The story of this trip really begins back in 2017, during the last solar eclipse over the U.S. I was moving into my new apartment at college, a bit jealous that I couldn’t travel to see totality. In the end, on a mostly cloudy day in Worcester, I managed to see the partial eclipse. I didn’t have any solar filters, so the best I could do was use the internal reflection of the lens elements in my phone camera to project the image of the sun elsewhere in the frame.
After that half-hearted viewing, I looked up when and where the next total eclipse in America would be, and when I saw that it was going over New England I made a promise to myself. If I was still living in the area when the far-off year of 2024 came, I’d travel to experience totality. Well 2024 has arrived, and as luck would have it, I still am one of the close to 200 million Americans that live within driving distance of the path of totality.
I will say in advance that a lot of things had to go right for this trip to work out. I started planning only about a month ago, which is very late considering that I’ve had a whole seven years to prepare. It was a small miracle that I found an open hotel room in the town of Burlington, VT. If I had acted sooner, maybe my room at the Comfort Inn would have cost less than a whole $600 for a single night. And that’s how busy it was when the historical cloud cover data looked like this:
I figured that chances of me actually seeing the corona were slim, but I still thought that experiencing the eclipse would be worth it. I could still notice the sky darkening and the weather cooling down, and so on. So I booked the room, and marked the day out-of-office on my work calendar.
Driving there and back in a single day was out of the question. Even with no traffic, the drive up to Vermont takes a whole three hours. It’s the furthest away from home I’ve ever driven my car, just edging out the time I visited my friend’s house in Pleasantville, NY by a few dozen miles. Factor in eclipse traffic? Forget about it! So, given that the eclipse was happening in the afternoon, this was my plan: I’d drive up to Vermont pretty early in the morning, hoping that most visitors were staggering their trips somewhat so there wouldn’t be too much traffic on the way there. Then I’d spend the night, and take my time driving back the next day, with most of the visitors already having gone home.
As the day of the eclipse approached, the forecasts began to look more optimistic. In a twist of fate, Texas, the state with the highest historical chance of being clear, was slated to be completely overcast along the path, whereas New England was blue skies all around.
Unfortunately, the low pressure system over the northern midwest was faster than forecast. The New York Times forecast the night before put the cloud cover in the Burlington area at around 60-80%. I was optimistic, though. I had slack in my anticipated travel time, and figured that if there were indeed clouds, that I could drive 30-60 minutes east instead of viewing it in Burlington proper. I packed my backpack with everything I’d need for the trip, and set out the next morning at around 7:20. My GPS said the drive would take about 3 hours.
That was a lie.
It hit me when I had just merged onto I-89. I chuckled when the GPS said “keep going for about 147 miles”, and looked at the screen. The estimated time to destination was still at just about 3 hours, even though I had already been driving for about half an hour. As I switched from Boston NPR stations to New Hampshire NPR stations, and finally to Vermont NPR stations, I kept looking at the estimated time of arrival. Every few minutes, it would tick up. I was perpetually at 3 hours from Burlington like some kind of sick purgatory.
I stopped at a rest stop just over the Vermont border, and it was packed to the gills. I was lucky to even find a spot to park in. I saw some other cars parked on random patches of grass because, I assume, they were as desperate to use the facilities as I was. Fortunately the traffic never got to be too stop-and-go. After the rest stop, my GPS routed me off I-89 and through some state highways to bypass a big traffic jam, which was nice. I actually saw the ETA drop because of that, which was very exciting.
A few more slow-going sections later and I was getting very close to my destination. The traffic eased up as I got closer to town, and I ended up parking at a mall near my hotel right around noon. Right as I did, I heard one final weather forecast on the radio saying what I was hoping for: the large system of low clouds was going to be stuck in New York until after the eclipse, and there were only going to be some thin cirrus clouds in the sky where I was.
Looking around, the mall parking lot was pretty empty, all things considered. The whole area seemed pretty empty, actually. I had some time, and there was a Barnes and Noble across the street, so I went an browsed for a bit before the next bus to downtown got there. I had researched the night before and found that there was a pretty frequent bus route that ran right from my hotel to downtown and back, and it was even fare-free. As the bus drove past the University of Vermont and got closer to downtown, I realized why the mall area looked so dead.
I overheard a conversation between two people on the bus, that went something like this:
"You said you're from Baltimore, how many people live there?"“About 700,000 or so?”
“The entire state of Vermont only has 600,000. You take everyone traveling from big cities like yours, and we’re talking doubling or even tripling that amount of people that are in this town normally.”
I looked out the bus window at the Church Street market area and saw hundreds of people ambling about in the pedestrianized street. It looked insane. I got out of the bus at the last stop and started making my way down the the waterfront. I was almost giddy with excitement. Seeing everyone gathering together for a single purpose made this seem way bigger than I thought it would. And to top it off, the weather was almost perfect. It just then occurred to me that I probably should have brought a hat and/or sunscreen.
I found a spot in the park next to two men in their 50s, and one of their sons. Since I came alone, I ended up chatting with them for most of the event. I knew it would be 45 minutes from the start of the partial eclipse to the start of totality, but what I didn’t account for is the local cell network being completely overwhelmed. I could barely send text messages, let alone send pictures or browse social media. So having other people to talk to made the time pass easier.
One thing that I will mention to anyone planning on going to an eclipse in the future is to download a custom camera app for your phone. My iPhone is a technological marvel, and the things the camera can do with postprocessing are amazing. However, when you’re trying to get it to focus using a single lens, and it keeps trying the computational photography with multiple lenses, or turning on night mode, it makes it hard to capture a good image. I probably should have downloaded something like Halide to get better shots.
It was a hot day in the park, with the sun beating down. I was baking, and even had to turn my portable camping chair around for some time for relief. The park sound system announced that the partial eclipse was beginning.
At first it’s hard to tell if the moon is actually in front of the sun. Someone next to us said it would be coming from the top. We couldn’t tell until a bit later that the sun was moving down and left.
It still wasn’t clear that anything was happening unless you were looking at the sun through the goggles. I chuckled when I realized the local band on the PA system was playing “Black Hole Sun”.
More and more people started filtering into the park. It was clear most of them didn’t care about seeing it from start to finish.
It started getting noticeably darker. It was as if the sun was being blocked by clouds, and if I didn’t know what was going on, I might have just assumed that was the case.
It was suddenly much chillier. I put back on my hoodie to stay warm. It felt like it was dusk already.
The anticipation was building. Everyone stood up to watch the last slivers of the sun disappear behind the moon. The sky across Lake Champlain looked like a sunset in every direction.
The sky rapidly darkened, and thousands of people started cheering. I took off my glasses to observe the corona and was in awe. I could not stop a huge smile from forming on my face. This was it.
I wish I could convey the depth of the experience to you through this post. Unfortunately, there are no words that can even come close to describing an eclipse that do it justice. I still smile when I see the (very poor quality) photos I took. Even if I had the best camera in the world, though, the photos would only give you a fraction of what actually going to one would be like. The travel was 100,000% worth it. If you ever find yourself on or near the path of an eclipse, make sure to go see it. It’s truly a special event, and the next opportunity might not be in your lifetime.