With Ralph Chou soundly asleep, many people
on the bus took advantage of the photo opportunity!

Scott Ramsay partakes of the coffee & doughnut
breakfast we had at a truck stop on the way down.

It had rained all night long on the bus ride down to
Petersburg, Virginia. It rained the next day and night too.

Since there was no hope of clear skies in Virginia,
we carried on into South Carolina in hopes of meeting
an eastward-moving weather front we had heard about.

The bus finally pulled in at a public school in Cleveland, South Carolina. Mike Watson, our fearless tour leader, raced into the school and obtained permission for our group to set up on the school grounds. By this time, first contact had already passed, so everyone set up their equipment as fast as possible! My telescope is shown in the picture above.

Some people set up in the middle of the soccer field,
slightly closer to the centreline than the rest of us.

Other people chose to set up on the asphalt basketball court.

After we got our equipment all set up, the school was let out to view the eclipse. Both my telescope and the piece of #14 welder's glass I had with me saw heavy use!

My polar alignment wasn't too good, and the declination was drifting a lot (as in the picture above). I took 3 shots of annularity — it was only 13 seconds in duration, and I almost missed the photo-op trying to take a peek through the camera! The sun was 99.8% covered, but I found it very difficult to look at without my eyes watering — even through the 'scope. The experienced eclipse watchers on this trip saw some corona at mid-eclipse. Note the Bailey's Bead at the 8 o'clock position.