Eclipsing a 46-Year Anniversary

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 46^th 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 46^th. 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.