Monday, August 21st a Solar Eclipse swept across the United States and since I live in Seattle, I was able to drive down to Oregon to view the totality (an event where the moon totally eclipses the sun and a cool effect called the corona is visible to the naked eye!
Here's the vlog I produced from the adventure if you want to watch it unfold:
The plan was to drive on Sunday from Seattle to Painted Hill, Oregon for the totality viewing on Monday morning. Why Painted Hills? It's dead center on the line of totality and has about 2 minutes of totality viewing. The line for the totality literally passes over the painted hills lookout.
The drive between Seattle and Painted Hills takes about 6 hours usually and on Sunday the traffic wasn't horrible so we were able to make that timing and arrived at Painted Hills around 5 pm. The rangers had closed off the usual route into the Painted Hills Lookout and had set up a parking lot that was closed from 9 pm until 6 am (sunset to sunrise). We had come prepared to sleep in the back of my Subaru Crosstrek and luckily the rangers mentioned that we could camp out across the street in what is called BLM land (Bureau of Land Management) so we decided to do that and parked our car about a 10 minute walk away from the parking lot which is about a 15 minute walk from the Painted Hills Lookout. Not too bad!
We went to the Painted Hills Lookout for sunset after a quick sandwich meal and enjoyed the sunset before calling it a night and making our way back to the car. I took some astrophotography shots that night because the stars were so clear but went to sleep pretty early.
The next morning we woke up at 5 am to a line of cars on the road but luckily we were able to jump out of our car and just walk over to the lookout! So we took our time and got a sweet spot on the lookout over the painted hill and I set up my camera gear to prepare for the eclipse.
- Sony A7RII
- Gitzo Tripod
- Sony 2x Teleconverter
- Sony FE 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 GM OSS Lens
- Zeiss Batis 18mm f/2.8 Lens for Sony E Mount
- GoPro
That's how I was able to capture some of these images and the video for the Youtube Vlog
The totality was amazing to see in person and it's hard to describe because it's just such a unique and crazy sight. After we watched the whole solar eclipse finish, we went to check out the nearby Painted Cove before jumping in our car and heading back home. The route back ended up taking close to 9 hours instead of the normal 6, but that wasn't bad considering the number of people traveling back that same day.
What a sight to behold.. definitely one of my favorite moments of 2017 and possibly my life.