Savannah, sans an eclipse

Yes, we were in Savannah for the eclipse! The almighty eclipse that crossed the entire continental US in its arc of totality.

When we originally mapped our trip across the US we were only vaguely aware of the eclipse, but fortuitously planned to spend this time in Charleston, right on the path of totality. ‘Well, that’s worked out nicely!’ we thought…

Turns out Charleston’s campgrounds were completely booked out and any rooms available were in the thousands of dollars per night. Not being flush with this sort of cash, we decided to switcheroo our dates with Savannah which was scheduled for 98% totality, but whose accomodation was far more reasonably priced (and available!). Not a bad trade off when you consider the crowds of crazy eclipse chasers that were forecast to descend on Charleston during this time!

The weather was forecast to be cloudy all the way along the coastline, so we figured we had as good a shot as anyone to see the lunar-solar collision. We bought our eclipse glasses and picnic supplies. We located our picnic blanket to afford several hours of comfy eclipse viewing. We found a nice wide open park (complete with confederate statue – thanks Savannah) to watch the eclipse. We were ready.

We got down to the park and set ourselves up, praying for the spotty cloud cover to hold and hoping to at least catch glimpses. We were thrilled that with our eclipse glasses we could actually see the sun through the clouds. We were winning.

That was until, 5 minutes prior to the sun starting its slow creep across the moon, dark storm clouds started brewing, followed by a steady few hours of thick cloud cover and rain. It got colder and darker, but that was about it. Our eclipse experience was a bust. But hey, at least we got to look cool in our cardboard glasses for about 3 minutes, right? Right.

But it wasn’t all bad. We saw some art at SCAD, visited the Mercer-Williams house (of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fame), went on a ghost tour with some drunk people and ate at Lady and Sons, a southern style restaurant owned by US celebrity chef Paula Deen. And, on the plus side, we can now at least wipe the word ‘totality’ from our vocabularies for the next little while.

Ps. Savannah is actually very pretty – those who haven’t been should actually put it on their wish lists. Just don’t do it during an eclipse – you’ll be disappointed.