NOTE: This publishing was pre-mature! The complete post has now been published, found at http://wp.me/p37YEI-1t3 Hasty fingers on keyboard makes waste…er mistakes! M
The last total solar eclipse visible from the US East Coast was March 7th, 1970. My “wife to be” and I took the MGB-GT 800 miles round trip to see this awesone phenomena from the sands of Virgina Beach, Va.
Short on time, Just browse the photos below.
Our route followed the Jersey shore, across the Delaware Bay by ferry, down the sparsly populated Del-Mar-Va Peninsula. across the recently completed 17 mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to Norfolk and then Virginia Beach.
great car!! I have a vague recollection of standing on our front sidewalk and using a piece of cardboard to witness it, I was 13 at the time. All I remember is being told not to look at the sun because I would go blind!
Yeah, with the partial phase, the pin-hole method you mentioned is the safest way to see a solar eclipses, as it “projects” the image on the ground, or a piece of suitable paper. Technically it is ok to directly view the totally eclipsed sun (if your lucky to be in that narrow path where it occurs) but care must be exercised to look away before the sun re-appears. I would suggest sunglasses even then. Otherewise, special neutral density filters can be obtained for all direct viewing. The MGB GT was a great car, – especially on road trips. Thanks for you’re comment. M 🙂
Peninsula.
I’ve read the complete post..it was worth waiting for.
Three friends and I drove all night from Lynchburg College to Va Beach to see the eclipse. Very impressive!! Then turned around and drove back. College dayz!!!
Notice I didn’t mention any names, but you know who you are!
I lived in Virginia Beach on March 7, 1970. It was a Saturday and a bunch of us kids gathered in the middle of a neighborhood street, faces upturned. We’d been told we’d go blind if we looked directly at it, but I was a twelve year old who didn’t like being told what to do, so didn’t use the recommended pin hole in cardboard technique. It was a memorable day, but the memory that eclipses the sun disappearing from the sky, is that our friends, the McDaniels, a Virginia Beach POW family like my own, received their first letter from their dad, Red McDaniel, that day. He’d been shot down on May 19, 1966 and the March 1970 letter was his family’s first assurance he was alive.
How interesting! And what a monumental and wonderful letter that must have been, four years after capture. I hope that he was eventually re-united with his family, and as you stated your family also were in similar circumstance, I hope that all ended well. I can’t help but think of John McCain. The war in SE Asia was difficult for us all, but no match for those who suffered the most.
I’d love to hear more. You can write direct at Mvschulze@yahoo.com 🙂 Marty
I lived In Norfolk and we jumped into the car and took the 1/2 hour drive to Sandbridge Beach just south of the resort area. I was not disappointed. I went to Asheville NC to see the 2017 eclipse but was clouded out and tried again in 2020 but Covid 19 prevented me doing so. I might go to Indiana next year to try again.