Eclipse-A-Palooza!

Susan Poole
4 min readApr 10, 2024

Sign me up for an encore.

Author’s photo

I get it now. Sometimes, there’s a solid reason behind all the hype.

Admittedly, I doubted that would be the case earlier this week as we anticipated the solar eclipse.

Since I live within the path of totality, the build-up was tremendous. Homes available for rent for out-of-towners. Schools and many businesses closed. Public parks converted for use by campers and RVs. Watch parties. A music festival. Eclipse merchandise sold all around town. An astronomer even narrated the event at our local high school.

You name it, we had it—minus the anticipated influx of people that could stretch our community’s capacity. We still drew visitors, but nothing like the chaos predicted.

The day of the big event, I couldn’t help wondering why the streets still looked empty. I spotted a meager five tents near the town baseball field, and most of the parking lots charging a fee remained empty until at least mid-morning.

It’s better to be over-prepared than under-prepared, but oh, how I expected the day to be a complete bust!

Because of the abundant warnings that roads would be gridlocked and navigating the crowds might be difficult, my husband and I decided to stay home. We set up our lawn chairs, readied our eclipse glasses, and waited for the…

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Susan Poole

Mother, lawyer, nonprofit executive, breast cancer survivor, and aspiring author. Recently left her day-job to write about topics that she’s passionate about.