Given the anticipated traffic and the distance to the Roper Mountain Science Center in South Carolina, where we were going for the day of the eclipse, the bus chartered by the school left at 3:30AM sharp even though the eclipse itself wouldn't occur until mid-afternoon. Traffic wasn't as bad as anticipated, however, so we arrived mid-morning and had a few hours to see what the science center had to offer. They apparently wanted a bus to block traffic in a certain spot so we parked at the absolute front of the parking lot, which was nice.
The Science Center turned out to be pretty big, with numerous large buildings spread over the mountain and surrounding fields. We first went to the Planetarium, which was showing a movie about eclipses in general and this one in particular, and it was kind of funny because it had clearly been made some time ago to hype this particular eclipse.
After that we went to go peer through their rather large telescope at the sun (through a filter).
Despite the large telescope, it was hard to make out much detail - could see a sunspot or two but the view was not that impressive overall (I guess the 93 million intervening miles were not entirely cancelled out by the telescope). Among the many exhibits and activities, we also went to a lecture from a NASA researcher on eclipses and the solar corona, their butterfly garden (well I think they had about three of these, we went to several), and the stingray petting zoo. We didn't have time to see everything and there were attractions for all ages set up across the campus.
Felt like Jell-o to me.
We needed something to eat, and because the Science Center had both limited admission and solid planning there were several food trucks with lines that were long but not complete murder. We had four kinds of tacos from two different trucks, encompassing beef, pork, chicken, and shrimp - nothing life changing but eating tacos outdoors for a work trip works for us.
Shrimp tacos
Due to the aforementioned planning by the Science Center there was plenty of room to spread out blankets and so on in fields for eclipse viewing as time got close. We didn't have to fight for space in a grassy area - plenty to go around.
Requisite eclipse glasses selfie
As advertised, it did get quite dark and the temperature dropped a lot - which was lovely as it was fairly hot out.
Our camera is not the best at eclipses, even total eclipses, which this was taken during. Eyes worked a lot better and it was pretty otherworldly.
We did observe the crescent-shaped shadows between leaves characteristic of eclipses - sometimes you'd look at them and assume the leaves were curved like that and then look up and nope, not even close - feature of the light from the sun itself.
We didn't hang around long after the eclipse, anticipating bad traffic getting back out, which we definitely did find. However, it wasn't as bad as we'd originally predicted, since we got back at 11PM instead of midnight, which was the predicted return time. Very happy the bus driver was the one driving so we could sleep in the seats. Great day trip, glad we got to do it.
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