The photo above is by Zach Ott, taken while he was with us in Nashville, Tennessee on August 21, 2017. It was the best of all the photos we took, though I will include more below.
Our Arrival In Nashville
We flew into Nashville on Friday night, August 18, on an evening flight. Coming from Arizona, we had a two hour time difference to overcome so we left at 4 pm and arrived at around 9pm local time. We flew on Southwest Airlines, our favorite domestic carrier. Southwest became our favorite after United let me down one too many times. I was a 250,000 mile flyer for United too. Southwest has been great to us.
We rented a car with Hertz, at a fairly expensive rate, and headed over to our daughter Chelsey’s apartment in Nashville near West End south of Interstate 440. Chelsey let us stay with her for the weekend and had an empty bedroom for us, as she has a 3 bedroom and only 1 roommate.
Saturday
On Saturday August 19, my wife Chris got up as normal but I was suffering from the time change and slept until nearly 10 am. Chris went out and picked up some groceries then we went out to look at cars with Chelsey in the afternoon. Chris made dinner that night.
Sunday
On Sunday August 20 we went to church with Chelsey, followed by brunch with our niece Stephanie. Sunday night we made sure we were ready for eclipse day and Zach Ott, a friend’s son, came in that evening. We got ready for the eclipse day and tried to get some sleep.
Monday – Solar Eclipse Day
With all of the concern about cell service, traffic, and 1.4 million visitors to Nashville, we got an early start. We left at 8 am for Opry Mills Mall and the Grand Ole Opry House off of Briley Parkway north east of Nashville. Traffic was non existent, in fact better than Monday morning rush hour traffic.
Getting into Opry Mills Mall was easy enough but there was a line to get into the area by the Grand Ole Opry House. We waited patiently until 9 am, went through security, and found a place to put our chairs by the stage. Music was a sound check until 11 am when Ashley McBride played. She ended after the eclipse began near noon. Levon started a few minutes later, which is a 3 man group. They took a break just before the full eclipse at about 1:20 pm.
At the point the sun was covered by the moon, I tried to take as many pictures as possible. I also took a couple videos that did not turn out. Chris took photos with her
SLR and Zach got the great picture above. We got about 2 minutes of totality before the sun went behind some clouds. How it looked in the sky was unreal, just like Zach’s photo. We saw a couple of stars around the clouds.
At ground level everything went dark but not pitch black.
We left the mall about 2 pm and the traffic was mostly okay except for parts of interstate 65 going back into Nashville. During this time the sun was returning but not completely back.
It was a good day and a great experience, one we would like to relive.
Here are some more pictures for you:
