Suffice it to say, we made it to the Eagle Creek Campground near Doniphan, MO.  The owner met us and we were the first people here for the weekend and the eclipse, so we got our choice of spots.  The place has less than 10 sites and needs some repairing, but they're working on it.  Apparently, they wouldn't normally be opening for the season until next month, but decided to open early just for the eclipse.  The network connectivity here isn't very good, so I'll make this short for now.   

We are currently the only people here.  Here's a pic of the entire campground!

Friday:

Doniphan is a very nice little town. We drove downtown yesterday (Friday), found the courthouse square, a flea market (for a $2 sheet to hopefully see Shadow Bands during the few seconds before totality), and a local fabric/craft shop where the owner and her mom have a great sense of humor!  Afterward, we went for ice cream at the local desserts place and watched the Old Classic Cars parade get started across the street.  After that, we came back home, fed the cats, and went to bed early because we were very tired!

Redbud tree:

Random yarn bombing in the Heritage Park (done just for the eclipse and weekend festivities):

Saw an Alien.  Don't know if he was illegal or not.

Richard found this lovely butterfly next to the museum!

There was an old timey car show and parade:

The car parade getting started:

This truck looks like a toy!

\

The weekend festivities posted at Heritage Park:

Saturday:

We’re having a hard time updating these pages here because there are no T-Mobile towers nearby, so we’re roaming. T-Mobile doesn’t charge more for this in the US, but they limit the amount of roaming while doing a hotspot.  I (Richard) have hit the limit, so I’m writing this from my phone. I hope to find a place to upload some pics in town later today.

(By the way, I realize the pics so far have been way too large.  I’ll upload smaller ones from now on and hope to be able to make the current ones smaller as well.)

So, we didn’t make it to town at all today.  Instead, we went to meet the new neighbors who arrived last night (around 11pm!). They came from Florida!  We talked and talked about everything in the world!  It was amazing how much we and they are alike!  We have a lot of the same interests, including rocks, gardening, butterflies, etc., the guy has allergies but otherwise is just like Richard (“boringly normal”), while his wife has some of the same pains and allergies as Kelly.

Really strange.  Anyway, we spent many hours talking and by the time we left, it was after 3pm.  So, we walked to back down the road to see the horses and foals (3 of them).

We took lots of pictures and will upload them as soon as we can find enough connectivity to do so!

Afterward, we went up to the top deck of their house overlooking the river (the “Tiki Bar”), had our usual G&T and cheese.  While we were there, Lori (the next door neighbor with whom we spent so much time earlier) showed up with her home made Mango Wine!  Then, the owner showed up as well and we had a great time hanging out and talking about all sorts of things!  We all agreed we should do it again tomorrow!  Here's a picture showing the deck where we were enjoying the view of the river, Mango Wine, and friendly company:

Finally, we walked back to home, fed the kitties, and retired to bed.

Tomorrow will be the time to verify we know what we’re doing for the eclipse and to go into town to the art show and pick up our “Eclipse 2024 Doniphan” T-shirts!

Good night, all!

Sunday:

We woke up today to lots of clouds and very high winds!

But this was expected:

We are still on schedule for clear skies during the eclipse (at about 2pm local time) tomorrow:

Today there's an art show downtown starting at 2pm and we should be able to pick up our "Eclipse 2024 Doniphan" T-shirts.  Given that it's supposed to also rain, we'll see how all of that goes.  As I write this, it's 1pm, cloudy (the picture above was taken outside just now), and extremely windy.  Doesn't seem like a good time for an outdoor art show.

While we're waiting for that, Kelly is taking some time to glue up a solar filter for her camera: