A solar eclipse is special. While they are not that rare
from a global perspective, they rarely show up in the same place. A few months
ago, my son told my wife that a total eclipse was going to occur on our 46th
wedding anniversary – April 8, 2024. The path of the eclipse would pass just a
few hundred miles from where we live. We decided this was an event that was
made for us.
Apparently, a lot of people felt the same way and had been
making plans to see the eclipse months before we learned of it. Hotels between
Erie, Pennsylvania and Cleveland, Ohio were booked solid. Finally, my wife
found a two-star hotel called The Skylight Inn in the town of Willoughby, Ohio
– about 20 miles from Cleveland.
We weren’t sure what we would find in Willoughby in terms of
restaurants, grocery stores or other city-type amenities. So, we packed a
cooler with food and brought gallon jugs of water to sustain us in the event
Willoughby turned out to be in the middle of nowhere, or its food options were
limited by eclipse seeking hordes. We also brought two brands of beer to enjoy
during the eclipse – Oberon Eclipse if the skies were clear or Levante Cloudy
and Cumbersome if thick clouds obscured our view of the eclipse.
We got on the road around 11:15AM on April 7. After meeting
our son for dinner near Pittsburgh, we arrived at the Skylight Inn around 8:00PM.
The Skylight Inn is an old-fashioned motel and quite deserving of its two-star rating.
But our room was clean, and a new, vinyl plank floor had replaced what we
assumed had been a worn, dirty carpet.
We spotted several restaurants within walking distance and
decided to take a chance on Applebee’s. It wasn’t overly crowded; we were able
to get seats at the bar. We ordered drinks and an appetizer. My wife struck up
a conversation with the man sitting next to us. She told him we were there to
see the eclipse, which was occurring on our wedding anniversary. His name was
Antonio, and he surprised us by paying our tab, proving that kind, generous
people are everywhere, including Willoughby, Ohio.
The next morning, we ordered a hearty breakfast at the Bob
Evans next to the hotel. Happily, sustenance was not going to be the problem we
feared it might be. While we could have seen the eclipse from the hotel parking
lot, we found a park a few miles away on the shores of Lake Erie. We realized
that we did not have chairs or even a blanket to lie on while we waited for the
eclipse to begin. On our drive to the park, my wife spotted a thrift store
where we found a thick wool blanket for the unbelievable price of $5.62. We
arrived at Osborne Park around 10:00AM and spread out our blanket on the crest
of the hill overlooking Lake Erie.
Osborne Park was the place to be. The local community had
organized an eclipse party there with food trucks and music from the local
radio station. Park employees were handing out eclipse glasses at the entrance
to the park, though my wife had already purchased glasses for us from a trusted
source.
A brilliant blue, cloudless sky greeted us upon our arrival
around 10:00AM. By noon, high, thin clouds started to move in. The forecast was
“partly cloudy,” so we prayed heavier clouds would stay away. Now and then we
would check out the sun with our protective glasses. They were so dark we could
see nothing but the sun. Seen through our eclipse glasses, the sun looked very
much like a full moon. We learned that the sun is 400 times larger than the
moon, but also 400 times further away making them appear to be the same size
when viewed from Earth. These conditions are unique to Earth. No other planet
in our solar system has the right conditions to experience a total eclipse of
the sun.
The eclipse was scheduled to start shortly after 2:00PM and
to reach totality at 3:13PM. Shortly before 2:00, we felt a noticeable drop in
temperature as the moon’s shadow made its way toward Willoughby. Around 2:10,
we first noticed the moon taking a bite out of the sun. We checked the moon’s
progress over the next hour as the sun went from appearing as a full moon, to a
fat crescent, to a thin crescent and finally, to a thin fingernail clipping.
Minutes before totality, the radio station announced that they were stopping
the music. Then, totality. We took off our glasses and looked up in awe.
Being in the presence of a total eclipse of the sun is
unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It is difficult to describe the emotions
we felt as darkness enveloped the earth, and the bright sun became a black ball
surrounded by a thin, white corona. My wife said she felt we were looking into
God’s eye. A star was visible in the dusk-like darkness. Looking towards Lake
Erie, we saw orange and pink clouds on the horizon that mimicked a sunset,
though the sun was high in the sky in the opposite direction.
Less than four minutes later, the thinnest crescent of the
sun emerged from hiding. That tiny slice of the sun was enough to turn darkness
into daylight. We saw a flock of Canadian geese flying in a straight line
rather than their typical V formation. Then they settled onto the surface of Lake Erie, perhaps fooled into
thinking it was time to bed down for the night.
We remained in the park for another hour as the moon
continued its journey, allowing the sun to once again be free of any
obstruction. We chatted with some of the other eclipse watchers and then drove
into Willoughby’s quaint downtown. We shopped a little, ate dinner and headed
to Pittsburgh to spend the night at our son’s house. Heavy traffic from
thousands of other eclipse seekers meant that the normally 2 ½ hour trip would
take us 4 hours to complete.
Our wedding anniversary comes around once each year, and
there is not much special about the 46th. But viewing a total
eclipse is a once in a lifetime experience. It may have only lasted four
minutes, but it made our sojourn to Willoughby, Ohio an anniversary that we
will always remember.