Central Florida to Clemson - for the Solar Eclipse
 

I'll add my pearls of wisdom later - for now, here are the images :-)

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I had been scared stiff of delays due to Eclipse traffic based on reports from Oregon a couple of days before the event. So, instead of leaving at about 9 am, as originally planned, I left at 4:45 am!! Surprise!!! There was not much traffic on the roads. Approaching Jacksonville, I could see the sky lightening in the early morning light.

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And I ran into some traffic. "What the!", I went.

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Fortunately, it was some construction traffic that had shut down the I-95 to a single lane.

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Crossing St John's river ...

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... I was greeted by some nice cloudy scenery ...

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... and the Sun made his appearance.

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Passing through small towns ...

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... this was what the traffic looked like! I had the whole road to myself.

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There were places with some nice scenery, such as this one, which I just had to stop and take a photo of!

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Approachig Augusta ...

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... there was a mishmash of highway shields!

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Crossing I-20 ...

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... I came to this intersection that, to me, appeared to have one signal head too many. I assume they wanted to make absolutely sure that folks obeyed the signal, so installed an extra head!

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I loved the scenery on both sides of the small-town roads that I drove through. I intentionally was avoiding taking the interstates, though by this time, I did realize that they probably were not half as busy as I had been worried they would be.

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This little pond to my left looked really nice with the reflection of the vegetation, therefore I doubled back so I could take a photo.

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Saw this solar farm somewhere near Chappelle, SC - must have experienced a dip in energy production that one afternoon! By now, I was well and truly inside the zone of totality and could relax and not worry about not making it to see the eclipse :-)

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I had some time to kill as I got there way before I was expected at my friend's house, so I walked around downtown Spartanburg. It was super hot, but I managed to keep myself from evaporating ;-)

Those huge bulbs would've made more sense in Edison, NJ. Whatever!!

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D-Day (or should I say SE-day) in Clemson

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The home turf of the reigning NCAAF champs

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The team from Maine is getting their gear sorted out - they plan to launch a balloon to measure some figures up in the atmosphere (I never got around to asking them questions on the specific details)

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Party is just about getting started

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You want solar eclipse glasses? We got solar eclipse glasses! Clemson had enough of them to spare

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Balloon being readied for launch!

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Party continues

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Clouds were in the mix quite early during the eclipse. We were all worried whether it would hinder our views.

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The Clemson navigates the crowd

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The winds buffeted the clouds around. Quite a few times they came close to the sun and covered the sun as well. It was illuminating to see that some times we could see the partially eclipsed sun even through the clouds.

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Folks had developed ingenious ways of using the solar eclipse glasses - I especially liked the hands off approach this dude used!

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While I was able to take a photo through the solar eclipse glasses, note that the photo does not give a true representation of the portion of the sun that's eclipsed (I need to work on this skill!)

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It was quite interesting to see the sun being reflected in the shade of the cracker. Until this point, I hadn't realized that it was so easy to see the phases of the solar eclipse on the ground (even though I had read about it)

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As you can see, though the sun is fully eclipsed, when the camera is not zoomed in, the sun appears whole (believe it or not, the above four photos are in sequence)!

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Weird effect that I achieved by chance. This was right past totality, and I was not really looking through the lens when I clicked it.

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Crescent sun reflected in the shade of trees - the pinhole effect, which was pretty counter-intuitive to me!

Great experience! I had the pleasure in 2000. Something to remember...

Yes indeed! It was a fun experience for sure.

It has been an eventful last couple of months for me - from the natural beauty of Alaska, the great spectacle of nature (Solar Eclipse) and the wrath of mother nature (Hurricane Irma went by less than 50 miles west of us, though downgraded to category 2 by then!).

Thanks for the pictures!

something to remember indeed. thanks for sharing. reading the news/blogs/social medias about the enthusiasm of American itself were wonderful.

I saw the last year's Indonesian solar eclipse. it was quite early, around 8AM. pity it was cloudy. what made it beautiful I guess, was the mixture of 'blackstar' and dispersed morning light in the horizon (and the sea).

my photos are terrible given the limited phone camera, but it's forged in the memory.

Great job documenting the whole experience! I enjoyed it from the comfort of my cousin's backyard in Corvallis, Oregon. What stands out for me in addition to the spectacular weather was the eerie effect of the "360° sunset" at totality, in which despite it being nearly dark, the horizon was bright in every direction. It was like being transported to another planet. Gave me goosebumps.

Thanks for the comments!
That is one thing I missed, given that we were all in this quadrangle, there was not much of the horizon that we could really see.