I couldn't get my wife to get moving so we could leave between 9 and 9:30. That extra half hour of more would have made a big difference!! it's a bit more than a 2 hour drive from my house to DuQuoin, IL and a few minutes more to Carbondale. Both were in the middle of totality, so not knowing exactly what to expect, I was going to make my decision when we got there, originally intending to be there by noon. Well, we didn't get out of St. Louis until 10am or so. I went basically the same route we always took to the Paducah contest. I had planned to exit I-64 at the IL-51 exit and head right to the Fairgrounds. I had just gotten on I-64 and ran up on a back up before we even got a mile or so. Google maps said it was a slow down expected to last 10 or 15 minutes, which would have been OK. But it was like it kept growing ahead of us and we couldn't get caught up!! We never got over 20MPH at any time and spent a lot of time sitting still. I had forgotten my road atlas or I could have probably found a country road bypass, but it eventually took us 2 hours to go 62 miles!! No traffic going the opposite way!! I got off at a state highway that had a desperately needed potty stop, and played with google maps and charted a course overland the remaining distance to the Fairgrounds in DuQuoin. There was NO traffic on the county roads and in DuQuoin at all. It made me wonder where all the other people on the Interstate were going?? Got to the Fairgrounds at 1pm on the dot, just as things started to happen. Got settled, got glasses and such out. You can't really see too much lighting change with the sun almost directly over head until you get well past 3/4 coverage. At about that point, we could see the shadow coming our way in the distance. It's nice an flat in southern Illinois and we could see a fair distance off to the South West. It looked like a storm coming our way, but no clouds in the sky. Totality was more than 4 minutes, but didn't bother to keep exact time. Beautiful corona around the moon!! Stars came out and the wind dropped to zero. About 5 to 7 degree temp drop. It was a really cool thing to see for so long. In 2017, we were not that far off the shadow centerline but the position of the moon was different then and I think it barely lasted 2 minutes. It got much darker this time. No birds flying home to roost in any of the trees. When in totality, you could see a sharp point of light at the bottom of the moon like light was shining through a deep valley. It would have been cool to have gotten a sharp picture of that. We watched for another 30 minutes of so and I was amazed at the number of people that left right after totality!!
Next we had to find a Burger King. Mama wanted Burger King and the nearest one was 20 miles away to the east in Benton, IL off I-57 . So I figured what the heck, spend an hour or so getting a late lunch and let traffic thin out Left the Fairgrounds at 2:45. Had lunch, and left BK at 3:45 or so. Went to get on northbound I-57 and one lane was closed for repaving, and slow moving traffic. I didn't feel like reversing course and going back 20 miles to the county roads when it was only about 25 or 30 miles or so to the I-57/I-64 interchange and I was thinking it would clear up a bit outside the construction zone. WRONG!! I think the rest of humanity was in the Rend Lake area. Lines and lines of cars at each highway entrance we came to. Again, no traffic going the other way!!! It was almost an exact replay of the trip there. We did pick up and run at the speed limit for a while once on I-64 West bound but we soon got the alert that we were coming to another 40 minute stack up, and who knows what that would turn into. We were close enough to the same IL-127 exit I took on the way there, and this time took it North thinking to link up with I-70 at Greenville. So did a whole lot of other people!! Lots of towns with flashing red lights at the cross roads, that took things to a snails pace again. I bailed off of that at soon as I realized another county road ran into Lebanon, IL and IL-4 Familiar ground to me again, and once I got that far I had it licked. Walked back in my door about 7:10pm after leaving Benton IL at 3:45!! But it was worth it!!! I saw something naturally spectacular, live and in person that I know I'll never get to see again. If i had to do it all over again I would but this time i would make sure to bring my road atlas, we leave on time, and Mama eats McDonalds whether she likes it or not!!
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Topic: Eclipse pattern (Read 1023 times)