When a once in a lifetime event happens, and it’s going to take place in your hometown, you go right? There was some talk about how to do it, especially since it was during the school week, and there were no hotels, airbnbs, etc available and sleeping all 5 of us at my parents house isn’t the easiest.
Tom’s low on vacation days, and and eclipse might be a lot for the younger ones, so it was decided I would take the first grader to VT. Even better, we decided to car pool with my bff and her first grader. We figured it was educational enough to pull them from school and make an event out of it.
We really had no idea what to expect, but we bought the glasses and downloaded a schedule and went with it. Going up also gave E bonus time with the grandparents and bonus best friend time for me. There was still snow in VT, and considering we had maybe 2 days of snow all winter, it was fun to be able to play in that too. Especially since it was warm enough to be outside in a T-shirt. We hit up the playground and killed time until the eclipse started.
Little did we know, we ended up in one of the best places to watch the eclipse in the entire country. The rest of the path got some last minute clouds, so there were people changing plans and flying to Vermont to watch it with us. Including a neighbor’s brother, who works for NASA and was recording the eclipse with some very fancy equipment. Our little town hadn’t been this popular since Phish threw a concert in Coventry.
And although I had no idea what to expect, and wasn’t thinking it was going to be THAT cool - it really was! I found myself getting really excited as it progressed, and the totality was amazing. It got really dark, although not pitch black - it looked like sunset on Jay Peak. The thing I wasn’t expecting was how cold it got with no sun.
It was definitely worth seeing once in a lifetime, and I think E really enjoyed it too, even if they did call it the “olympics” instead of the eclipse all week.
