Solar Eclipse Aug 21, 2017 (Corvallis, Albany, Lebanon: sale, insurance, shops)

[Nell Plotts]

Originally Posted by Crashj007

Great shot. mine are all too much flare.

Thanks, the photographer is only 13 yo.

[psichick]

I decided not to go to Salem (too close to I5 and too many events going on), so I went to McMinnville. I left at 8am and it took me 45 mins from Hillsboro; not bad. All I can say is that I am soooo glad I went. Nothing can compare to seeing and experiencing that in-person.

I left a bit late as I was trying to photograph the last part, but eventually gave up when Waze told me it'd take 1.25 hours to get back home....and knowing it would only get worse. It took me 2 hours to get back to Hillsboro. My friend tried take backroads to Hillsboro from Salem, she said it took her almost 4 hours to get home. Yikes! And that's why I went to the furthest point north, on side roads....if I could get ahead of all the Salem traffic, I was good. I just should have left at 10:30, not 11:20. Ugh.

Here's a cool picture I got.

[karlsch]

Originally Posted by psichick

........

Here's a cool picture I got.

Great picture. Does a good job of showing the dazzling white light

[NightBazaar]

Originally Posted by Nell Plotts

Thanks, the photographer is only 13 yo.

Well he certainly took an impressive photo. Good job!

[Cloudy Dayz]

I left the coast about 4:30 PM Sunday and arrived in Madras about 9:30PM. Traffic was light all the way. All around Madras there were big tent cities set up. Lots of people walking and biking in the dark. The businesses were all still packed. I had something to eat and then I drove to Warm Springs at 11:30 PM, and found a public parking lot to park in, There were about a dozen other cars and RVs in the parking lot. I tried to get some sleep but I got woken up about 3 AM by cops shining their spotlights in my car. The price you pay for sleeping in your car. LOL. About three of the cars in the parking lot left after that happened. I just stayed and the cops never said anything to me. But they did stay there for the next two hours.

At 5:30 when it started getting light I started driving around looking for a good view location. I really wanted to find a hilltop or mountain top. The view point on US-26 north of Warm Springs was already packed with cars, but there was still some spaces left. I decided to look for something better. I wanted to drive to the area south of Warm Springs. Unfortunately all the roads leading out of town in that direction had Road Closed to Through Traffic signs on them. I didn't drive past the barricades. Anyway about 7AM I found the viewpoint at the top of Pelton Dam Road and decided that would be the location where I would watch the eclipse. Incidentally I later noticed that there were Road Close to Through Traffic signs on Pelton Dam Road too. I guess it pays to drive around the signs and see it it's actually closed.

When I got there at 7AM there were only about ten cars in the pull out. That number quickly increased to about 15. There was probably space for about 50 cars. The conditions looked perfect. Clear blue sky everywhere. Great view of Mt. Jefferson, with hardly any smoke. Then about 8AM a clear line of smoke moved across the sky. At that point some of the people who had been there early on started leaving to find a less smoky place to view. I stayed and nobody else came after that. By 9AM there was rolling smoke in the area, and it was getting difficult to breathe. By eclipse time the smoke cleared slightly, but the sky was still hazy.

I think the one thing that kind of surprised me about the eclipse was that it didn't get as dark as I thought it would. I've heard stories about the stars being visible during eclipses. I did see a couple of stars but they were the big planets that are often visible in the daytime sky if you look close enough. It did not get as dark as night. More like typical twilight, but with the light up in the sky instead of over the horizon. The most impressive thing was seeing the sun with a big black spot on it. Overall it was a very interesting experience. I'll probably try to do it again at least once more. Oh I never did buy any solar eclipse glasses, and I don't think not having them was a big deal. The only thing they might be useful for is killing time while you are waiting for the real event.

Now the negative part, the traffic leaving. I got in my car and left just before 10:30. Most people were still viewing the eclipse. I drove south to avoid traffic in Madras. I drove pretty slow, as the roads still were lined on each side with people viewing the eclipse. Everything was going just fine until I approached one of the tent cities as people were leaving, and the traffic came to a dead stop. Every major road was at a dead standstill in every direction. There was no place you could go. For the next five hours I averaged 5 mph. Mostly it was sitting at a dead stop for five minutes, move slowly for one minute, then sitting for five minutes again. It was by far the worst traffic I have ever seen in my life, and I have seen some bad traffic jams with 20 years of living in the San Francisco Bay Area. The traffic on US-97 from Madras to where I got off in Terrebonne would make an LA traffic jam look like a Sunday drive in the country. The entire time I was on 97 I had my road atlas open and was studying alternative routes. I took several of them but they all lead back to US-97 again. There is absolutely no alternatives to that lousy highway. At least in the city if you get in a traffic jam, you can exit the freeway and take the surface streets. It's slow going, but at least you move. Out there in the middle of nowhere, you just sit there with nowhere to go.

It sure makes me realize how totally inadequate the Oregon road infrastructure is. But the eclipse was still totally worth the traffic hassle. I'd do it again.

[Cloudy Dayz]

Here are some pictures that I took. I'm not sure what the weird bubble effect is at the bottom of the picture.





These pictures of the landscape, I took the first one about one minute before totality, and the second one right after the sun disappeared. The picture brightness is way high though. Actually the second picture is what I remember the brightness looking like right before totality. Then it got that much darker. Even when I was taking the picture I was thinking that the brightness on the LCD screen was too bright. The contrast is about right though.

[Jiff]

Good photos Cloudy Dayz. I did a video at totality at the Solarport campground at the Madras airport , but it's not that good.

We had traffic agony on Monday too. We left the campground at 11am. It took us 6 1/2 hours to get to our hotel in Goldendale, 105 miles, mostly on US-97. It took about 3 1/2 hours just to get almost to the 97-197 split where we finally got out of stop-and-go. I'm sure we could have got there quicker if we had crossed 26 to Cherry Lane coming out of the airport to get to Adams, then Dogwood to 97. Cherry Lane was wide open. Thing is, coming in on Sunday, traffic directors, for some unknown reason, stopped almost all the traffic except buses at Adams and Dogwood. We sat there for 30 minutes before finally making a U-turn, returning to 97 and crossing to 26 on Jefferson. Same weird traffic stoppage by directors at the airport intersection, but they finally let us in.

26 towards Madras looked pretty good on Monday, so instead of chancing the same blockade at Adams and Dogwood we headed towards Madras to cross on Jefferson. Big mistake. Both direction of 26 were parking lots a short distance from the airport. Jefferson okay, then a parking lot on 97 to almost the 197-97 split. Moving along and seeing half the cars take 197 we were feeling pretty good. Nope, big backups approaching a couple little towns and getting in and out of the Columbia gorge.

Seeing traffic bumper-to-bumper at Wasco leading to Biggs, 10 miles away, we took the wide open OR-206 down a canyon to the Columbia thinking we'd get on I-84 and ramp onto the Biggs bridge, bypassing the junction at Biggs. Nope, railroad tracks kept us from 84 so we had to take 30 into Biggs. Dang, we spent about an hour to get a left onto 97 in Biggs where it was semi-truck mania. Then a grueling crawl out of the gorge to police directing traffic at WA-14, then clear sailing to Goldendale. I guess that was the best place for them since directing at Biggs would just extend the crawl back across the bridge. No problems from Goldendale to Lynnwood on Tuesday.

Drove to The Dalles on Saturday, then clear sailing from our hotel in The Dalles to the Madras airport on Sunday morning. Just the strange traffic control at the Madras intersections. I hope that not many didn't go to Oregon because of the news making the Thursday traffic jam near Prineville for the big Oregon Eclipse 2017 festival look like it was typical of all of Central Oregon.

The total eclipse was awesome, including seeing the snake waves on the side of a barn. Because of the smoke and the high thin clouds it wasn't quite as dramatic as 1979 in Richland WA with a clear sky. Lots of interest in my binoculars viewer. Campground was okay, kind of dusty with dead grass.

Sunday at the beer-wine-booze garden in a hangar at Solarport with an excellent band was fun. We heard that Solarfest was good, but we were satisfied at Solarport. Lots of happy people having a good time. Well worth the gruesome drive on Monday.

[Sherwoody]

Originally Posted by Cloudy Dayz

Here are some pictures that I took. I'm not sure what the weird bubble effect is at the bottom of the picture.





These pictures of the landscape, I took the first one about one minute before totality, and the second one right after the sun disappeared. The picture brightness is way high though. Actually the second picture is what I remember the brightness looking like right before totality. Then it got that much darker. Even when I was taking the picture I was thinking that the brightness on the LCD screen was too bright. The contrast is about right though.

Why don't you adjust them to your "mind's eye" view in editing in addition to the original?

[Cloudy Dayz]

Originally Posted by Sherwoody

Why don't you adjust them to your "mind's eye" view in editing in addition to the original?

OK, you convinced me. I lowered the exposure a bit. I think this is closer to reality of what the light was like. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Thom52]

Shot with an old M4/3 camera body (my current camera died a couple days before the eclipse), no special gear, definitely no "practice" shots. and Definitely doesn't capture the reality.

ec1110061almostSahrpCrescent by Thom I, on Flickr


ec1110078totalWsnag by Thom I, on Flickr

ec1110089sillouette by Thom I, on Flickr

ec1110082WhychusGettingDim by Thom I, on Flickr