Eclipse Trip - Eclipse Day

The kids were sent to bed with their travel/day clothes on so that if the weather forecast didn't improve, they could quickly jump in the car and we could head west.

At 2:00am, the sky was cloudy and the astronomy forecasting team said it could possibly clear off. At 4:00am, the entire area was covered in fog - so we left for clearer skies. According to google maps, it's 2 hours to Fort Laramie, WY (not counting for fog). About 8 am, we were near the turn off to go to the National Historic Site. According to their website, they were offering free parking for eclipse viewers, which is a big deal since several places we passed where offering "sit in our fields with no facilities" for anywhere from $50 to $150 per car. So, we decided to visit a northern frontier fort and compare it to a southern frontier fort (Fort Davis).

We were told the capacity for the fort was 5000. I heard that they counted roughly 3000 visitors. The national parks staff was amazing!! They provided port-a-potties and kept them clean and stocked! They had several, very cool!, water refill stations around the fort. Not only were they water foundations; they also had a spigot up high for refilling water bottles and it had a motion sensor! In addition, there were some approved vendors for drinks and snacks - a very welcomed addition. Who wants to leave in the middle of the eclipse because the 5 yr old is hungry? An FYI... we were in mountain time at this point, so totality was during lunch time.

We decided to setup in an open field, away from the trees and away from the cars. We had the car parking lot in front, the main portion of the fort to the right and the out building behind us.

The national Park rangers setup a world map and a US map for people to pin where they were from. The vast majority were from the Denver area. We were surprised to see several from our area of TX.

We were recently gifted a "tiny" telescope and we decided that it was the ideal thing for travelling with. It didn't take up any more room that my camera case and the tripod was useful for the camera later on. Thank you so much Mark Franklin!!

These first images are through my phone camera with solar glasses over the camera lens or through the telescope.

And then it was totality! These 2 (above and below) are from my phone.

The following are from my "big camera" on auto and then on low light settings.

Walking back to the visitors center (which we though would be emptier than before) we found a tree and saw the eclipse through the shadows.

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