Total Eclipse in East Tennessee!

The recent big, big happening here in East Tennessee was the total eclipse of the sun…the first one stretching completely across the continental United States since 1918…99 years ago!

The path of totality passed directly over the nearby town of Sweetwater Tennessee.  That small town in Monroe County really geared up for it…with lots of publicity and planning.  Sweetwater expected up to 50,000 visitors for the event.

This photo was taken in the morning of the day preceding the date of the eclipse itself.  Our curious friends Norm and Linda picked us up and drove us to Sweetwater to see just what was happening in town the day before the big event…

A lot was happening early in the morning… Not many visitors were in evidence but vendors and concessionaires were setting up for business up and down the parking area across from the businesses in downtown Sweetwater.  

This town of about 6,000 residents has become quite adept at planning for and promoting itself as an area destination for specialty shopping and big events.  The annual July 4^th celebration, the Veteran’s Day parade, a Christmas parade with ‘A Small Town Christmas’ and a big Muscadine Wine Festival all draw big crowds.

A local artist created this big sign/mural commemorating the eclipse.  We took this photo of our friends Linda and Norm…

…and of course, they had to take a photo of Laurie and yours truly.

Among the early visitors in Sweetwater a day before the actual event was this group of kids who happily posed in front of the event poster… I’m sure that they thought that this was a lot better than being in school.  Of course on the day after this, when the eclipse actually took place, most or all schools in the area were closed due to expected traffic and safety issues.

This map was posted on the side of the town’s bandstand… Even though it was about a day and a half before the actual event, lots of pins had been placed.  I think someone was fooling around placing all those pins in North Dakota!  Five other visitors in the grouping at the upper right list their place of origin as “Space”.  We kept looking for little green folks running around…to no avail!

Just to demonstrate that of all the effort by city leaders and concessionaires in Sweetwater didn’t go to waste, this is a screen capture of the downtown area that Laurie took from our local TV news coverage in the early afternoon before the eclipse started.  It looks like a success to us!

So on the big day a group of neighbors as well as visitors from Georgia assembled at Norm and Linda’s home on their deck.  There were adult beverages and lots of snacks on hand. 

Everyone had their approved eclipse glasses or a homemade viewer constructed with foil and a cereal box.  The young man looking into the cereal box and his mom to the left had come up from Georgia to witness the event.  This 14 year old was really ‘into’ the entire experience!

The following 3 photos is a sequence showing the effect of the eclipse from the deck at Norm and Linda’s home…

Full daylight with blue skies…

The event is underway… Note that the streetlight has come on!

Same view during the full eclipse… The birds stopped singing and the cicadas were going strong!

One more eclipse sequence…

Laurie and I really love this last photo in this sequence…

Of course, we had to include a photo of the eclipse of the sun to complete the experience.  This was the best of our several attempts to capture the couple of minutes of totality…

Because we stayed in our neighborhood to view the eclipse, we didn’t encounter the aftermath of the big event!  This photo shows the traffic heading north toward Knoxville along TN Hwy. 444 in Loudon County.  At one point traffic was backed up/stopped for the entire 11.1 mile length of this road.  US Hwy. 11 which runs roughly parallel to this road was backed up even further…

That’s it for the total eclipse of the sun here in East Tennessee.  Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave