The Great American Eclipse

We had heard about the eclipse that was going to occur a couple of months before the actual date of it happening. I didn't think anything of it after I found out that it was going to occur on a Monday. I knew that the kids would be in school and I just figured that Jennifer and I would see it while the kids were in school. Then out of no where the Fayette County Public School system decided to cancel school on the day of the eclipse. This allowed us the opportunity to go back home to western Kentucky to visit with family and watch it where it was closer to a total eclipse. We found out that Jennifer's family was having an eclipse party at her granddad's house. His house was in an area where it was supposed to be 99.5% eclipse so we figured that it would be good enough. That way we wouldn't have to fight the crowds of people in Hopkinsville for the totality.

It just so happened that my Aunt Mildred and her family were visiting during that time from New York. It couldn't have worked out any better for us to see everyone in such a short trip back home to western Kentucky. We met up with Aunt Mildred at their hotel and we visited for a while. Then the kids took a swim in the pool while I napped since I had worked the night before and couldn't sleep on the ride down. We all went out and had dinner at Olive Garden before saying our goodbyes.

Thankfully we were able to stay with Grandma and Grandpa since all the hotels in the surrounding counties were full for the time we were there. It looks as if everyone really did head to western Kentucky to see this eclipse. We didn't get to spend much time at their house, but the kids enjoyed seeing Grandma and Grandpa and playing on the piano. We will have to come back again soon.

We got out to Granddaddy and Memom's house just a little bit before the eclipse started. We enjoyed some of Granddaddy's BBQ while we waited for the eclipse to get to the total point. Trying to take pictures of just the sun with my cell phone just showed a big glowing sun. Then we decided to try and take the pictures with the special glasses. They didn't turn out great, but we enjoyed getting a few shots of the experience.

I had been looking for these solar eclipse glasses for weeks in Lexington with no success. Thankfully MiMi had gotten a set of 12 and had enough for us too. I saw online about making a face shield for the kids in case they accidentally looked around the glasses. I think they turned out pretty good.

We also had a lot of fun exploring Granddaddy and Memom's cabin. They have so many little trinkets of old time memorabilia. I enjoyed hearing all of Granddaddy's stories and all of his stuff. He also has the tombstone of a distant family member who had fought in the Civil War. The kids had a ton of fun running around and exploring too.

Granddaddy and Memom have just the best little county house and property. The Heflin kids are just so used to everything in the big city of Lexington that they didn't know what to do with themselves at their house. Just the small things like a porch swing could have kept them busy for hours. I also picked Memom's brain about all things canning and they showed me all the stuff that they had canned over the past year. The bottom right picture is of most of Jennifer's family looking up and seeing the eclipse in the early stages.

Here were some of the best pictures that we were able to capture during our experience. It was amazing to see it all happen. When it started to go dark and the crickets started chirping it was really weird. It started to get dark and we were waiting for it to get completely dark. However, it never completely got dark and then all of a sudden it started to get lighter and lighter. It got to where you could see just a sliver of the sun from behind the moon. We never got to see totality which was a huge disappointment.

The drive home was horrible! I have never seen so many cars on the Western Kentucky Parkway. It was almost bumper to bumper all the way to Elizabethtown. Thankfully I made the right decision and got off on an earlier exit and drove through downtown Elizabethtown. We left about an hour after MiMi did and we got home 2 hours before her since she got stuck in the traffic trying to get onto I-65. 

We all had a really great time in western Kentucky and it was a lot of fun getting to spend time with family. The eclipse didn't really live up to our expectations, but we are glad that we got to experience it with the kids. On the way home we were already talking about trying to go and see the next one that actually happens in about 8 years. So, next time we will make a bigger effort to try and get to an area with 100% totality. Thanks for reading and God bless!