Total Eclipse in Ste. Genevieve

I felt a unique amount of excitement and dread for the eclipse. I was excited to see a once in a.. long time event and I was nervous that I would screw it up. St. Louis maybe just barely missed the path of the totality. Lydia said her school was supposed to get like 97% of the sun covered by the moon and invited me to watch it there. But you know me. They don't call me "110% Milito" for nothing. I followed the path of the longest totality with my slender yet masculine finger and looked for a place worth visiting. Little wine country town Ste. Genevieve, MO was smack on the line so that was an obvious choice. I invited my parents and they were on board.

To Missouri, and beyond!

I had no idea what the traffic would be down there so we left pretty early. It ended up not being a problem at all. The traffic on the way back was pretty nasty but if it didn't interfere with my sky gazing then so be it.

I scrounged up some free eclipse glasses for us in the weeks prior. The library was a particularly good spot for it.

But even they couldn't handle the demand. Lot of fans of the moon and sun in St. Louis.

We stopped for a classy breakfast at the local Huddle House. Some of the customers there were wearing particularly hideous eclipse themed t-shirts.

This did not look like the picture.

The crappy little next door Microtel was magically transformed into an exclusive astronomer's club.

Some of the marketing attempts were pretty great.

Many of the big deal wineries were either closed (fail!) or had expensive events that were already booked up.

The little Sainte Genevieve Winery in the historic downtown area was open for business so we bought a few bottles of wine and set up shop outside under a grape-vined trellis.

I wandered around town a bit once we were situated.

I bought a fashionably questionable eclipse t-shirt of my own.

This was the first US coast to coast eclipse in 100 years, and no one really knew what sort of crowds to expect.

It's annoyingly difficult to take pictures of the sun. I tried both bare and through my paper glasses lens but nothing seemed to work.

While the actual totality was only a couple minutes long the whole process was nice and leisurely.

The light got dimmer and dimmer. It wasn't really like night but more like a the dim sickly sort of like before a tornado. When the sun finally went dark everyone took off their glasses and spirits were very high. A few fireworks went off nearby. I was so wrapped up in it that I didn't even try taking any pictures. It was pretty cool.