Eclipse 2017, Day 7: John Day day 5

Not much happened this Monday.  EXCEPT THE MOON BLOCKING OUT THE SUN.  It was pretty glorious from atop Brian's property.  Having experienced a few partial eclipses, I can say with certainty NOTHING COMPARES TO TOTALITY.

Let me repeat.

NOTHING COMPARES TO TOTALITY

It's not even close.  Partials just get a little darker and cooler than it might have otherwise.  Totality is like going to another planet and back in the span of minutes, deep twilight's purply haze all around while planets, stars and the sun's corona are on full display.  Seeing a ring of faint, wispy light where the sun just was made it easy to understand how this event had been mistaken for all manner of religious experiences in the past.

We did our best to follow the advice of experienced eclipse-goers to just enjoy the event and don't bother trying to photograph it.  Nonetheless, we did snap this single photo ...

Our lone picture of the actual eclipse

and took this one single video of totality's approach (note the phone's auto-sensitivity kicking in), which had to have quality reduced so the video size would fit under Blogger's 100MB limit.

We hung out to see the eclipse finish after totality.  The air warmed, the light looked less alien and got back to its usual brightness, all in reverse of the lead-up to totality.  The fairly difficult (at least for us) hike down almost did Dog in, but she's a trooper.

We went to Little Canyon Food Truck, wanting to eat and say proper goodbyes to the people who made our visit to John Day so pleasant.  We felt like we had gained a new family.  Experiencing totality was, of course, the main event, but it's easy to see how 5 days in the woods could sap even that excitement from first-time campers who had no one but each other for company; and for the pendulum to swing to the complete opposite, physical needs taken care of, new friends as happy to hear your view of the world as they are to shed light on theirs, providing just the right balance of excitement and calm, is something we'll remember forever.  It was one of the rare vacations we really, truly put our life on hold and were fully immersed in the moment for five solid days.