Do you have an eclipse horror story? We want to hear it
You’d been anticipating this day for months, perhaps years. For a few short minutes, the moon blotted out the sun, plunging a slice of the Earth into eerie darkness.
It finally happened: The Great American Eclipse.
Perhaps you’re one of the folks who reserved a hotel room in the path of totality back in 2015. Maybe you persuaded a farmer to let you set up camp in his geographically desirable cornfield for the day. Or you could be the type of person who just decided to hop in your car and wing it.
If you were lucky, everything went off without a hitch. But let’s face it: Even the best laid plans can be … eclipsed ... by a little bad luck.
You might have gotten stuck in traffic as the skies started to darken.
You might have found yourself spending hours waiting in line for a port-a-potty.
You might not have been able to find a pair of essential eclipse glasses.
Your might even have been thwarted by a few inconveniently placed clouds.
If your eclipse experience went sideways, we want to hear about it. Send your story to amina.khan@latimes.com. If you’ve got photos or video, we’d love to see those too.
We’ll gather your eclipse horror stories and share them online. In fact, here’s one to get you started from Northern California resident Joe Ireland, who’d wanted to see Monday’s eclipse since he missed the total solar eclipse in August 1999 that swept through parts of Europe and Asia.
“We live near Sacramento and we were heading to Brooks, Ore., to a train museum and field,” Ireland wrote. “I had wanted to go to Idaho and thank God we didn’t go that route through Nevada. We had stopped at a casino outside of Redding, Calif., to spend the night. As the wife hooks up the septic at the RV lot to dump our tanks, the hose comes loose and you-know-what spilled everywhere. Man, it was gross and stinky.”
This was just the start of the family’s troubles. A tire blew on their way through Oregon on Sunday; later, the spare tire lost its tread south of Eugene. A tow truck pulled them to a Goodyear, which could only replace the front tires and the spare. Eventually, they made it to Brooks.
“We settle in from our 14-hour drive that should have taken six,” Ireland wrote. “We decided traffic is going to be terrible on eclipse day and go to Salem for the four tires we need first thing when the tire place opens. We ended up watching the eclipse from the parking lot. It was awesome. And worth it. We even won enough money at the casino to pay for most of the tire work.”
Did you manage to find the happy corona around your eclipse horror story? Either way, keep them coming to amina.khan@latimes.com.
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MORE ON THE GREAT AMERICAN ECLIPSE:
Your solar eclipse checklist: What to look for on the big day
The Great American Eclipse: How to watch it safely
Parades, parties and port-a-potties: Eclipse mania is taking hold from coast to coast
UPDATES:
3:50 p.m.: This article was updated with an eclipse-watching account from Joe Ireland.
This article was originally published at 9 a.m.
