So, having watched the solar eclipse through my free Warby Parker glasses (a huge shout out to Warby Parker), I am now convinced more than ever that the moon is closer than the sun. Not only that, but I am convinced that the sun is very bright. What I mean by that is that, when the moon has blocked out 90+ % of the sun, it is still very light outside. So my advice to the sun is to relax a bit. Don’t burn yourself out. And my advice to the moon? It was very cool when you blocked out the sun. You didn’t need to rush it. Next time, go slower.

We watched the full eclipse from Makanda, Illinois, just south of Carbondale.

A digression. The son in law of good friends, with whom we spent time on Sunday, calls Carbondale “CarBAHNdali”. Once that gets into your head, you will never be the same.

Carbondale has the honor of being the one place that the lines for the 2017 and 2024 eclipsed crossed and Carbondale, the home of about 30,00 people and Southern Illinois University with its 15,000 students, was buzzing. The special production at the football stadium seems to have thousands of spectators, each of whom from the looks of the parking lot must have driven two cars.

A few miles south in Makanda, at it’s “hippie” boardwalk, there must also have been teems of people. We were advised to stay away if we didn’t want our car to be trapped for hours

A two hour drive took about three. Better than we feared. We took Illinois state roads and avoided Interstates which turned out to be a good move. Except at stop lights, where things got quite backed up, traffic moved smoothly. Coming back, the roads were slower. On the route we tok after the eclipse, the problem was roadwork, not stop signs.  Each way, the 100 mile trip took over an hour longer than usual.

Second digression. We are lucky we didn’t take an Interstate. Friends who took an Interstate toward St. Genevieve never got there, the traffic was so bad.

The day was beautiful. Blue sky. Temperature exceeded 80. We were at the home of Randy, our friend Judy’s son, who is a physician and works at the federal prison at nearby Marion. They have a beautiful place on 67 wooded acres, and the setting was beautiful and the group was small. We all enjoyed the silence, the subtle light changes, the eeriness, the sudden drop in temperature and the four minutes of quasi-darkness. We followed the moon’s progress and marveed at the entire situation.

Third digression. The other four people with us were Brian, Britt, Julia and Mary. I am so bad at names that I have been saying these four names over and over. But I don’t really know who these people are.

I wish I had a camera good enough to distinguish the changes in light, or to catch the moon’s encroachment, but alas, my cell phone camera was not up to the challenge.

One picture from one of those watching with us.

And one more from the Japanese restaurant that ended our day.