So, we spent another full day at Fort Massac after the Eclipse, and it was the day that the rain finally came and the heat and humidity broke. Most of the people in the campground also left that morning, so it was a nice quiet day.
We got in some bike-riding and wandering once things cooled down. It did mean that more bugs came out, but we had local volunteers helping us with that.
Our son found a painted rock that someone had left on the (now vacant) site just north of ours. It was really cute, and was a fun find that made our day just that much brighter.
You rock!Keep or Hide. (We left it there.)Down at Fort Massac’s boat launch in the evening.
Of course, the sun coming out again after the rain was nice as well. We made it down to the river again, and walked down to get some Ohio River mud on our shoes.
Nice dramatic clouds in the sunset too!
But as nice as it was to have the cooler weather, we set off the next day fairly early (and as we’d filled up just outside Paducah, we had a full tank to start with) because we were off to hit Mammoth Caves!
A Kentucky Police Pick-up Truck?
It was a wonderful day for a trip, being sunny with some light clouds, and cool enough that I didn’t have to really worry about the engine’s temperature, even though our trip was mostly uphill! We did see some interesting stuff on our way, though, like the Police Pick-up Truck. In Buffalo (and as much of New York law enforcement that I’ve seen) SUVs and vans are the only real non-sedan light vehicles, so this was an oddity worth a picture.
The TVA Paradise Fossil Power Plant.
The other was the cooling towers of the TVA Paradise Fossil Plant. Some research after the fact shows that this coal-powered plant, located just east of Drakesboro, has the largest megawatt capacity of any power plant in the state. We could see the plumes of steam really clearly from the Western Kentucky Parkway.
We stayed on the Parkway until we got to US231, which we took until we got to KY70, which really got me a bit nervous at first. I didn’t mind the hills or the curves, but rather the fact that there was really no shoulder to these roads. Meeting any kind of large vehicle was a sort of test of nerves of jockeying between the ditch and clipping someone’s mirror. But it was some lovely countryside when there wasn’t any oncoming traffic.
And driving on these smaller roads would end up being great experience for getting to our campsite later that night when it was getting dark.
But finally, we made it to Mammoth Cave National Park. (Which I’ll discuss in Part 9.)
So, the morning of the 21st, we started getting stuff set up. There was to be less than 20% cloud cover, a light breeze, and overall a good day for the Eclipse. The cloud cover was in the form of mostly light cumulus clouds that were sliding from the south-south-west, but had big chunks of blue sky between them.
Our eclipse-viewing set-up.
We had brought a small 90mm refracting telescope that I fabricated a projection screen onto. Using the 90 degree prism diagonal adapter, the image of the sun was easily visible on the small screen. I had tested it in Buffalo on both the sun and the moon, so I was sure it would work well for all the lighting conditions of the eclipse, without a sun filter. Well ahead of time, I took this out to the cleared space just south of our site and set it up.
The projection screen on the telescope, for those of us without the lovely steampunk goggles that allow you to look at the sun …No, that’s not all dust on the lenses, those are sunspots!
I was really happily surprised that the screen worked as well as it did, as we were able to make out sunspots before the eclipse was even near approaching. I was able to leave the image up for a couple of minutes before the sun would track off and I’d have to readjust the telescope so the image would be visible, but that was no problem (except for a couple of times when a big cloud went over).
Here comes the moon …
Slowly, over the course of an hour, accompanied by drinks and popcorn, we watched the sun slowly disappearing as the moon slid in front of it. Mostly we watched on the projection screen, but occasionally we’d sneak short looks with the solar glasses, to see it in as unaided a manner as we could.
(Light) Clouds won’t stop us!
Even when the light clouds passed over, we were still able to see the progress, though the dense clouds were just too much.
Here’s the sun about half-way gone …
Slowly, but steadily, we watched the moon make it’s way across the sun’s face, and were able to look across the campground and watch people enter the park for the viewing they had set up at the visitor center/museum. There were some people congregating at a campsite farther along our loop, but otherwise, we had the campground area to ourselves. (Which is really how we like it.)
And this is what a half-gone sun looks like without a telescope …
One of the things I was really surprised at was how bright it continued to be, even as the moon was covering up the sun. It wasn’t until the very last 5-10% of the sun was getting covered that it made very much of a difference.
A tiny sliver of sun left …
But finally, the moment was upon us. The ‘crescent sun’ kept getting smaller and smaller.
But still plenty of light for reading …
But there was still plenty of light for reading, even if it wasn’t full-strength sun.
But as the last little bits of sun were covered up, it got dramatically darker.
I had also turned the bus’ dashcam on. Here’s the video of the eclipse from the bus’ point of view (sped up to double-speed).
The eclipsed sun as the camera saw it …
We did try to get a picture of the sun being eclipsed, but due to the humidity in the air, it wasn’t as dramatic as we’d hoped – the light was getting refracted back into the darkened area. As such, instead of a nice dark area in sky, like we saw with our eyes, the camera picked up a dully glowing donut of sorts.
The crescent sun is on the other side now!
And then, the sun, slowly came back. We had one diamond show up on the projection screen, but it was gone too fast to get a picture. And then it was like we were back to just standing in the sun, much as we had been waiting for the eclipse.
The sun is almost all the way back …
And slowly the sun came back and it was just like every afternoon we’d had up to that point. But it was an amazing thing to witness, and surprising as to how long it actually took for the eclipse to be noticeable, and how quickly it returned to normal (at least to our unaided eyes).
So, one of the things that we did after touring the Museum and the reconstructed Forts was to engage in one of the pre-eclipse crafts. We made colored moon and sun cut-outs to paste over solar viewing glasses (though we had our own glasses, so we just took the cut-outs).
(Lego) Batman!
Then, that evening, they had an outdoor movie the our son and I went to see; Lego Batman. We biked down with a couple of camp-chairs and a small table, and were some of the first people to stake out seats on the grass.
Not only did we get to see the movie near the riverbank, on an inflatable screen, for free, but they also offered popcorn,Moon Pies, and Sun Drop for refreshments!
It was an awesome end to our day!
Now on to Part 6:
So, the next day, we ventured out to …
Metropolis! (Illinois, that is.)Superman Square and surroundings (from Google Maps)
The city limits of Metropolis, Illinois directly abut with Fort Massac State Park, so it wasn’t hard to get into the urban setting. In fact, this sign is right where East 5th street makes a right angle from where it runs south along the park, and then to the west, right over to Superman Square.
That’s right, Metropolis has been decreed to be the official hometown of Superman. On January 21, 1972, an official release from DC Comics made the proclamation, and that was followed by the Illinois State Legislature passing Resolution 572, which affirmed that Metropolis was the “Hometown of Superman” on June 9 of the same year. Superman Square runs around the County Clerk’s Office, and from there, looking northeast along Market Street, is a 15 foot tall (painted) bronze statue of Superman.
Superman, ready for the upcoming eclipse with his eclipse glasses on!Transport!
But, how to get there? Well, we brought our bikes, and due to the floodplain nature of the area around the Ohio River, the route was overall flat (though the park area is about 20+ feet higher than much of the city along the river), and they have a designated bike route to get from the park over to the square. So it was just about 2 miles from our site to the square, and taking our time we were still there in half an hour.
Who are these pesky knee-biters? Oh, some Kleinmartins …
So after taking pictures with Superman to prove we were there, we spent a couple of hours looking through the Super Museum, which is right across the square from the Superman Statue.
One of the lead knives used on ‘Adventures of Superman’ with George Reeves.
The Super Museum is pretty amazing (and air-conditioned!), starting off with the gift shop/store where you enter. For only $5 per person (kids 5&under free), you can get access to see an amazing collection of memorabilia, comics, documents, video clips and documentaries, toys, video games (bring some quarters), and actual TV and movie props from the Superman world that DC has cultivated over the years.
Krypton Power Crystals!Many, many Superman items …And control panels …The boy and Batman pose with Darksieid.
But even after seeing the Supergirl memorabilia room, and Batman and Darkseid, we finally came to the end. We then spent some time in the store, looking at all the stuff they had (they were out of kryptonite chunks, unfortunately). We ended up with a commemorative magnet (to stick on the steel roof inside the bus), and the last of a commemorative poster that they had in stock. With these we set off to see one more thing before biking back home.
Lois Lane is ready to take down notes for her story.
Metropolis doesn’t only have a (painted) bronze statue of Superman, but a few blocks northeast up Market Street, they also have a statue of Lois Lane.
To get to Lois, we had to ride through the set-up for a pre-eclipse street festival, that looked (and smelled from the cooking of the food vendors setting up) good and fun. But, it was so hot and the sky so cloudless, that we thought we’d be better off heading back to the site, where we had shade trees and the woods.
The boy with the heater core fan’s entire output blowing on his back.
And once we got back, it was still pretty hot in and around the bus. There was hardly a breeze, and even with all the windows and the roof vents open, it was hot. We’d never encountered this level of heat and humidity (and Buffalo has plenty of humidity, but is pretty breezy), so I hadn’t thought to bring a fan. But I had wired the bus’ 12 volt accessories through a switch so that we could run them off the converter when we were plugged in (or batteries when we’re not) so I started up the big heater core fan and the two defrosting fans. It worked pretty well.
The Star Wars Theme sounds pretty good on a dobro …
Later, as the sun was going down more, it cooled off as a little breeze started up. Our son entertained us on his dobro, and I started getting a fire ready for dinner, while my wife made some potato salad and a green salad.
Beans warming up on (the edge of) the fire!
My contribution was to cook some burgers, and heat up some beans (in the can, of course) over the fire. The rotating, adjustable grating worked really well for being able to control the cooking, though
The burgers are about to come off the grill.
we started late and it quickly was pretty dark by the time the burgers were done, so it’s hard to see them well. After a wonderful dinner, it was off to bed. The Eclipse was the next day and we wanted to be ready.
We got in some bike-riding and wandering once things cooled down. It did mean that more bugs came out, but we had local volunteers helping us with that.
