Eclipse Day

A couple weeks ago we experienced a rare and overwhelming natural phenomenon: a total solar eclipse.  The whole country would experience at least a partial eclipse, but St. Louis happened to be in the path that would get to see it in totality.  I was lucky enough to be off work so I picked up a coffee for myself and an iced tea for Dad and met him at the park.

Eclipse Day sort of became an unofficial holiday, what with businesses closing or people taking the day off, so there were quite a few people at the park.  The dock wasn't busy at all though.  We had about twenty minutes or so until the main event so we just observed the surroundings.  The little crescent moon shadows were the coolest part.

And then the total eclipse started happening.  During the last five or ten minutes everything was covered in this weird twilight light (the parking lot lamps even came on!), and then it got really dark. The frogs started ribbeting and the nighttime bugs started making their nighttime bug sounds, and the sun was almost completely covered.

It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.  I thought it was going to be neat, but it was much more exciting than I was expecting.  I tried to take a picture of it at totality but forgot to put my eclipse glasses over the lens.  One of Dad's friends did remember and sent him that second picture; pretty cool, hunh?!!

After the minute and a half of totality, it went back to twilight, then to daytime.  The frogs and bugs went back to sleep and we met up with Taylor at Amigo's for an afternoon round of Victoria beers.  While there, we saw another odd natural occurrence in the form of strange clouds that looked like someone took their hand and swiped a section of it.  Ahh, nature is awesome.

(photos by e.hunt, and Dad's friend Megan)