Totality

Today was the day of the "Great American Eclipse"  We got up early, had breakfast and then headed up to Athens Tenn to see the Eclipse.  Our hotel was about 40 min from the park we planned to go to.  Turned out, they were having an event for the Eclipse and there were tons of people there, but we still got a decent parking spot and a great spot to set up our canopy and chairs.  We spent the next few hours hanging out and playing games.  I made a homemade solar filter for my camera and with dad and Jon's help, got it set up to try and take pictures of the eclipse.  Once the eclipse started, we got some pictures and looked at the sun though our glasses.  James was fascinated by the whole thing and kept going on and on about the "Moon eating the sun".  Finally it was time for the big moment, totality.  Right before the moon fully covered the sun, the whole park started cheering then WOOSH the shadow raced in and the sun went out.  The atmosphere was amazing.360* sunset, streetlights on, bugs chirping and the black hole of the sun with the shining corona around it.  The whole family was Awestruck.  I managed to get a few pictures of the totality, then after way to short a time, the moon moved on and the sun was back.  It was AWESOME.  After totality, many people started to leave, and we figured traffic would be really bad so we hung out another hour or two before packing up.  We decided to use a little more time and visit the Mayfield Dairy for some ice cream to give the roads some more time to clear.  We ended up hitting a bit of traffic, it took us an hour longer to get back to Chattanooga than it should have, but the trip wasn't bad.  We finally got back to Hsv around 9ish and we stopped at the Krispie Kreme to get some eclipse doughnuts.  It was a  great end to a marvelous day.