The Total Solar Eclipse was quite the adventure for Maggie and I: nearly twelve hours and 900-odd miles of driving in one day, with the middle half of the trip hope spent under a thunderstorm that was pacing the same route we were driving. It was worth every mile, and we escaped missing the eclipse beneath thick clouds.

We started our day in Austin, Texas, with plans to head to the Hill Country of the state to watch the total solar eclipse pass overheard. Fredricksburg was our target zone, and I had settled on Luckenbach, the music haven, to set up cameras. 

The weather forecast ensured that was not to be. Austin and the Fredeicksburg area were slated to have near complete cloud coverage by forecasters, as a front was setting up to bring rain to the area. Satellite maps showed that the weather folks knew what they were talking about, so we used the GOES satellite map to find where the front would have have reached by the time the moon slipped in front of the sun. 

Broken Arrow, OK, looked good so we headed there. Then we drove into Idabel, saw the sun shining, and decided we were “there.” We set up next to an astrophotographer in a vacant lot and started tracking the sun across the sky. Clouds came and went, the normal spring cumulus clouds, and when totality happened, we got very lucky and saw the whole thing clearly.