August solar eclipse

Anyone planning on making the trip to watch the total solar eclipse on August 17th?

I'm planning on driving up from Utah to (probably) Driggs, Idaho with my daughter's to watch it. I originally planned on Rexburg but the more I look into it the more that option seems to be a very poor choice since everyone and their dog will probably do the same which will make I-15 terrible. It will take me about 5 and a half hours to get from my place in the Salt Lake valley up to Driggs but that is taking a slower back way up through the mountains. It will probably still be faster than dealing with whatever traffic there will be, particularly when coming home.

I'll probably split the trip up there in two by heading up to my in-laws in Cache Valley the evening before and spend the night there, then it's just a 4 hour drive from there to Driggs. It starts at just after quarter after 10 am, so we would leave a bit before 6 am and get there in plenty of time. Totality isn't until after 11:30 there, so that's plenty of wiggle room. Then a 5.5 hour drive back will get the girls home in time for bed.

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I'm leaving the area for the eclipse most likely north to around Cody. As you noted too much traffic, too many Tourons.

But if you are headed for Driggs, I'm guessing it will be extremely busy. Driggs is becoming the new Jackson WY. (Local saying is the millionaires are being pushed out of Jackson by Billionaires and moving to Driggs.) Driggs has more and more traffic every year and for this occasion it could be very, very busy.

But just guessing, you probably want to stay away from ID Falls, so don't try the I-15 to Hwy 26 route; I'm guessing it could be a cluster.....

I would guess 89 north to 26, and then onto 31 into Victor would be decent, but I would not be surprised to see everyone parked on the shoulder from Victor north to Driggs.

The 191 route up WY to Hwy 22 over the Teton Pass will probably be bush too since the is the fastest way from ID into Jackson WY, and vice versa.

....


Watching the morning AM, they are recommending everyone in the eclipse totality area to make sure to hit the local grocery stores, fuel up and generally get ready a week in advance.

Chances are I'll be heading to near cape Girardeau, MO. Up from Louisiana, 30/40 across Arkansas and 55 up.

BTW, you can get shade 14 glasses on Amazon for about $30. I need to order mine before the rush.

I'll be going all the way to outside my house. I'm in Keizer OR, basically Salem OR, within the path of totality. If I wasn't I doubt I'd be driving any distance to see it.

edit: Already bought a pack of glasses...

I saw the last one, they really all do look the same. It's light, then it's dark, then it's light... though with that said, I remember talking with friends about how old we'd be when it happened again.... sigh, my younger me was right - I'm old.

I bought a pack of 10 glasses for $7 shipped off amazon prime. Most of them are made by the same company (American Paper products or something) so it's just the printing on them that are different and different sellers charging different prices.

f5moab, yeah, I'm sure that no matter where you go it's going to be pretty busy. My plan is to take 89 to 26 to 31, just like you said. I'm avoiding 15 at all costs since that's the way everyone else is going to go. I'm not really able to get up there the night before unfortunately, so I'm really hoping that route will be OK. Honestly if I can't get to Driggs then whatever, Victor would be fine too (the center line passes right between the two, and it's only a difference of a few seconds in totality), so even if I just get kind of close to that area I'll be OK. It's mid day so as long as I can find a reasonable opening somewhere nearby I will be fine. Heck, maybe I'll look for a trail to drive up in the mountains along 31 before I even get to Victor/Driggs. Nice thing about having the H3 is I can go places most of the other people won't be able to.

I'm planning on filling up all my gas cans (15 gallons worth) and putting them on my hitch carrier so that I don't have to worry *too* much about gas, and bringing food and water in my fridge. I have no delusions of being able to easily find any of that along the way up there. It's a little over 200 miles from Logan to Driggs which is a little under my average range (usually get about 240 miles on a tank), so I'll probably stop somewhere in the Bear Lake area to top off my tank and then I should be fine to get back without filling back up at a gas station until I get back to the Bear Lake area.

An alternative is 34 from Cache Valley to 89 to 26 to 31. It will all depend on what the traffic is like that day.

Between Victor and Driggs it is either farmland or subdivisions anymore. Some dirt roads, but they are kept up so almost any vehicle can travel on them. I would guess the stretch around bear lake shouldn't be too bad on Thursday for traveling through. Have a good time.

I'm way too far away. Beside, the sun in Phoenix often gets blotted out by gunfire anyway. Or is that Chicago I'm thinking of?

I thought during the summer it was too hot to commit crime, don't they wait until the winter when you're no longer in hell?

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Well, I believe I have my routes all figured out now and they should keep me away from the majority of the traffic. Now I just have to finish getting some other things together and hope the weather cooperates.

Oh. And screw you Amazon for selling me counterfeit solar eclipse glasses. And not telling anyone until the week before. I spent part of Monday morning stopping at several places to find some replacements, and fortunately I was able to get some from the planetarium during my lunch break (also picked up a solar filter for my telescope, so that will be cool to have with me).

It's sad how man people were taken by jerks selling fakes from China. Even some of the school districts here ended up buying fakes unintentionally.

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alrock said:

I'm way too far away. Beside, the sun in Phoenix often gets blotted out by gunfire anyway. Or is that Chicago I'm thinking of?

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stop boasting about all the future clients - if people stopped shooting each other, we'd be out of business.... and we can't have that, can we? :homer:

JPaul said:

Oh. And screw you Amazon for selling me counterfeit solar eclipse glasses. And not telling anyone until the week before. I spent part of Monday morning stopping at several places to find some replacements, and fortunately I was able to get some from the planetarium during my lunch break (also picked up a solar filter for my telescope, so that will be cool to have with me).

It's sad how man people were taken by jerks selling fakes from China. Even some of the school districts here ended up buying fakes unintentionally.

Click to expand...

I got an e-mail from Amazon. Apparently mine are in the "we can't verify they are fully iso compliant" category. Honestly, I think they are ok. Silver lenses, not just dark like the knock-offs I've seen. While wearing them I can hold a bright LED flashlight a couple inches away and it's just a very dim light shining through. However, the wife and I did some last minute grocery shopping during lunch today and they had "real" eclipse glasses so I bought a couple pairs.

I took my glasses outside today and was able to look straight at the full sun. I can still see so I guess that's good. Mine say ISO certified, but I guess anyone could print that on there.

Already on my way up. I've mad it up to my in laws and will be leaving at 5 AM or so to get up to the spot I'm hoping to use.

I've got 25 gallons of extra gas with me and a full tank, so it should be good to go. Fridge is full of drinks, food, and snacks, as is my front seat. (I may or may not have let my girls go a little overboard with picking out treats for the drive up and back)

I tried out the sun filter for the telescope today before we left, it's pretty cool to be able to look at the sun through it. There is a string of sunspots on the face of the sun right now.

Weather looks to be shaping up to be about perfect for the eclipse where I am heading, so I think everything is going to work out.

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I'm about 10 miles south of Carbondale IL which is peak spot. Traffic around here is not bad at all. I expected total gridlock. I am inside the 2:40 band so should get a nice long look. Only thin wispy Cirrus clouds here.

I took my welding mask to work and it worked great . Here in SoCal it was only about a 3/4 eclipse.

I had 99.2 looked at it for a few seconds (with glasses) and said to myself...BIG DEAL! Went back inside. Glad to say I only had to walk out to the backyard and not drive a few hundred miles.:giggle:

My trip went very well, fortunately. Made it up to Hyde Park Sunday afternoon and spent the night at my in-laws, then we left at about 5 AM Monday to drive up to the spot in Idaho I selected. Traffic was very light getting up there, only had to deal with a few slowpokes and one idiot that pulled out in front of me from a gas station even though there was literally no one behind me, just so that they could drive a mile and turn back off the highway...

There were more people up at the dirt roads off 31 between Swan Valley ID and Victor ID than I thought there would be, but I guess it's not surprising. (Just goes to show that anyone that thinks they can just run off to the mountains in a SHTF situation doesn't realize just how many other people are going to have the same idea...) But we were able to find a nice spot to pull off with some shade and a good view.





I'm very glad I chose to buy the solar filter for my telescope, it made watching the eclipse a much more enjoyable experience for me and my girls (sadly my wife wasn't able to come because she is a school teacher here in Utah and it was the first day of school). I was able to get some surprisingly decent photos just by putting my cell phone camera up to the viewfinder. Not great, or amazing, but decent.














I wasn't able to get a good photo of the totality, but it was incredible to watch it. It was well worth the trouble of planning and executing the trip up. The drive back was fine for me as well, though I thought I'd listen to Google and try going back down 26 through Alpine to 89, but I got to about 24 miles away from Alpine and it was completely stopped, so I turned back around and went the back roads route I had originally planned. It took me on 058 down to 087 which brought me over to Grays Lake Road, then back down to Highway 34 and on to 91 to get me back to Hyde Park, UT. 058 was a little slow because it hugs the upper side of the mountains along the Snake River reservoir and the Snake River until it hooks back up with 087, lots of twists and turns that if you go even slightly too fast could end up with you flying off the side of the mountain. 087 was much faster though, and the whole route was very scenic. Far better views than staring at someone else's taillights for who knows how many hours. We left our spot at around 12:30 or so and made it back to my in-laws around 5:40 PM. Considering it took us about 4 hours just to get there, I did pretty darn well.

We stopped for dinner and a stretch at my in-laws and then headed the rest of the way home. Traffic was busy but not overly slow fortunately. So all in all it was a terrific experience.

Yes it was pretty cool, I watched it in Rexburg.

Lauren and I trekked down to Prairie, OR and camped out in the national forest for a long weekend. Little bit of a mad dash before heading out as I had just returned from California and sitting in the airport parking lot in 100 degree weather for almost two weeks finally killed my batteries. Not to mention a few other things that needed attention which were pushed off by the last-minute trip to CA. 6.5 hours away for us and managed to avoid most of the traffic on the way home by pre-checking and rerouting. Took our dear sweet time getting back, stopping for distractions like swimming in a lake when the mood struck. Road trips without a timeline are actually nice.

Awesome experience seeing totality for the first time and she had a blast indulging her photography streak for five days (Lauren's totality pictures for the curious). The glorious Milky Way views and gorgeous sunrise/sunsets didn't disappoint her one bit, either. On my end, I got to test some SHTF systems like 200W of solar in the truck which helped me reduce how much work I skipped. Exposed a lot of required updates though and reminded me how remiss I've been about working on my truck; nothing quite like a small taste of offroad to make you realize you miss it. Also managed to keep Lauren from getting eaten by a mountain lion, twice. Pretty happy about that one. Midnight strolls into the woods for nature calls should be prefaced with a flashlight sweep. Nothing gets the adrenaline running quite like seeing two emeralds stalking toward you in the pitch black.

JPaul, we had less people than we expected. I attribute a lot of that to a lack of cell service nearby so people couldn't look up the miscellaneous dirt roads. I think having a pre-planned location or a print map pre-SHTF will give you the ability to get out there alone if the time comes. But, we were also an hour from the nearest town >10k people and had downloaded offline maps for the entirety of Eastern Oregon.

It was really cool how friendly most people were out there. We were all there to experience astronomical glory, so everyone was excited about being there.

Jpaul, those are some awesome pics! Thanks for sharing.

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