Jeff Geerling: eclipse experience

Earlier this week, my family and I drove from Minneapolis to southern Illinois (about 600mi/965km away from home) in order to see my first, and likely only, total solar eclipse.

It was a truly incredible experience, and even after a few days have passed and the travel fatigue is behind me, I still really don’t have words to describe it.

And I think that’s because it really can’t be described.

A screenshot of a map of the US with a route highlighted: from central Minnesota to the mid-southern end of Illinois.
This trip and back in about 36 hours… for me that’s a lot of driving.

One creator who I enjoy is Jeff Geerling, and you’ve probably heard of him already. He does great tech videos over on his YouTube page, and has a blog which has helped me troubleshoot problems on more than one occasion. He’s provided a lot of great resources, and has been helpful to me as I’ve taken the leap into content creation.

Jeff posted a video (via YouTube) today about the eclipse experience, and his video is a well constructed breakdown of what went into visiting, and ultimately, photographing the eclipse.

Unlike Jeff, I didn’t film the event at all- travelling over 1200 miles in our tiny car was tough enough without including my camera rig. Plus, I didn’t want to be thinking about my camera during such an awesome – in the truest sense of the word – experience.

Jeff’s video is a great showcase of the truly spectacular event. Even so, nothing compares with totality, and no recollection can take the place of experiencing it for yourself. I’ll never forget sitting in a park in southern Illinois with hundreds of strangers from across the country, cheering on our universe, together.

If you have the chance to experience totality during a total solar eclipse, I urge you to make it happen. For me, at least, it brought about a feeling of euphoria that’s still lingering days later. It’s worth the trip.

Thanks for reading!

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