We didn’t do any planning leading up to the eclipse. We sort of had an idea that we’d be near the path of totality, but we never really banked on it and we didn’t do anything useful like find a pair of solar glasses even though they were being sold at Wal-marts across the country. So when it was coming up we looked at the map of the Path of Totality and pointed to a spot in the middle.

The spot we ended up choosing was a little town called Alliance, Nebraska which home to Carhenge – a henge made of cars instead of stones. There was nowhere to stay nearby, (with parking passes near Carhenge going for up to $150 for the weekend) so we spent the night before in a Walmart fifty-miles north. I managed to break Kyle’s pour-over as soon as I got out of bed, so we were forced to breakfast at the only local establishment: McDonalds. The staff of the Chadron McDonalds was woefully unprepared for the influx of humans making a beeline for the path of totality – it was a wonder they didn’t run out of food. Every staff member behind the counter looked ready to burst into tears at any moment.

I secured our breakfast and we hit the road south where we drove into the most dense fog we’d ever experienced. It was worse than San Francisco. We were watching cars up ahead of us just disappear. It dampened sound. It was intense. When we came out of it we were able to see the beginnings of the makeshift campgrounds people set up on the sides of the road. It seemed as if anyone and everyone in the Path of Totality opened up their yard (for a fee) and let people park on their land. As we got closer and closer to Alliance we started to worry about being able to find parking at all.

As it turned out, everything was fine. People didn’t want to be in the town proper, they wanted to be on the outskirts. They wanted to be with droves of other people in a place where the street lights wouldn’t automatically go on. No one was really in Alliance. So we found some parking on a side street in an industrial area and walked to the main drag with our trusty homemade pinhole viewer.

We’d already been up for four hours at this point, so we decided to stop in a little coffee shop to perk up before the main event. Against all odds, they had eclipse glasses.

We had heard that comparing a total eclipse to a partial eclipse is like trying to compare a sparkler to the sun. Both Kyle and I have memories of being witness to a partial eclipse as children and it was incomparable to what we saw in Alliance. As the sun became more shadowed the temperature dropped so much that we had to put on sweaters. The light was like nothing either of us had ever seen before – something between dawn and twilight where it seemed like all the color had been sucked from the world. The light had a weird blue quality to it that felt somehow apocalyptic. It didn’t help that we were in an industrial area with no one near us. I don’t think we’ve been anywhere that reminded us so fully of being tossed into an episode of The Walking Dead.

When the sun was fully eclipsed the cheering started. It came from every direction even though we couldn’t see another soul. People were just whooping and shouting and having a grand old time. It was so eerie to see the corona of the sun seeping out from behind the dark of the moon. I was surprised by how many stars we were able to see even though the street lamps around us popped on just before the totality started. I had initially thought I would want to be surrounded by other humans but I was so happy we were able to experience it alone with just the idea of people nearby. It made the whole experience so much more magical.