We camped overnight in the bighorn mountains and yesterday morning started driving down to Casper. With the freeway really busy we were reading reports of traffic backups outside Casper, so once we got down near totality, we took off from the freeway, and got on a dirt road that wound its way down through ranchlands. Eventually we found a ridge with a vast, desolate view to the east and west.
My favorite moment was looking out over the landscape and seeing it change at the moment that totality hit. Everything changes so fast, it's so unlike anything we're used to in nature. After an hour of watching through the welding lenses, and a couple minutes of seeing the world around you grow dim as though you're wearing ever darker sunglasses, those two minutes of the actual eclipse are so sudden and intense, and I can't imagine anyone feeling that it's long enough to see everything there is to see. You want to study the corona, you want to count stars and planets, you want to appreciate the sunset in all directions, you want to see the light in the landscape around you. My heart was pounding in my chest the whole time.
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