monday - photos
We got to Franklin, NC pretty early - had no trouble with traffic. We got a nice parking space and went searching for a place where we could be away from the crowds. We found this little abandoned spot first - it was only a few hundred feet from where we parked the car. I took a picture of it cause it just looked so cozy. But then we thought we should keep looking - we had many hours till the eclipse.
This looked good - about 5 blocks away - public and semi-secluded at the same time. Plus I have always liked cemeteries.
There were even benches to sit on if we wanted, though we did bring lawn chairs. Rossy is searching for a 4 leafed clover. Dave told him he'd give him a dollar if he found one. He didn't.
Sebby.
A stone I liked.
A very aged grave stone.
Saw this little painted stone on the picnic table (blue ridge mountain?). Made me want to paint some rocks of my own some day and leave them laying around our town.
Franklin NC
After we figured out that our eclipse headquarters would be at the cemetery we went back to our car to get our chairs and other stuff. Spent some time in a outdoor cafe getting lunch then walked through downtown to see what was going on. They had live music and craft show things set up. Big crowds.
News van.
They had closed off part of main street for the day.
Some people like to be in crowds. It reminded me of people setting up seats for a parade.
Fun.
Dave wanted me to make sure I got a photo of the "Franklin" truck - since our home town is Franklin also. We headed back to our spot at the cemetery just in time for the start of the eclipse.
Flat out.
Partly in shade.
Rossy using the pinhole viewer box I made.
Crescents on our blanket.
This guy kept flying over.
Sebby, and Dave in the background talking to our "neighbor". He had come all the way from California to see the eclipse. He had a friend he was staying with. She seemed to have no interest in the eclipse and read a book the whole time.
We moved to a place beside the cemetery that had a good view of this field. We hoped to keep an eye on the horses to see if they did anything odd during the eclipse. I set my camera to manual so I would be able to keep track of everything getting darker. Otherwise if I had left it on auto the camera would have made adjustments to lighten the exposures as it got darker. This is the first picture I took while the sun was only about 1/2 covered.
Getting darker.
It is noticeably darker now and things look strange.
If feels like there is something wrong with your eyes. If the sun is shining and making shadows it shouldn't look this dark.
At this point clouds moved over the sun and we didn't get the effect of sharp shadows anymore. These photos looks darker than it was in reality (to us). In reality it looked like a dark dusk during the total eclipse - not "black as midnight" like I had heard it might be like. You could see some stars. We could have seen more stars if there hadn't been clouds covering half the sky.
Nearly there - looking through clouds.
I took the camera off the manual settings and went to auto during the total eclipse so I could get a picture of how the horizon had sunset colors to it. There was some sort of insect in the bushes nearby and they got quiet. We wanted to see if the horses would do anything different - when it got very dark they did start to move slowly out of the field - maybe they were going back to the stable. But at the exact moment of eclipse some stupid person set off fireworks and they got scared and ran in circles around the field.
Zoomed in - this shows a bit of the ruby ring on the right side as the sun was coming back out again. We couldn't see it very well cause of the clouds.
Back to the manual settings I had before - still dark but getting lighter now that the sun has peeked back out again.
Rossy looks pensive.
Sebby too.
We walked back through town afterwards. Still keeping an eye on the sun as things got brighter.
We left Franklin and headed up towards the Smoky Mountains. Dave and I remembered that there is a place near Cherokee where you can see elk in the evening. Getting into Franklin that morning was easy, getting out of it with thousands of other people in the afternoon took a lot longer. Traffic was very slow.
In the background is a life size model of an old time settlement. We saw it a couple years ago when we were on vacation with Kathy and Pete at Maggie Valley and explored this region.
The big bull and a smaller one trying to push each other around a bit. It didn't look like they were very serious.
After a while the big bull went towards his girls and they all got up and started to move away from us towards the woods in the background so we got back in the car and went over to the place where they were going to be crossing the creek.
Taking a drink.
Majestic female.
Looked like she was undecided which way to go.
The group moving through supervised by the park rangers. There were people on the far side looking into the model buildings and they had to wait till the elk were gone before they could come back
The big bull was the last one to go across. The one ranger told us that one time he charged her when she got too close to him.
He ran his antlers into a branch that got caught on them. He didn't seem to care and just kept moving with it on there.
In the model farm there is a pig sty with real pigs living there. Time for bed I guess.