Eclipse-o-mania!

[Luva65wagon]

I took a trip over to the Tri-cities on Sunday with the wife and family (still weird to say) and a friend as we headed down the center of the state to watch the eclipse in a town called Fossil. I found it a perfect place to go. The high school there uses the aptly "correct" name of "Falcons" as their school team name. Very small town and we had a pancake breakfast in their gym and looked at all the graduating classes of, like, 6 students per year on average! That's small! It's a charter school and they said this eclipse event raised more on the pancake breakfast than 3 years of regular donations! Glad we could help.

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The eclipse was ... totality awesome! I've seen a few partials and as many lunar eclipses - but a total eclipse is an unreal event to behold. I used those funny glasses and managed a few very cool pictures and a much longer video.

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We stayed at friends in Kennewick to be able to leave there at about 4 in the morning Monday to make it into middle Oregon with time to spare if there was a huge traffic snarl. I guess the huge jam was on I-5 as, though there was a lot of traffic, we never got held up in either direction... until we reached Snoqualmie pass. We saw signs saying they were closing the pass at 7PM for blasting and we rushed for about 30 minutes to get there before that happened. Didn't make it by 4 cars! So, we opened the tailgate and played cards on the interstate.

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Somewhere in the middle of the country 2024 or bust!

[Jeff W]

Great pictures. If you would have been driving the Ranchero, they probably would have waved you on and stopped traffic after you passed.

[Luva65wagon]

It was crazy those last 30 minutes (from when we first saw a sign saying the pass would close at 7PM). We were about 30 minutes away and it was 6:35PM! Incites crazy driving from just about everyone racing to beat the closure. There was a guy who raced up along side us; we were doing near 80 as it was and he was blasting his horn at the guy to the left of us who was doing a couple miles an hour faster than we were and was clearly not going fast enough. He zipped in front of us to get around the guy and disappeared quickly into the distance. Of course, he was not stopped in front of us or by the closure.

State patrol could easily give hundreds of tickets due to this "warning of impending closure" sign. Nobody was doing even close to the speed limit.

[SmithKid]

I drive I-90 quite a bit. Last year it was a weekly occurrence on Thu. evening at 7 PM, and we got caught once too. We just learned to either not travel Thu. evening or else, if we had to, leave earlier so we wouldn't get caught in it. The stoppage usually lasted about an hour, and it's a real bummer if you're not prepared.

[Luva65wagon]

Not prepared as in... bushes?

:ROTFLMAO:

[SmithKid]

Bushes ARE sometimes difficult to locate. Especially with A BIG lake on the W side and rock wall on the E side. :NERVOUS: