Lusk, Wyoming

A week ago, four of us got in the car around 8:00 pm and headed west.  We were planning on heading to Alliance or Scottsbluff, Nebraska to see the total solar eclipse.  Our plans changed around 2:00 am, around the point where we would need to be turning south off of I-90, we started to look at cloud forecasts of the western Nebraska area.  Most of the forecasts kept looking iffy...and if you're heading for totality in an eclipse, iffy isn't good (turns out that you could see it in these locations, the clouds just opened up as totality began according to friends of mine).  We knew Wyoming would be clear, all the forecasts said Wyoming would be one of the best places to view the eclipse, so we decided on Lusk, Wyoming (similar distance and time as our Nebraska locations).

Our route would then be a 685 mile drive, out to Rapid City and then south around the Black Hills and into Lusk (population 1,500)...long drive, sure, bet Lex fell asleep shortly after leaving and woke up in Wyoming...Luke woke up in Rapid City while we stopped for gas and fell asleep shortly after that...the drive back was similar...

We got into Lusk around 6:30 am and hand figured out during the drive that the county fairgrounds would be a viewing location, but the fairgrounds didn't open up until 8:00, so we had time to kill...

Once in the fairgrounds, the eclipse didn't start until around 10:25, with totality beginning at 11:46...but it sure was a nice view...

When the eclipse started...it was time to get the glasses out...

If you look closely in the picture above, Luke's not even looking at the sun, he's looking at me...

Here's first contact taken through the glasses...you can barely see the moon starting to cover the sun in the upper right...

We had almost an hour and a half to kill while waiting for totality, every so often we would peek at the sun, but there where other things to do too...like look at the eclipse through telescopes close by or projection screens where you could see the sunspots too...

We had to eat lunch...

We saw the eclipse by looking at shadows between leaves...if you look closely, you might see small crescents, those crescents are the sun being covered by the moon...

And every minute, more and more of the sun was being covered...

And we waited...

What's cool is that minutes before totality, the sky dims and it looks light twilight...here's two pictures taken within minutes of each other (compare them to the picture above of the scene in Lusk)...

See the street lights that have come on?

And then it was time for totality....we spent 1 minute, 52 seconds within the shadow of the moon...and yes it gets dark...

But the sun being covered is amazing...you can see the corona extending a huge distance...it was awesome...here are pictures that Craig took...

Here's a picture that was heavily cropped...look in the upper right at that pink 'flame,' it's a solar prominence that is bigger than the Earth...

And then it was time to leave Lusk...and it took awhile...

Craig said it best when totality ended - "that was worth driving 10 hours for...."