NATION/WORLD
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 7A
Outside totality, the view is worth staying home
By JADE MCDOWELL
and ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
There were plenty of
oohs and aahs at Butte Park
on Monday morning as
young and old gathered to
watch the solar eclipse.
Some eclipse-watchers
set up chairs in the back of
pickup trucks, while others
spread out picnic blankets
or hiked up to the top of
the Butte. There was even a
group doing yoga under the
slowly disappearing sun.
Vivian Sullivan, Alexis
Sullivan and Sergio Rangel
were hurrying down the
Butte trail about 15 minutes
before the eclipse’s peak.
“We’ve got to go back
and get our lawn chairs.
We were just too excited,”
Vivian said, laughing.
Alexis was busy viewing
the eclipse’s path through
her
protective
eclipse
glasses, and noted that she
was surprised the eclipse
wasn’t more obvious to
anyone walking around
without the special eye
gear.
“I thought you would
actually be able to see it just
looking,” she said.
Not everyone at Butte
Park was a local. While
many out-of-state travelers
headed farther south to
the path of totality, Lisa
Cochrane and Sandy De
La Rosa were in Hermiston
from Yakima.
“We wanted to get as
close to totality as we could
without fighting all the
traffic,” Cochrane said.
The women stayed
at the new Holiday Inn
Express — a hotel they said
Hermiston should be proud
of — and then grabbed their
lawn chairs and headed out.
“We found this beautiful
park and settled down,” De
La Rosa said.
She said the whole event
was giving her flashbacks
to watching Oregon’s last
solar eclipse when she was
in sixth grade.
Traffic troubles
Monday
afternoon
Umatilla County caught
some of the post-eclipse
traffic jams that had been
predicted. Traffic backed up
for several miles on Inter-
state 82 near Hermiston and
Umatilla, made worse by
a bottleneck on the bridge
over the Columbia River,
which is down to one lane
of traffic due to construc-
tion.
Out of concern for safety
as vehicles attempted to
merge into that single,
non-stop lane of traffic
moving onto the bridge,
the Oregon Department
of Transportation closed
the bridge’s westbound
on-ramp at Umatilla off
of Highway 730 for a few
hours. The bridge remained
gridlocked into the evening.
“It’s hazardous to get
on and off there,” ODOT
spokesman Tom Strandberg
said.
ODOT
also
urged
drivers to avoid traveling
on Highway 395 north-
bound from Long Creek
to Pendleton, as the 209
interchange in Pendleton
became clogged in the early
afternoon.
To alleviate traffic on
those highways, a detour
Oregon State Police via AP
This Saturday photo shows the crowd at the Big Summit Eclipse 2017 event near Prineville.
“I felt close
to God.”
— Maxine Patterson,
McKay Estates resident
Photo courtesy of McKay Estates
Assisted living home residents watch the eclipse at
McKay Estates in Pendleton Monday.
for car traffic was placed at
the intersection of McKay
Drive and Highway 395
to Tutuilla Road to help
relieve
congestion
on
Southgate in Pendleton.
Pendleton’s view
The review for Monday’s
solar eclipse from Pendle-
ton’s McKay Estates were
unanimous.
“Once-in-a-lifetime”
and “unforgettable” were
just some of the descriptors
some of the assisted living
home residents used to
characterize the phenom-
enon.
McKay Estates took
the residents outside and
supplied them with eclipse
glasses.
Shirley Sagrero recalled
the sensation of putting on
the protective spectacles
and peering at the partial-
ly-obstructed sun for the
first time.
“It looked like a banana,”
she said.
For others, looking into
the sky and seeing the rare
occurrence felt like a reli-
gious experience.
“I felt close to God,”
Maxine Patterson said.
This isn’t the first time
Oregon’s been under the
shadow of a high-profile
eclipse.
In 1979, a total eclipse
worked its way through
Oregon and eventually
passed over Idaho, Montana
and North Dakota before
moving north into Canada.
Unlike this year, the
path of totality went right
over Pendleton, although
according to reports at
the time, cloud coverage
obscured views of the
eclipse for many ground-
bound viewers.
While some McKay
Estates residents were
living in other parts of the
country at the time, others
remembered the previous
eclipse’s local effects.
Wiley Cook recalled
working
for
Umatilla
County in 1979. On the day
of the eclipse, he remem-
bered having to turn the
headlights on as he hauled
rock to be used as gravel for
roads.
“It’s like a moon in
reverse,” he said of the
eclipse.
———
Contact Jade McDowell
at jmcdowell@eastorego-
nian.com or 541-564-4536.
Contact Antonio Sierra
at asierra@eastoregonian.
com or 541-966-0836.
ECLIPSE: Next U.S.
total solar eclipse is 2024
Continued from 1A
said with a smile. “But we
wanted to come prepared.”
A number of visitors trav-
eled not just cross-country,
but across an ocean to see
the uniquely North American
event. Bart Verbrugge and
his wife, Véronique, came
all the way from their native
Holland with their two chil-
dren, Isabel, 11, and Jurien, 9.
Bart Verbrugge said
he has witnessed two
other solar eclipses in his
life — one in northern
France and the other in
Zambia, Africa. But he
wanted to be able to share
the experience with his
kids, so they flew together
to Vancouver, British
Columbia, Canada about
three weeks ago for vaca-
tion and made their way to
John Day by Friday.
“We wanted to show the
kids this awesome experi-
ence,” he said. “I just want
to share with them this
magical moment.”
Bernd Schatzman also
flew in to the U.S. from
Germany, where he met
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before coming up to the
path of totality together.
The feeling of watching
an eclipse is incomparable,
he said.
“It’s like some special
kind of gray darkness,”
Schatzman explained. “At
the same time, the sun gets
this silvery kind of shine.”
After totality, some at
the industrial park decided
to stay while others hit the
road right away. Worries
of severe traffic backups
were perhaps overblown,
according to Tom Strand-
berg with the Oregon
Department of Transporta-
tion, who said only minor
delays were reported along
highways 395 and 26.
“It’s actually been a
lot calmer than we antic-
ipated,” he said. “People
seem to be behaving, for
the most part.”
The United States will
not experience another
total solar eclipse until
2024, and Oregon will not
see another until 2108,
when one is expected to
graze along the coast.
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