the place with the giant shuttlecocks in the sculpture garden.  Gigantic badminton shuttlecocks.  But they also have a diverse sampling of impressionist work (Monet Waterlilies and a Haystack; Van Gogh Olive Trees; a pretty Pisarro and so on) and a pretty good sampling of contemporary work (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rothko) including “Mural” by Jackson Pollock, which we’d seen during our springtime visit to Chicago!  Turns out we’re following a gigantic painting around on tour!  (Guess where it’s going next? The National Gallery of Art in Washington!  Starts in mid-November!)

After the art gallery, we headed over to the Kansas City Zoo.  Arrived two hours before closing.  That was enough time to see the hippo, rhino, giraffes, lions, tigers, and the free-roaming kangaroos – couldn’t get too close to them – keepers told us they were “skittish”.  It was too hot for the chimps, baboons, and gorillas so we missed them – they were hanging out in the air conditioning…aren’t they from Africa?  Hmmmm.

We started to realize during our touristy day on Sunday that we’d have to drive pretty far and it would be to the east to get to weather that would be maybe guaranteed to be good.  We went to dinner, packed up the SUV and departed Kansas City at 9 p.m. Sunday night aiming for Belleville, IL – just southeast of St. Louis – where I had visited many years ago during a trip to St. Louis and Scott AFB.  Belleville seemed like a nice place then so maybe it would be safe for us to find a Walmart parking lot to sleep for a few hours.

We arrived at the Walmart in Belleville at 1:30 a.m.  We asked the manager if we could sleep in the parking lot like the RV people do in Walmarts across the country.  He said, “Sure” with a wide sweep of his hand, “No problem.”

But the thing about Walmart parking lots is that they’re very well lit.  Even at 1:30 a.m.  (It’s a 24-hour Walmart.)  We ended up parked under a tree and non-functioning overhead light in front of the Lowe’s that shared the same parking lot.  Sleeping in RVs and sleeping in SUVs are totally different experiences.  SUV sleeping is not good sleeping.  We could fold down the back seat to make enough room to lie down, but Mr. 6’4” takes up a lot of room.  We couldn’t get the air mattresses to inflate but the blanket from our KC hotel room provided a little padding.  The problem with SUV sleeping, like tent sleeping is that if it’s hot outside, it’s hot inside.  And it was hot.  And we didn’t want to roll down windows because we didn’t want bugs and bad guys to get into the SUV with us.  So, husband got maybe 4 hours of sleep and I got about 2.  Ugh.  Back on the road at 6:00 a.m.

Our goal was Hopkinsville, Kentucky or any place in-between that had a “sunny” forecast.  Hopkinsville had the longest duration totality on the continent.  And already had a sunny forecast.  No place in between looked as good, so we headed there.

At the interstate pull-off for Hopkinsville there is a McDonald’s and a few other businesses like gas stations and Cracker Barrel.  After getting a drink and bathroom break at McD’s, we had a debate over staying right there for viewing – as there were already people in lawn chairs set up in a couple of places around the McDonald’s!  I thought we should try to get closer to town and away from the lousy parking lot but remember that exit ramp area as a backup plan.  So we headed toward Hopkinsville with about an hour and a half to go before the eclipse started.

Google Maps showed, and Facebook verified, that Hopkinsville, pop. 30,000, expected 100,000 visitors.  We hoped to stay away from that melee.  As we drove closer to town, we saw “Camping – $100” signs and were pretty sure that was primitive camping at Farmer Green Jeans where all you’d get was a port-a-potty for your $100.  Also we saw, “Eclipse Parking – $25” for parking in someone’s front yard.  We were not compelled.  We decided we’d pull over in a wide spot in the road if we had to.

As we neared Hopkinsville, we glimpsed a family cemetery off the side of the wide, dual-divided state route we were pm.  A couple of cars were already parked there with one fellow aiming his camera, mounted on a tripod, at the sun.  Well, that looked pretty darn good!  We ventured a little farther toward Hopkinsville but saw how the traffic was worsening on Google Maps, so we turned around and headed back to the cemetery.  I understand little family cemeteries – my family has one in the boonies of South Carolina.  As long as you’re respectful, sure, you can visit.  Just don’t leave a mess!  We were the third car there, chatted with the folks ahead of us – no one related to the cemetery family, all were just looking for a good eclipse-viewing point.  And, wow, it was a great spot!  A small asphalt parking lot, a few little trees and a couple of big old trees for shade and about a dozen headstones – surrounded by soybean fields.  We parked, pulled out our chairs and all the eclipse-viewing paraphernalia and got set up.  Tripods, cameras, white paper, chairs, cooler, phones with the eclipse app and so on.  More cars pulled into the little lot – everyone looking a little sheepish about just plopping down there, but we developed a bit of camaraderie.  We met families from Arizona, Chicago, Boston, Memphis.  Some folks had driven there, some flown there, for some the eclipse was part of a longer trip or they were just traveling for the viewing.  Some had nothing more than cardboard viewing glasses, some had tripods, telescopes and cameras.

All told the final tally was about 20 cars and about 50 people.  Kids, parents, grandparents.  And this was a case where having that range of ages only made the event more fun.

We had beautiful clear weather, the talking eclipse app on our phones worked great, the cameras all caught different extraordinary phenomena (first contact, corona, diamond ring, pinhole through the trees, and maybe even shadowbands!), and we were overjoyed.  A complete success!

Then, we had to face it.  We had a 7½ hour (no stops) drive back to KC – which we had to accomplish that night so we could leave the hotel at 6:00 a.m. the next morning to catch our plane home.

The drive was long, we took turns, but the weather became very ugly for the final 30 miles outside KC – after 10 p.m. and sleep-deprived from SUV sleeping the night before.  It was a struggle but we made it to the hotel by 11 p.m., showered, packed that night and nabbed a few hours of sleep before heading to the airport for the uneventful trip home the next day.

My next post will include my new, brilliant strategy for viewing the 2024 eclipse on the path of totality.