I took a trip over to the Tri-cities on Sunday with the wife and family (still weird to say) and a friend as we headed down the center of the state to watch the eclipse in a town called Fossil. I found it a perfect place to go. The high school there uses the aptly "correct" name of "Falcons" as their school team name. Very small town and we had a pancake breakfast in their gym and looked at all the graduating classes of, like, 6 students per year on average! That's small! It's a charter school and they said this eclipse event raised more on the pancake breakfast than 3 years of regular donations! Glad we could help.

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The eclipse was ... totality awesome! I've seen a few partials and as many lunar eclipses - but a total eclipse is an unreal event to behold. I used those funny glasses and managed a few very cool pictures and a much longer video.

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We stayed at friends in Kennewick to be able to leave there at about 4 in the morning Monday to make it into middle Oregon with time to spare if there was a huge traffic snarl. I guess the huge jam was on I-5 as, though there was a lot of traffic, we never got held up in either direction... until we reached Snoqualmie pass. We saw signs saying they were closing the pass at 7PM for blasting and we rushed for about 30 minutes to get there before that happened. Didn't make it by 4 cars! So, we opened the tailgate and played cards on the interstate.

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Somewhere in the middle of the country 2024 or bust!