The Republic photo | Dave Stafford
A handful of people were staking out spots to watch the total solar eclipse shortly after 1 p.m. Monday, and while Donner Park was by no means crowded, it had attracted at least a couple of people who had traveled a fair distance.
Timothy and Marey Casey of Charleston, West Virginia, sat in outdoor chairs with their golden labradors Kiester and Hobbit on Monday afternoon, arriving in Columbus on a bit of a lark.
Marey said she and her husband had traveled from their home to South Carolina to witness the last eclipse about seven years ago, and while Marey was at the LexiCon gaming convention over the weekend in Lexington, Ky., she called her husband with the idea of meeting and traveling to someplace in the path of totality.
“We like smaller towns,” Timothy said. Plus Columbus was a fairly easy drive from Lexington after Timothy, who jokingly said “she’s a gamer, and I’m a gaming widow” met up with his wife.
While waiting for the eclipse, the couple said they were pleasantly surprised by what they had experienced in Columbus, from the eye-catching bridges to Zaharakos ice cream parlor. Though Timothy puzzled over how people can navigate flatlands. “I get lost in a place with no mountains,” he said.
But the couple found Donner Park, which made for better viewing than a hotel parking lot, Marey said.
“The experience of hearing the crickets and the birds become quiet,” she said, “At a park, it’s just nicer.”
Meanwhile, members of the Boyd family from Madison who had set up to watch the eclipse at NexusPark were also in awe of something else — the lack of skygazers in a wide-open parking lot.
Steven Boyd, a retired professor of Hebrew, his wife Janette and son Hugh had a prime viewing spot in an open space just off 25th Street, where Hugh used a Mead Etx 125 telescope and observer to cast an outline of the beginning of the eclipse on the ground on Monday afternoon.
Steven said the family seven years ago had traveled from southern California, where he was teaching at the time, to Salem, Oregon, to witness the last total solar eclipse. The traffic congestion for that event had created hours-long backups, he said.
“Here, I kept thinking, where are all the people?”
But the lack of people left more time for the family to witness the slow-moving eclipse, which Hugh also used a colander to reflect an image of the partial eclipse.
The Boyds know their eclipses and the natural phenomena that result. Hugh and Steven discuss the events that occur during the event, such as “Baily’s beads” and “diamond rings.” They also knew that they would be witnessing almost four minutes of eclipse totality in Columbus.
It’s all somewhat matter-of fact, but Hugh also explained why the family travels to witness such rare events.
“It’s just a marvelous natural wonder,” he said. “It’s a marvelous display of God’s creation.”
