Eclipse 2017!

What better place to see the total solar eclipse of 2017 than in the most visited National Park in the US!?  Ok, I know what you are thinking. But as it turned out, traffic wasn't that bad — at least not for us. Plus, it was a great view!

We camped in Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee.  It's an 11-mile, one-way, narrow loop through backcountry that was farmed in the 19th century, but pretty much abandoned after that.  Beautiful — if not easily accessible. 

We were in line to enter the loop at 5:30 am; some had gotten there at 1am and traffic was backed up for about 60 miles by the time the gate opened. 

There was a bear in the loop that caused a brief delay, but we got the central parking area by 8am and staked out our place under a tree.  It ended up being the PERFECT place to wait for about 6 hours! 

What do people do while waiting for six hours? Try out their eclipse glasses and equipment — a lot.  A particularly enterprising family brought ropes and their kids made a make-shift playground that was used by everyone. Rufus slept. Everyone tried to escape the sun..when they weren't looking at it!

The changes in the environment were the coolest part of eclipse for us.  It was like wearing photo-gray sunglasses, everything just got slightly darker...and so much cooler!

And it all happens so fast — as you can see in the video below. 

We opted to not buy any special equipment— so we could only take pictures at totality. In any case, no pictures we have seen really did it justice. So, we'd say, if you have the chance in 2024 — go see it in person!