It's not every day you see a solar eclipse. It's even more rare to experience its "totality" where the moon completely covers the sun, darkness falls during the day, and a chill feels the air.
This past August 21st, I was lucky enough to be in the path of totality for this year's total solar eclipse -- the first to cross the entire United States in almost 100 years -- strictly by a chance conversation. Last January, I was hanging out with my dear friend Jen and planning my next visit to her home in Portland. She had already planned a trip to a vintage trailer park to go "glamping" with friends the weekend of August 19-22nd, and invited me along, as their rented vintage trailer had a convertible sofa. So I said yes... and found myself in the middle of Oregon wine country with a great view of one of nature's coolest shows on August 21st between 9:30-11:30 am PT.
But before we talk solar shows, let's talk about the vintage trailer park. It's called The Vintages and it is awesome!
Situated across the road and around the corner from the Stoller Family Estate vineyards (which was also lovely and makes a great pinot noir and rose'), the Vintages rents out a bunch of vintage trailers and airstreams, each complete with a grill and vintage bikes for riding around the park and to a small town down the road.
(They also have TV's complete with Roku, so I was able to watch the 2nd to last episode of Game of Thrones this past season as soon as it hit the HBO Go app, while the other "glampers" we busy making s'mores ;)
The other excellent thing about The Vintages was that it has a big empty field right next to it, which was PERFECT for eclipse viewing! We all pulled our lawn chairs over to the field along with our breakfast and eclipse glasses, and watched the eclipse from basically the comfort of our front yard.
Here was my Samsung Galaxy S6 camera phone photo of "totality"... it was amazing watching it slowly get darker and darker in the middle of the morning. The lights in the trees of the trailer park came on as dusk fell a few minutes before totality, like they had the evening before. And it definitely got chilly. It was very cool to experience!
And one of the other "glampers'" friends is a professional photographer, Jason Tang, who drove up to join us and had a massive telescopic camera. He took this amazing time-lapse photo of the eclipse, from six feet in front of me :)
After the eclipse, we turned our lawn chairs around and watched a line of cars back up on the road back to Portland and laughed because we had nowhere to be. Then we hung out and swam, read and ate snacks all day.
The next day we took a detour back to Portland by way of the Oregon Garden, which was gorgeous in late summer. Here are just some of the photos from the various gardens they have cultivated there... it's definitely worth a visit if you like flowers and are in the neighborhood.
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