TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE near Austin, TX
We were fortunate enough to experience a once in a lifetime event on April 9th, 2024 at approximately 1:00pm CST. We saw TOTALITY! The Sun was completely covered by the moon, thereby turning daylight into night.
Totality!! Photo credit: Don
I booked our AirBnB, flights, and car rental almost 9 months in advance to ensure we had the greatest chance to see this event. (The next total solar eclipse to cross the U.S. will be in 20 years)! Although we had a few hiccups along the way, we were able to see what we came for…TOTALITY!
We arranged for Makenna, Ella’s morning sitter, and her husband Ayden, to watch the kids from Saturday morning to Tuesday evening. They had a great four days together and we are so grateful that everything went well at home.
Our flight took us to Austin, TX, which I had so many wonderful things about. Austin did not disappoint. We were able to spend Sunday exploring Texas’s capitol, where we found breweries, authentic Texas BBQ, and live music. It was a great day (without kids)!
I reserved our rental car from Easirent. They were supposed to pick us up in a shuttle when we landed and bring us to the rental agency. Unfortunately, about 20 of us were never picked up and eventually told that they gave our rentals away. You can imagine the anxiety I had then trying to reserve a car last minute, when it felt like the entire country was flying into Austin or Dallas for this solar show. Fortunately, AVIS came through and we were able to drive to our less than stellar AirBnB in Killeen, TX where we met Don and Chris who had come into Dallas from Apple Valley, CA. We chose to stay here because it was directly on the centerline of totality. While we had never experienced anything like this before, Don and Chris both saw totality in WY in 2017.
As we anxiously checked weather apps for cloud cover, we decided to drive west towards Goldthwaite, TX as this small town had a lower percentage of cloud coverage expected for that day. We got up bright and early to make the trek and settled near a city park with a couple hundred other eclipse chasers. By 9:00am cameras with filters were set, crowds were gathering and we simply had to wait for the show.
And what a show it was! All of the emotions leading up to this point (leaving the kids, endlessly scanning weather apps, not knowing if we’d get to see what we had come for) were incredibly overwhelming as soon as we were able to take off our eclipse glasses and just stare at the Sun.
I later learned from Don that the high level of prominences (solar flares) that we were able to see was because the Sun was in solar maximum. Basically, the Sun was tightly wound; and like rubber bands unleashing themselves after being tightly wound, the flares were plenty; so much that we could see them with the naked eye!
I’m not sure if we will ever see something like this again; it’s hard to put into words the experience as the pictures posted here don’t capture it all. I can’t speak for others, but for me, I felt incredibly small and insignificant, yet wonderfully alive.