Total eclipse roadtrip 2017

On Sunday, we drove to the mountains in western NC to view the total eclipse. We camped with friends on a hillside between Black Balsam Knob and Sam Knob. Here's a view from early Monday morning:

In the morning, C, S, and I hiked down into the meadow below our campsite...

...and then up Sam Knob to scope out the view, thinking it could be a good spot for all of us to watch the eclipse. There were already lots of people on Sam Knob--hiking up, hiking down, camping, picking huckleberries, setting up telescopes, and enjoying the views.

Then we hiked back down to the meadow, and around the knob to Flat Laurel creek.

There were already lots of people at Flat Laurel Creek, hiking east, hiking west, camping, picking huckleberries, setting up telescopes, and enjoying the views.

See the ukelele slung over the hiker's shoulder?

I asked him if he was heading up to Black Balsam Knob to join the band, and he looked at me like I was from outer space. There were already lots of people up near Black Balsam Knob, playing guitars and drums and smoking weed and otherwise preparing their spiritual musical selves for the eclipse. One of the vans parked in the lot had the Pink Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon" rainbow prism painted on it.

Ultimately, we decided the best spot for viewing the eclipse was our campsite. Here's a view of the easy little tent S and I shared. My, tent technology has changed since the six-person tenting days of my childhood. See that thing floating in the air in the top left corner of the photo?

That's a butterfly. They were plentiful, thanks to abundant thistle blossoms. To pass the time between hike and eclipse, I took a couple hundred photos of butterflies and bees. Here are a few:

Note the hovering bee!

Of course, because we recreational eclipse-watchers can't spend all of the time during an eclipse watching the eclipse, I took more photos of butterflies and bees during the eclipse too.

Traffic jam

My favorite

Here are some scenes from our eclipse-watching experience. It had been on-and-off cloudy most of the morning, and the eclipse started with clouds...

...but they cleared away about 30 minutes in, giving us excellent views.

As the eclipse neared totality, the clouds closed in--as though materializing from thin air.

I like to think that we were experiencing eclipse-induced weather--i.e. that the drop in temperature changed the dew point in our humid corner of the world. That would help me feel not quite as sad that we missed seeing the Sun's corona. (I sent a message to one of the local TV weather casters to ask if that could have been the case, and will update this post if he responds.)

Then, approaching totality:

And totality: sunset colors all around the horizon, and much glee among the many viewers on our hillside. We were near the northeast edge of the totality zone, so only had about 45 seconds of night-in-day, but what an amazing 45 seconds they were!

Post totality, we enjoyed the strange light and views of the crescent Sun through the clouds:

And then the butterflies, which had disappeared as the light left, were back:

Thanks for joining us, C, E, J, R, J, J, M, and Z!

(Camping with that many friends, one might expect the occasional conversation to get a little heated. I will simply leave this here--http://wadlstrumpf.blogspot.com/2015/07/puns-in-german.html--with a reminder that I will bake a cake--or Torte--there's a forthcoming Wadlstrumpf blog post about the difference--if one of those conversationalists can come up with a pun in German that's actually funny.)

More bugs in the 'hood

My neighbor J, who showed me the freshly molted cicada the other week, pointed me toward an orb weaver and a praying mantis in her garden the other day. En route, I encountered a gray hairstreak butterfly.

This is a flower in our garden, for those who want to look at something yellow and black that isn't a big hairy spider.

The gray hairstreak butterfly rubs its hind wings together. In fact, the reason I know it's a gray hairstreak butterfly is that I googled "butterfly rubs wings together," and the search returned a bunch of photos of gray hairstreaks. One theory is that they rub their wing tips together to draw attention to their faux rear antenna and faux rear eye-like spots, making them look more threatening to predators.

Hind wing tip up

Hind wing tip down

In my wingtip-rubbing search, I came across a photo of a hairstreak-like butterfly being devoured by a praying mantis. It was a pretty graphic image, as such things go. The praying mantis in J's yard wasn't eating anyone when I saw it.

Nor was the orb weaver spider. I feel some affinity for the orb weaver, because it spins dramatic zigzags, like me, although I find the spiders a little disconcerting to see up close.

Unlike the flower in our garden, this yellow and black thing is a big hairy spider.

Another cicada

My neighbor called me over to her porch today to see a freshly molted cicada. Its exoskeleton had just fallen off, and it was hanging upside down on a brick pedestal, drying its wings and its tender fleshy surface.

I think the photos below are easier to study when the bug is rotated 180 degrees. I also find the cicada less skin-crawly to look at at when the photos are sepia toned rather than full color, but then the three ruby ocelli (thanks, interwebs!) between the cicada's compound eyes don't look as much like blood-contaminated lymph sacs (which they aren't--they're eyes # 3, 4, and 5, if you count the compound eyes as one eye each).

Enjoy.

Butterfly

Cicada

We were out of town most of July and apparently missed cicada-hatching season. Small round holes dot the ground now, several inches deep, and molted cicada exoskeletons are a dime a dozen. Today, trimming a crape myrtle, I found an actual dead cicada, with delicate wings intact. Black ants, which have been more abundant than usual this year, were already feasting on it, although they proved a little camera shy. Two make an appearance in the top photo.

Yet more plants and bugs

Ten days ago, I posted this photo of a baby prickly pear pad:

Here's what it looks like today:

For a plant that grows slowly, what a huge investment of energy that is!

Ten days ago, I didn't post this photo of a mystery onion-like weed in our yard:

It's looking much more interesting today:

The main reason I was outside taking photos this morning was to document the gorgeous purple oregano flowers.

I'm once again delighted with how my Sony RX100 II enables me to observe things in pictures that I'd completely miss in real life, such as this Peucetia viridans (green lynx spider):

And with that segue back to bugs, here's an Apheloria tigana on the move out by the Eno River. I never realized they stood so high above the ground, but I guess their legs have to climb over some pretty bumpy terrain.