Off to See the Eclipse - Part 3, The Road to Grand Island

With the eclipse due in Beatrice just after 1:00 p.m., we were up early for the final leg of the trip from Sioux City, Iowa.  It is about a three hour drive down the freeway, to Omaha and through Lincoln.  I decided that a four hour route around the larger cities might be wise under the circumstances so we headed due west on US 20 and then south on US 81.

This got us to Norfolk, Nebraska, for breakfast.  We stopped at the Perkins restaurant with the large United States flag out front - just a few blocks down from the intersection of Eisenhower Avenue and Johnny Carson Blvd. Johnny graduated from Norfolk High School. (This is truly "red-state" territory.  The Nebraska 2016 presidential vote broke 59%-34% in favor of President Trump.  There were two counties in the state that Secretary Clinton carried.)


After breakfast, we soon approached Columbus and faced a decision.  The sunny day we had been promised a week earlier was not going to be here.  Looking to the southeast, we saw clouds but to the southwest there was blue sky. 



We decided to leave Beatrice to Bill Nye, the science guy with the bow tie.  We turned toward Grand Island instead.   This put us on U.S. 30, The Lincoln Highway.



We were quickly in the path of totality and began to see eclipse viewers on both sides of the road.

At Central City, a group was gathered in front of the library.  Others sat in lawn chairs in their front yards.  The hardware store had a grill going with hot dogs.








In between towns, folks just pulled off the road by the corn fields.






With no specific location in mind in Grand Island, we headed toward the WalMart parking lot, certain that there would be a crowd watching there.  But on the way we saw a delightful city park and pulled in there to set up shop.


We had two set of glasses for eye protection.


I had a camera on a tripod plus my usual compact digital camera.