Solar Total Eclipse
August, 2017
Madras, Oregon, USA
The trip down to Madras from West Vancouver was an easy drive. We stayed overnight in the parking lot of the Mt. Hood ski area, and then made the morning drive into Madras. Because we left a day earlier than originally planned, we had little traffic on the way.
Madras is a sleepy little town of 6,500 people, but for this event the population grew to several hundred thousand at least. The fairgrounds were set up to receive campers, as were a number of farmer's fields. One of the bigger ones was said to have made between one and two million dollars by charging vast sums to those willing to pay.
The whole affair was well planned, and the town had shuttle buses all set up to ferry the visitors from the various camps to town and back. However, we planned on a different strategy and decided to quite literally head for he hills. Despite what the forest service ranger told us in town, that all land was either private property or fully booked up months in advance, a guard at the local minimum and medium security prison that we came across as we drove out of town pointed us to the road that led to BLM land. Our equivalent of crown land. There we could camp for free, and without any permits. We just couldn't use any fire. A no-brainier considering all the smoke billowing from the hills.
Below is the photo journal of the epic 2017 solar eclipse. Enjoy.
The path of totality drew us to Madras, Oregon. A better choice than the coast because there's no marine cloud risk. Besides, NASA rented the high school in Madras for the event, so if it's good enough for them...
This shows the length of time for the eclipse totality. It varies based on location, and Madras would get 2 minutes and 4 seconds.
A good sign, if you pardon the pun, that things are well organized. This seen in a field some distance from town.
More signs of good planning.
We stopped first at the info center/chamber of commerce/forest service office in the centre of town. Here we picked up a bunch of decals, maps, brochures and magazines about the town, the surrounding area and of course, the eclipse.
American towns always have such nice signage.
Main street Madras. Still early enough to be uncrowded.
One of the largest "private" solar campgrounds in the area. We passed this on our way into town on Highway 26. Even though it was early Friday morning, the camp was filling up fast. No drive ins, all spots were by reservation only. And you didn't get much room for your money.
So as we said, we found our way to the BLM land. This is the start of the offroad journey. The dirt road was literally across the street from the prison driveway, and the guard we met was the poor guy who was manning the post at the entrance to the half mile long driveway. He was a nice young guy, as were the other two guards stationed across the road in a pickup truck. They came racing over to ask us all about the truck. Turns out that the truck is a really good ice breaker.
Now what kind of a moron plants trees right alongside the road. Technically we are not supposed to drive off the existing track. It's frowned upon by the conservationists. What to do... drive off the track and hurt the ground, or stay on it and break branches and scratch the truck. Hmmm...
The dreaded fork in the road. Fortunately before we left on the trip I downloaded high resolution GPS maps of the area so we could figure out which track to take.
We were trying to get to the top of the hill that the prison guards pointed to. But the hill was fenced all around its base. We went up many side routes trying to find a way to the top, but all led to dead ends with very tight spaces to turn around.
We would have scratched the Defender's sides, so taking the Volvo through the same trail was beyond tight. Thank goodness we now had a working front drive axle. We made use of it a number of times.
Six wheel drive up the steep and sandy hill.👍
Bushes 100, paint job 0. 😥 Lots of desert pin striping.
The truck paint showed lots of scratches too, but they were mostly marks in the dust, or material that rubbed off of the branches. The Imron paint that's on the truck is really tough, being an industrial paint as opposed to an automotive paint. The brown powder coating, however, is a different subject. We'll see what they look like after a wash. Maybe we'll clear coat the brown with Imron as well.
This is our GPS track around the Madras area. The loop over to our solar camp was in a counter clockwise direction. So yes, we took the long way round. 😤
The hill we set up on was made up mostly of this volcanic rock. The rocks were filled with air bubbles. With Mt. Hood and Mt. Jefferson in sight of our camp, I can't imagine where the volcanic rock came from.
So after three hours driving around the outback, we settled on this perch for our stay. It had a 360° panoramic view of the area. And no obstructions to block our view of the sun. Despite the wildfires burning north of us on the Indian land, the air here was still quite clear. Unfortunately, it would not last.
Our first sunset, with clean air.
The next day the smoke started blowing in.
As did the blowing dust.
Still spectacular, but for different reasons, the next night's sunset was just a tad different. We were starting to worry that the smoke might get too thick for us to see the eclipse.
A shot of a farmer's field below us. A fellow hiked up to our truck from the camp. He was also from BC, and rented a spot in the camp.
Because of the size of his family, he opted to rent the full meal deal, which meant the tent, mattresses and all meals were supplied. He said it was really good, with music and other entertainment, and a big play area with all the playground stuff for kids. We didn't ask him how much it cost.
A close up shot of one end of the camp.
This was our camp. On the entire hill top there ended up being only fifteen cars. Most of which we couldn't see because of the topography. We had the best spot as it was level, and there was no way for anyone to block our view, or even get close to us. What's the name for that... oh ya, Heaven.
The morning of the eclipse we got up early so I could position the cameras and video camera. The two cameras on the tripods with the shirts over them to keep them cool, both had long lenses. One was 540mm, and had the makeshift solar filter on it for non totality images, and the other had our big 600mm f2.8 lens with no filters for when totality was happening. The other camera on the tripod to the right was actually a video camera pointed in the opposite direction from where the eclipse shadow was to come racing toward us across the valley. At 2400 miles per hour, we didn't know if we would capture it. Ten minutes before totality we started recording and just let it run. Haven't had a chance to view the footage yet.
One thing about photographing and eclipse. If you stay at it from when the moon just starts to cover the sun, until it completely uncovers the sun, you are staring straight up at the sun for several hours. Can we all spell sunburn??
Wendy took a more leisurely approach to watching.
So, was it worth it??
ABSAFRIGGINLUTELY!!
As impressive as the totality is, if you look carefully in the bottom left of the shot, you will see a tiny white dot. That, my friends, is another star that was visible during totality. Pretty cool, eh?
Different exposures of the same shot produced different results. So I bracketed all my shots with seven exposures. The darker exposure hid the corona so the solar flares could be seen.
Just as the moon moves off totality, the coveted diamond ring appears. Ours even has ruby accents.
The final compilation from all of my shots.