Our 6,000-Mile Road Trip to See a Second Eclipse

 

Getting ready for four minutes of totality

Chances are, if you experienced one total eclipse, you wanted to see another one.  That’s what happened to us following the August 2017 total eclipse in Oregon. So last year at this time, Kathy spotted an opportunity to attend a 160-trailer Airstream rally in Greenville, OH to see the April 8 2024 total eclipse and immediately signed us up.

 

We could have attended other rallies, and the weather getting there in late March can be dicey (it was), and the odds of a clear day in Greenville weren’t that good either. But the campground at the fairgrounds had full hookups, it was close to the Airstream factory and three major museums: Armstrong Aerospace, the Wright Brothers, and the HUGE US Airforce which featured three Air Force Ones.  Photos of those places are in the photo link below.

Marcelene, MO, the hometown of Walt
and Roy Disney.

 In case weather blocked our view of the eclipse, we made up our minds that this trip was all about the journey with the eclipse as a bonus.  We traveled on backroads about 60% of the time, going through Midwest towns in decline, recovery, or doing just fine, thank you.  It seemed like every one of them had a museum.  (Fun fact:  there are more museums in the US than there are McDonalds and Starbucks combined!).  This was our fifth cross-country road trip since 2016, and it was nice to explore places we haven’t been before.

 

Willa Cather's hometown. After the museum
we downloaded 'O Pioneers, which perfectly
described the countryside we were driving through

Ten days later we arrived.  The sky cleared and we got a magnificent four minutes of totality to the tune of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon playing on someone's boom box. Unlike the Central Oregon one, we didn’t have hills and coniferous trees blocking the 360° view of twilight that seemed to last forever. Definitely worth the trip!

 

The amazing 360° dusk

This time sequence and the two dusk photos above are courtesy
of fellow Airstreamer Walter Lundahl from northern Ohio

Our trip home was longer, but not long enough.  We would have loved to have driven all the way from Nashville to Natchez, MS on the 404-mile Natchez Trace Scenic Parkway (see photo link) and spend more time in Utah.  But we had commitments back home.

Capitol Reef NP.  Europe has nothing like this!

 Besides the Natchez Parkway, our most surprises of the trip were in Arkansas.  First, it was beautiful. Second, the Walmart-funded Crystal Bridges art museum in Bentonville was probably the best art museum we have ever experienced in the US.  The third surprise –the Clinton Presidential Library--was more of a disappointment.  Unlike others we have visited, it was too policy wonky, and not enough about his childhood and how he became president. By that standard, even Andrew Jackson's hermitage outside of Nashville was more interesting.

One other surprise was how full the National Parks in Utah were. Most campgrounds had been booked months earlier, many by foreign tourists renting RVs.  We can’t blame them—Europe has nothing like the desert SW.

 Like all trips, it’s good to go, and very nice to be back home.  We’re enjoying our three-butt kitchen, queen bed, robust internet, and a beautiful spring.

 Here is a link to some photos.  But unlike in the past, this one is a brief slide show I recently made to the Mid Valley Travel Club with many of the photos labeled. Enjoy!

"What We Can, While We Can."

"What We Could While We Could."

Last evening of spring from our deck

 

First road bike ride of summer to the hills of Polk
County from the old Willamette River RR bridge in Salem