Natural Weekends – Total Solar Eclipse

I went out West to catch the solar eclipse on Monday. While I had chosen a couple of potential locations depending on the weather, I eventually settled on the Camas National Wildlife Refuge in Hamer, Idaho. And boy am I glad I did. The staff of Camas was so well prepared for the event and did a marvelous job of handling the huge influx of visitors to the refuge as well as being available to all the visitors with questions about the refuge itself. Since the refuge would be open to the public, entry was on a first come, first serve basis and only a limited number of visitors would be allowed in. I got in line for entry at 1 am but the line didn’t really start to build until around 4:30 or 5 am. Because of the danger of wildfires and the need for quick evacuation, the cars that got into the refuge were not all crammed together, so you really had some personal space for viewing the eclipse. In addition, the refuge itself was just seeing its first influx of migrating birds so I spent a pleasurable few hours after the eclipse wandering through the refuge as the eclipse watchers departed en masse. All in all, thanks to the folks at Camas, it made an awe-inspiring event just another part of a magical day.

Here are some photos – if you look hard, you can see three sunspots on the sun at around 2 o’clock.