RV Adventures

annular eclipse (noun): A solar eclipse in which the moon covers all but a bright ring around the circumference of the sun.

total eclipse (noun): An eclipse in which the entire surface of a celestial body is obscured.

When planning our route back to New Mexico, we realized that we could position ourselves to be in the path of totality for the October 14, 2023 Annular Eclipse. We thoroughly enjoyed our total eclipse experience in 2017, so we happily arrange to be in the right place again. After consideration, we settled on the Hobbs, New Mexico area.

The day of the eclipse, we decided to not hang out at our campground and instead find some like minded eclipse viewers. We did some internet searching and I happened upon an “eclipse chasers” group on Facebook. A quick search on the word “Hobbs” yielded a picture taken by an eclipse chaser already set up in Hobbs. His picture showed a park with a lake and a cell phone tower in the distance. There was only one park with a lake in Hobbs…so bingo…we had a place to start. We jumped in the car and went to Green Meadow Park, bringing with us our eclipse glasses, heavy coats (it was chilly) and lawn chairs.

I think we had found THE place to be in Hobbs that day. There was a farmer’s market going on and lots of eclipse viewers with their telescopes, cameras, etc.

Me being shy (said sarcastically), I started chatting up some of the people with interesting equipment.

This elderly couple was from Southern California. His telescope apparatus is what caught my attention.

This telescope would track the eclipse and send the images to his phone in real time.

Want to buy one of these units yourself? $4000 will get you one on Amazon.

There were other eclipse viewers around the lake. We talked to people from Alabama, Arizona, Florida and a lot of locals. People were letting us view the eclipse through their binoculars that had homemade solar filters on them (I’m so doing that next time). It was a festive atmosphere.

We had two European gentleman park next to us and they gave us a pinhole viewer. Note the three differently shaped holes on the card.

When the sun shone through the holes in the viewer, in the shadow it created you could see what the eclipse looked like.

You could also see the current state of the eclipse on the shaded pavement. The sun would shine through the leafy trees and the shadows cast also reflected what the eclipse was looking like.

I had hoped to try taking pictures with my point and shoot camera, but doing some research told me I had to have a filter or I would ruin my camera. That makes sense. Then I saw a woman putting her solar eclipse glasses (which are basically filters in a glasses frame) over the lenses of her cell phone camera. So I decided to try it. Wow!

By this time, we were done wandering and got comfortable in our lawn chairs.

We had some nice ladies from Tucson near us, they let us use their binoculars (again with filters) and you could see sun spots. People were getting creative with how there were attaching the solar filter material to their devices. I need to google how to do that!

It amazed me the number of passerbys at the farmer’s market that would stop and ask “has the eclipse started?” Duh! It was almost at maximum. More than once, I handed my glasses to someone to see for themselves.

Finally, the ring of fire.

It was so cool!

We got out the pinhole viewer again. Again, so cool.

Once the ring of fire happened, a lot of people took off. Not us, we stayed for the whole event.

The next eclipse is a total eclipse happening on April 8, 2024. It’s going from from Texas, across Rochester, New York, and exiting at New England.

This eclipse is going to be HUGE. I predict the hype will be comparable to the 2017 total eclipse. You can see this map of the eclipse’s path at https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2024-april-8. We already have reservations for that date at a campground near Waco, TX. And you can bet I’m buying some of that solar filter material for our camera and binoculars.

After next April’s eclipse, there won’t be any more solar eclipses across the USA until 2044 and 2045. So plan accordingly! Map is from https://mreclipse.com/pubs/SEUSA.html.