Despite working late into the evening, I decided an early start was in order. I had no idea what the traffic situation would be like. Although the area the number of tourists out and about seemed manageable in the week leading up to the eclipse, I was worried what would happen with everyone hitting the roads at the same time. Since Eclipse Day was a Thursday, I also didn't know how many people would be making a day trip to see totality. With Bell Smith Springs being close to the centerline and situated among a sparse road network I didn't want to risk being caught in a traffic jam, or being turned away once I got there.
I got up around 5 am to make my final equipment checks. I had a waterproof duffel carrying my camera bags, tripods, the star tracker, binoculars, as well as sunscreen, 5 liters of water to combat the August heat, some snacks, and a binder with a pocket to protect my eclipse glasses. I also found a folding lawn chair for myself so that I would have somewhere comfortable to sit for the day. Then I loaded up my car and started the 45 minute drive to Bell Smith Springs, hopefully before other people in the area for the eclipse woke up to do the same. The first 20 or so minutes were in the fuzzy morning twilight, and to my relief no one else was on the road yet. I stopped at a gas station in town to get a small breakfast for myself and chatted for a few minutes with the cashier about the eclipse. Then back to the road.
Sunrise brought with it some tranquil views, but also made me a little nervous about the weather. Overnight the forecast chances of thunderstorms had nudged upwards from 20 to 30%. The air temperature was already cracking 80F (25C), and it felt unusually damp even by the standards of an early morning in August. The sky had a greasy blue-gray look to it, which was usually an early warning of thunderstorms to come in the afternoon. Some light scattered cirrus was also floating over, which was a signal that there might be an approaching upper atmosphere disturbance to help thunderstorms to bubble up despite the fading sunlight we would experience later in the morning. But despite these possible signals of trouble, I decided to stick with my plan, chalking some of my unease up to nerves.
As I pulled up to Bell Smith Springs I began to worry about my parking prospects. A small group of people sat around a county police car, taking note of the number of people going in. One of them asked me to roll down my window to ask if I was already camped there. I replied that I wasn't and was told that I was in luck, because getting there just in time. The man told me that the park was already at 75% of its parking capacity, and at 150% the park road would close to new visitors to prevent it from getting torn up too badly by roadside parking. Maybe an hour later and I would have needed to make a roughly two mile (3 km) hike just to reach the trailhead from the main road. They waved me in, and I was greeted by an unusual sight. The main campground was full, so several people had reclaimed many of the unmaintained primitive camping pads from nature. It was odd to see the colorful tents in the bramble, a few early risers wandering around as they prepped breakfast and packed gear, and the bumper-to-bumper cars lining this normally quiet stretch of road.
Given the number of people about, I was worried that I was going to have trouble parking near the trailhead. But after I passsed the main campground, the number of cars rapidly thinned. Only a couple were present at the trailhead. I breathed a sigh of relief, because I had not been relishing the prospect of lugging my heavy gear bag much further than I had on my dry runs. After I pulled into a spot, I kicked back the seat and dozed for a few minutes before pulling out my breakfast and downing a Diet Coke to stave off a caffiene headache later in the morning. Once I was fully awake and alert, I hopped out and started the task of hauling gear to my viewing site.
The duffel proved to be pretty unwieldy. It weighed close to 60 lbs [30kg], and the strap dug pretty hard into my shoulder. It also had the tendency to develop a pendulum motion while walking, alternatively digging it into my collarbone and dragging it a bit off my shoulder. Every few minutes I would need to stop and readjust it, slowing my hike into the woods. Unfortunately I didn't really have an alternative way to haul gear, and I felt like there wasn't much I could jettison. I figured the hike was short enough to deal with it, but although it was only 6:30 am at this point, I knew I was going to need to spend most of the time before the eclipse started to actually make it to the small piece of real estate that I had selected.
The first part of the trail, which was a steep downhill section that had been graded and improved with stairs actually proved to be the hardest part of the hike. The stairs were a little oddly spaced - about two paces long - which meant that the same leg did the lifting on every step. Every now and then I would have to try to kill my downhill momentum, duffel bag and all, so I could switch up my gait to avoid a cramp or exhaustion. After about 10 minutes or so, I reached the most difficult section of the trail, a stone staircase built into a narrow fissure in the cliff that allows people to descend a 40 foot cliff face to the creek and watering hole below. The staircase was a legacy of the CCC, and was built to the accessibility standards of the 1930s (which is to say none). The stairs are wide enough to easily fit a person, but much less so for trying to manuever an oversized duffel. The stairs were also incredibly steep, and trying to unwedge a duffel too hard risked hurtling myself into the Great Unknown. But after a few minutes, I had reached the creek, which at this early hour was still deserted.
I took a short breather at the swimming hole, since the higher humidity of the morning was sapping my strength faster than on my dry run. I popped out the lawn chair and set up beside the creek. I spent about 45 minutes just enjoying the early morning birdsong and the gentle wisps of mist swirling off the creek. The first group of people I met were a group of college students who had come down from Loyola. A couple of them had done undergrad at Southern Illinois University, and had come to enjoy the eclipse at their old hangout spot with their friends. They had a small inflatable pool trampoline to play with at the swimming hole, and while I chatted with them a couple of them got to work inflating it. They offered me a beer, but knowing the hike ahead I turned them down. I waited a bit longer until more people began trickling in before deciding it was time to pack up and get a move on.
The creek doesn't really have a trail, but in the low water conditions of summer the creek itself is usually the trail. My walk mostly followed a gravel bar for a few hundred feet (~100 m), followed by a short scramble up the banks of the creek, through a bit of brush, and then back down to the next gravel bar. It proved to be a series of short, relaxing walks, separated every few minutes by powerlifting the duffel. Early on in the walk I settled the bag on my shoulder badly, so it quickly turned into an excruciating experience. It took close to an hour and a half to reach my viewing site. But once I reached it, my excitement for the day quickly returned.
Getting set up at my viewing site didn't take too long. Most of my gear could be plunked down on the flat sandstone block I had spotted on my scouting trip. The size of the block gave me plenty of room to spread out, and I was able to make a small "campsite" for my gear. After posting up, I spent a few minutes resting my legs and working some of the pain out of the shoulder I had hurt on the way in. Once I had loosened myself back up, I needed to figure out exactly where to place the time-lapse camera. I picked out a gravel bar about 50 feet from my campsite, which had a nice view of the artificial lake, some slowly swirling ripples of pond scum, and a nice arrangement of boulders sticking out of the water.
I completed my setup around 10:30 am, and after that it was just a matter of watch and wait. The time seemed like it was passing slowly, I suspect due to a combination of my excitement and the stifling air. The trees blocked what little breeze was setting up, and only occasionally would the wind blow along the creek. When it did, it came off the lake, carrying a strong smell of algae and decaying fish. The still air seemed ripe for thunderstorms, and small puffs of cumulus were beginning to dot the sky here and there. But, I figured unless the skies turned truly threatening before noon, I stood to lose out on most of the experience simply by making a snap panic judgement to retreat to the car. I also convinced myself that there wasn't really anywhere to go in the time available - the number of people I had seen that morning had me spooked that I wouldn't find an alternative viewing sit, and the winding rural backroads severely limited my ability to get away from any clouds. So I settled in for the long wait.
The weirdest encouter of the day came around 11:15, when I heard something crashing through the brush from the direction of the lake. I wondered if it was a deer or mountain lion. I quickly dug out my pocket knife and had it sitting in my lap just in case it was something aggressive. But I quickly realized that the sound was coming from a shirtless man, soaked head-to-toe, trampling around in the woods. I asked where he'd come from (there's really nothing but wilderness in that direction), and he said he had camped out near the dam impounding the lake (roughly two miles downstream). To my bemusement, he explained that he'd been bored waiting so he'd decided to swim up to the end of the lake to see what it looked like. At some point the lake became too shallow to swim, but continued to meander through the woods, so he kept following it.
At some point, wading got to be too tiring, so he just climbed up on the bank and walked along the lakeshore. He asked me what was further up the creek, and I replied there was a swimming hole and campground about a half mile up the creek. He shrugged and said "Oh, I guess I've made it to the end, then. Nice chatting with ya" before turning around and wandering back into the woods in the direction he came. The trampling eventually faded, and I hope he made it back to his campsite in one piece. The whole encounter, while odd, had been a welcome break from the crushing boredom.
Written: May 28, 2020
Edited: August 14, 2021