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As we hit the road, 7 day weather forecasts for the eclipse were looking dicey. The "raining all day Monday" forecast quickly turned to "partially cloudy all day," with a line of clouds along the eclipse path from the Rio Grande to the Ohio valley. We were committed, though, and set off to our campsite in Arkansas. "Pray to your favorite weather and sky gods," I said in my email to campers.
Weather in the Ouachita Mountains turned out to be fantastic. The first night was a bit chilly, but the rest of the week featured sunny days and a few high wispy clouds. It's refreshing to camp in a state that's damp enough to have a campfire without hypervigilance that you might burn down the whole forest. And as someone who's used to spending vacations on festivals or distant adventure travel, having a vacation with just a couple dozen people and no schedule of events was a nice change of pace. The night before the eclipse the forecast was still calling for "partly cloudy," with with wispy clouds that might still show the great gig in the sky. As the Earth turned to Monday we were greeted with completely clear skies, the sun perfectly visible through a clearing at our campsite. Jupiter also made an appearance, though we couldn't see the passing comet.
Many times during the two-year planning period for this adventure I was rather amused that I was driving a thousand miles on a two week adventure for a four minute experience. Totality was indeed pretty neat: "evening" came on quickly, then a dark sky with wispy solar promenances visible to the naked eye. Our position at the base of the trees didn't offer much of a views to the horizon, though I could see sunset hues in each direction. I would've loved to bask in the experience for an hour; between taking photos (a few of which turned out alright) and looking around to see what all was different I didn't get a chance to really tune into the eclipse vibes, man. Now that I've got a solar camera filter and I know solar binoculars are a thing I should spend more time just gazing at the sun.
In the days before the main event I hoisted two wire antennæ into the trees and managed to get the fake internet points award for making contacts on 10 amateur radio bands. I didn't actually make a lot of contacts, since I seemed to only call CQ on bands with poor propagation or nobody was listening. I did make a lot of park-to-park contacts—I wasn't the only one with the idea to have a radio campout for the eclipse—and made some very low-key contributions to science by participating in the Eclipse QSO Party before and after totality.
En route, I played ham radio on the Santa Fe Trail in Dodge City and the Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge. The former had a really high noise floor for some reason, maybe machinery at the agricultural processing plants. The latter was a lot of fun: we started by digging for selenite crystals that form a short dig below the crust of the salt basin. The radio waves liked the site as well; I had a steady pileup for most of an hour. Sea water helps HF propagation, and a field of salt with water a foot below the surface seems to have the same effect.
We spent a day in Tulsa visiting the Greenwood Rising center and the Woody Guthrie museum. Greenwood Rising opened 100 years after the Tulsa race massacre when a white mob burned down "Black Wall Street," the black neighborhood of Greenwood, one of the largest concentrations of black wealth in America. This is an incident that wasn't talked about as part of Americas history until recently. Despite attending a racially-conscious elementary school and using Howard Zinn's book as my first high school history text, I was unaware of the Tulsa race massacre until 2019. Greenwood Rising isn't just about the massacre, but does a good job creating a sense of the place before it was destroyed and what it meant to have a thriving black neighborhood on the other side of the tracks. Modern museums are big on interactivity, and Greenwood Rising does a good job of creating an immersive experience to enhance the educational goals. The Guthrie Center was also a good visit. I hadn't known that Woody was a prolific sketch artist, many with the same incisive yet accessible social commentary as his songs. I'd also thought the Dust Bowl was an extended dry period with poor farm soil care practices leading to the fertile land slowly blowing away. I hadn't realized that there was a specific day, Black Sunday, that blocked the sun and buried entire towns.
The big rain event that had all the eclipse chasers worried all week managed to hold off in Arkansas until about 10pm; enough time to pack up most of our camp and switch from the canvas tent to a dome tent, easier to wrangle when wet. And despite a wet night, the weather gods smiled on us again, pausing the rain in the morning so we could pack the final bits. We got to enjoy some lovely scenic pullouts along the Talimena National Scenic Byway. At the top I activated Queen Wilhelmina State Park at the top of the mountain while the clouds closed in to form a wonderfully liminal cloak. Despite the high elevation all my strong signal reports were coming from Georgia, a mysterious pipeline through the ionosphere.
On the way home we spent another couple days in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, capital of the Cherokee Nation. Subdivision of Cherokee land under the Curtis Act, along with many other factors, makes the Oklahoma nations feel a lot different than the Indian reservations folks in the U.S. west are used to. Tahlequah feels like an ordinary town where several parcels are owned by natives and the tribe. There are several good Cherokee museums and a casino, but everything else feels like a typical mid-sized American town in the southeast from fast food and barbecue restaurants to big ranch houses out towards the lakes. Funky res cars, res dogs hanging out in the shade, and the smell of frybread that you might imagine on a reservation in the southwest or on the plains doesn't show up in Tahlequah or elsewhere we saw among the five "civilized" nations.
North American eclipse hunters will have to head overseas for the next two decades, so I'm glad I made a trip out of it. The 2045 eclipse will pass right over the same campsite but I think I'll stay closer to home for that one since it passes across Colorado as well. I wonder how early Valley View will take reservations…
Weather in the Ouachita Mountains turned out to be fantastic. The first night was a bit chilly, but the rest of the week featured sunny days and a few high wispy clouds. It's refreshing to camp in a state that's damp enough to have a campfire without hypervigilance that you might burn down the whole forest. And as someone who's used to spending vacations on festivals or distant adventure travel, having a vacation with just a couple dozen people and no schedule of events was a nice change of pace. The night before the eclipse the forecast was still calling for "partly cloudy," with with wispy clouds that might still show the great gig in the sky. As the Earth turned to Monday we were greeted with completely clear skies, the sun perfectly visible through a clearing at our campsite. Jupiter also made an appearance, though we couldn't see the passing comet.
Many times during the two-year planning period for this adventure I was rather amused that I was driving a thousand miles on a two week adventure for a four minute experience. Totality was indeed pretty neat: "evening" came on quickly, then a dark sky with wispy solar promenances visible to the naked eye. Our position at the base of the trees didn't offer much of a views to the horizon, though I could see sunset hues in each direction. I would've loved to bask in the experience for an hour; between taking photos (a few of which turned out alright) and looking around to see what all was different I didn't get a chance to really tune into the eclipse vibes, man. Now that I've got a solar camera filter and I know solar binoculars are a thing I should spend more time just gazing at the sun.
In the days before the main event I hoisted two wire antennæ into the trees and managed to get the fake internet points award for making contacts on 10 amateur radio bands. I didn't actually make a lot of contacts, since I seemed to only call CQ on bands with poor propagation or nobody was listening. I did make a lot of park-to-park contacts—I wasn't the only one with the idea to have a radio campout for the eclipse—and made some very low-key contributions to science by participating in the Eclipse QSO Party before and after totality.
En route, I played ham radio on the Santa Fe Trail in Dodge City and the Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge. The former had a really high noise floor for some reason, maybe machinery at the agricultural processing plants. The latter was a lot of fun: we started by digging for selenite crystals that form a short dig below the crust of the salt basin. The radio waves liked the site as well; I had a steady pileup for most of an hour. Sea water helps HF propagation, and a field of salt with water a foot below the surface seems to have the same effect.
We spent a day in Tulsa visiting the Greenwood Rising center and the Woody Guthrie museum. Greenwood Rising opened 100 years after the Tulsa race massacre when a white mob burned down "Black Wall Street," the black neighborhood of Greenwood, one of the largest concentrations of black wealth in America. This is an incident that wasn't talked about as part of Americas history until recently. Despite attending a racially-conscious elementary school and using Howard Zinn's book as my first high school history text, I was unaware of the Tulsa race massacre until 2019. Greenwood Rising isn't just about the massacre, but does a good job creating a sense of the place before it was destroyed and what it meant to have a thriving black neighborhood on the other side of the tracks. Modern museums are big on interactivity, and Greenwood Rising does a good job of creating an immersive experience to enhance the educational goals. The Guthrie Center was also a good visit. I hadn't known that Woody was a prolific sketch artist, many with the same incisive yet accessible social commentary as his songs. I'd also thought the Dust Bowl was an extended dry period with poor farm soil care practices leading to the fertile land slowly blowing away. I hadn't realized that there was a specific day, Black Sunday, that blocked the sun and buried entire towns.
The big rain event that had all the eclipse chasers worried all week managed to hold off in Arkansas until about 10pm; enough time to pack up most of our camp and switch from the canvas tent to a dome tent, easier to wrangle when wet. And despite a wet night, the weather gods smiled on us again, pausing the rain in the morning so we could pack the final bits. We got to enjoy some lovely scenic pullouts along the Talimena National Scenic Byway. At the top I activated Queen Wilhelmina State Park at the top of the mountain while the clouds closed in to form a wonderfully liminal cloak. Despite the high elevation all my strong signal reports were coming from Georgia, a mysterious pipeline through the ionosphere.
On the way home we spent another couple days in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, capital of the Cherokee Nation. Subdivision of Cherokee land under the Curtis Act, along with many other factors, makes the Oklahoma nations feel a lot different than the Indian reservations folks in the U.S. west are used to. Tahlequah feels like an ordinary town where several parcels are owned by natives and the tribe. There are several good Cherokee museums and a casino, but everything else feels like a typical mid-sized American town in the southeast from fast food and barbecue restaurants to big ranch houses out towards the lakes. Funky res cars, res dogs hanging out in the shade, and the smell of frybread that you might imagine on a reservation in the southwest or on the plains doesn't show up in Tahlequah or elsewhere we saw among the five "civilized" nations.
North American eclipse hunters will have to head overseas for the next two decades, so I'm glad I made a trip out of it. The 2045 eclipse will pass right over the same campsite but I think I'll stay closer to home for that one since it passes across Colorado as well. I wonder how early Valley View will take reservations…
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