Total Eclipse – Glendo Wyoming

Our camping location on Gravel Point in Glendo State Park is on a bluff overlooking the reservoir, but for the eclipse we went out of the park to a ranch nearby. Our location was off the road, and we were alone which had its advantages. At our camping location, there were thousands of people including bus loads from Denver, and we could not fly our drone.

Our eclipse viewing location was just a few miles up the park road. We set up out equipment – camera, telescope, and drone and waited.  Before first contact, we sent up the drone so we have images of our van and it’s location.  Click to see video

As the eclipse progressed we were amazed and almost overwhelmed. I had not anticipated the strangeness of the light at totality, the stars appearing near the sun, the diamond ring, nor the solar flares we could see through the telescope at totality. We sent our drone up, but had some problems with the software whereby it stopped it at about 50 feet. David brought it back down and tried to reboot it, but forgot to restart the video when he sent it up again. So unfortunately we have no video.

Coming back to our campsite after the eclipse was not so simple. Too many people trying to leave the park and too many trying to get back onto I-25 to head south. The population of Glendo is normally 200. 50000 were expected today. Unfortunately, we had to join the queue for about a mile before we could make the left turn to our campsite.

Now I sit on the bluff overlooking this amazing lake. Life is good.

-- Janet (text) and David (photos)