Eclipse Day

Monday was Eclipse Day and my intent was to just hang around the Harlow Lake/Little Presque beach area for the day.  I brought the bialetti (of course) and made my morning espresso.  I soon realized it wasn't rats or mice, it was chipmunks who ran this campsite.  They ran over the picnic table, over my feet and one of them had every plan of climbing my leg.  I made lots of noise and shoo'd them away so I could get packed up and head out.

On the way I stopped by another Harlow Lake trailhead where there is an outcropping of rocks.  Temps were in the mid-70s and I hung out on the rocks a bit before crossing County Rd. 550 to the Little Presque beach.

This has been my favorite stretch of beach since Braden was just a little guy wrapped up in a backpack and we all went there years ago.  My bathing suit was tucked under my clothes and I brought my fold up chair, camera, a few lenses and lots of old school filters that screw onto the lenses.

When I arrived at the beach there was only one other guy there, getting his tripod and equipment ready for the big event.  I wandered around the shore amazed by the amount of black sand that was washing up.  The pics don't do it justice.

I went further down the beach and began getting my equipment set up, too.  I had a new camera that I bought used from a friend.  It was a couple years newer than my Canon Rebel, which had a broken pin in the CF slot.  There is a river that dumps into Superior here so I went and took some test shots to get familiar with the camera.  I love having a dslr again but in reviewing my pics, I need to get into the settings because the camera on my phone did a much better job at capturing the blues of the water and sky. Phone pics above, dslr pics below.

The eclipse came and went.  I have not been on FB yet to see all the zillions of other people's postings to compare my pics against, but I think I got some pretty cool shots.  Its a miracle I'm not blind from how many times I actually had to look directly into the sun to line up the shots.  A small group of clouds came by at the perfect time, right as the eclipse had passed its peak, and I was able to get a pic with the EOS lens and look straight at it.

The lens combo that I had the most success with was an old Vivatar telephoto lens attached to the Canon dslr EOS body with a ring adaptor and 3 dark grey neutral density 52 mm filters screwed onto the lens.  Then I would hold 3 more 58mm filters (from the EOS lens) in front of those.

Many people had come to the beach by the time it was done.  I went back into the lake a couple more times knowing the weather was soon going to change and I may not get another chance to swim.  I left the beach and drove to Phil's 550 to pick up some hotdogs, buns and a couple bottles of water (the water from the well was potable and tasted fine, but it had a bit of a brown tinge that I wasn't so sure about).    Storms were expected by 8pm (I had a few brief moments of cell service to check the forecast and radar) and I wanted to get back and make a fire to eat before the rains began.

My timing was right on.  There was a brief burst of showers that began around 8pm, and I got everything moved indoors.

They quickly ended and there were still coals in the fire so I went back out for a couple more hours and listened to the thunder rumble and roll on and on and on.  There wasnt any lightening, just a never-ending rumble.  I could hear the rain hit the leaves deep in the forest before it got to my camp.  The cold front had finally arrived and it was time to go in for the night.  Big changes were on the way and I was hopeful that enough turbulence in the water would bring some fresh new rocks up to shore by morning.