It’s been a long—but wonderful—week of traveling. Last Tuesday, I left New York for my sister’s house, to help out with some maintenance, and to spend a couple of days working there.

Friday, after she got home from work. we hit the road for Ian and Laurie’s Great Eclipse 2024 Road Trip. We stopped for the night in Rome, New York, and made a brief visit to the Turning Stone Casino there. I played no-limit hold ’em in a cash game for the first time (I’ve played tournaments before), and while I noticed (and hopefully, corrected) a few leaks in my game, I managed to end the session winning $11. So, woo hoo!

Saturday morning, we drove west. And all along the New York State Thruway were signs warning “Eclipse Monday; Arrive Early, Stay Late” and “Prepare for Delays” and “Expect Traffic.” And in the days before we left, I’d seen the reports that local authorities around the Falls had declared states of emergency, expecting massive influxes of tourists. We drove all the way to Buffalo (looks like a lot of new high-rise buildings in downtown Buffalo; it’s been many years since I was there), and then straight over the Peace Bridge into Canada. It was my first time driving into Canada in several decades, the first time I needed a passport to do so, but it was an easy crossing. We drove up to Niagara Falls, Ontario, and had a wonderful time walking around under a brilliant blue sky, seeing the Falls from the proper side. For all the warnings of a tourist avalanche, it wasn’t terribly crowded; no jostling as we walked around, easy driving to a parking lot. Ho-hum in terms of the planned emergency. As to the Falls themselves, I was a tour guide at Niagara Falls for two summers during my college years, so I remembered all the facts and figures, but none of that truly describes the experience of actually seeing them. The thousands of gallons of water flowing every second, from the bright indigo blue of the upper river to the green-blue of the lower river, the constant roar, the ever-present column of mist (which, on this windless day, stood straight up, obscuring as little of the view as possible). We also saw the no-longer-quite-so-new-but-still-new-to-us zip line down from the rim of the gorge on the Canadian side, and the new Maid of the Mist boats (they’re using fairly wide catamaran hulls now; we remembered the monohulls). It was a lovely visit. Then we took a quick look into Casino Niagara, and mourned the Maple Leaf Village shopping mall it replaced. It’s a casino, nothing much. We didn’t play.

Then we crossed back into the States via the Rainbow Bridge. Again, a fairly rapid crossing, despite the more modern security procedures. And we headed to Goat Island (the big island that separates the American Falls from the Horseshoe, or Canadian, Falls). If I’m recalling correctly, they’ve changed the flow of car traffic around the island from clockwise to mostly counter-clockwise. We didn’t need to look over the edge into the gorge, but did want to visit Three Sisters Islands, on the south side of Goat Island, sticking out into the river. They are still wonderfully small, mostly undeveloped, close to the water, and far from the bulk of tourists. But we noticed a disappointing development, emblematic of certain changes in the world: when we lived there, the little islands had a mostly unpaved path (with paved bridges between them) and nothing blocking the feel that this was completely natural, including the ability to walk to the water’s edge and put one’s hand in the upper Niagara River. Now, however, those paths are completely paved or tiled, and fences have been built all along them, to prevent people from reaching the river. Is it our hyper-litigious society? Or our obsessive need to protect others from themselves? Whatever it is, we both found it very disappointing. Nevertheless, the environment—so close to the roar of the cataracts just above the falls, the water, and the water fowl enjoying themselves—was a truly restful oasis so close to the hyper-commercialized tourist mecca.

Leaving Niagara Falls, Laurie surprised me by stopping at a historical marker along the road (that’s something I would do, but not the old Laurie; she’s stepping out of her shell and trying new things this year). The Old Stone Chimney stands by the Niagara Scenic Parkway, and though the chimney dates to the 1700s, I didn’t recall ever having seen it. Well, it turns out it’s been moved… three times, since it was built. It moved to its current location in 2015, well after the last time I was in the neighborhood. We stopped at Kelly’s Country Store on Grand Island, a memory from when we lived in the neighborhood. So many of the decorations are the same as they were way back then. And of course, we had to buy some sponge candy.

Then it was on to Beth and Tammy’s house, our hosts for the next two nights. Beth is one of my friends from my high school years, from our temple youth group. It’s wonderful to have people (not relatives) who we’ve known so long, and who knew us back then. It was comfortable while being new.

Sunday morning, we had breakfast with one of Laurie’s friends from the neighborhood, who I’d not met before; very nice. One flaw: the waitress asked if I wanted two or three pancakes. I said three. But she had neglected to tell just how big the pancakes were. I ate a few bites of the third just because leaving it untouched felt wrong. But two were actually a bit more than enough. Then we drove around, just drove, looking at the house we lived in, the high school we attended, the neighborhood we lived in, houses friends had lived in, and so on. Constant comments of “so-and-so lived there,” and “that wasn’t there before.” A wonderful several hours of nostalgia.

And then, because we had some time—and because I hadn’t been there since long before my books were published—we went to the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site. For those who don’t know the story: President William McKinley was shot in Buffalo while visiting the Pan-American Exposition in 1901. Vice President Roosevelt rushed to his side, but was told McKinley was going to recover, so he returned to his family—vacationing in eastern New York—to calm public fears. A week later, McKinley took a turn for the worst, and died while Roosevelt was rushing back to Buffalo. So Roosevelt was sworn in as the 25th president in the Ainsley Wilcox mansion in Buffalo, one of the few inaugurations to take place outside the national capitol. The historic site is the building where Roosevelt took the oath of office, and where he stayed for a couple of days. But he never owned it, never lived in it. So it’s a museum of the era, with an overview of the Pan-American Exposition and the inauguration. A good museum (except that my books were not in evidence in the gift shop).

After the museum, we drove about a mile up Delaware Avenue to visit President Millard Fillmore’s grave site. Also within the fence are the graves of his two children and his two wives (his first wife, Abigail, died a month after they moved out of the White House; five years later, he married Caroline).

The weather, I have to note, on both Saturday and Sunday was absolutely spectacular: comfortably spring-like temperatures under a blue sky with nary a cloud in sight. Unfortunately, the weather chose not to align with the eclipse, of which, more anon.

After our day of touring Buffalo, we returned to Beth and Tammy’s house for dinner with more old friends: Alec and Beverley joined us. We spent hours just reveling in each others’ presence, reminiscing about the past and catching up on each others’ presents. It was a wonderful, warm feeling. And that warmth, mind you, was not brought on by dinner. However, dinner was authentic Buffalo chicken wings (note: not Buffalo-style, but actual Buffalo chicken wings. That’s the one thing I’m a bit of a food snob about, but eating those wings again reminds me that that snobbishness is justified. Yum! [And there were left-overs, so they rode with me all through the eclipse journey of the next day, and thence home on Tuesday, and they served as dinner Tuesday night. One again, YUM!).

The weather predictions (and I stayed up with Beth, watching the weather forecast yet again, comparing it with the forecasts on my phone) were disappointing. Buffalo was expected high and low clouds, and I was determined to see the eclipse. So Monday morning, Laurie and I left quite early, about 8:30, and headed east and then north, on a quest to get out from under the cloud cover in time to see the eclipse.

We scurried across the state on I-90, back the way we’d come (again, noting all the “extreme eclipse traffic” signs without actually seeing many vehicles on the roads), and then turned north into new territory, up I-81. Thence to US-11, taking us along the northern edge of New York State. I’d never been to that part of the state before, rushing through little towns, trying to find clear sky. All along the way, there were people sitting in their driveways, or in parking lots, or parks: individuals, families, large gatherings, all to experience the eclipse. Seeing that was wonderful.

The entire day, we were under thin clouds, but aimed at a small band of clear blue sky off at the horizon. As far as we drove, that unclouded blue never expanded, and a few minutes before 3:00, I accepted defeat, and we pulled off the road in Mooers, New York (which was named for Revolutionary War and War of 1812 veteran, Benjamin Mooers [who had been born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, which is where Laurie used to live]). But I grumped a little bit, so we decided to drive on another ten minutes, and finally wound up (still under those high, thin clouds), in a McDonalds parking lot just outside of Champlain, New York (according to my cell phone, at 44 degrees, 58 minutes, 54 seconds north by 73 degrees, 27 minutes, 38 seconds west, looking west-southwest about 253 degrees). I put aside my grumpiness with the clouds and just experienced the event. And what an experience it was!

The eclipse-viewing glasses did what they were supposed to, letting me stare at the slowly shrinking sun. And then came the moment of totality, and I took off the glasses to stare at it. I’m sure you’ve seen hundreds of pictures of the event. I didn’t bother taking any; I was too busy experiencing it. And it was everything I’d hoped for. We even saw a few stars during the darkness! Then the Moon continued to move, the Sun came back, and I put the glasses back on to bask in it for another 15 or 30 minutes. Now, I think I’m going to have to find another total solar eclipse with a perfectly clear sky, just to completely experience the darkness and the corona. But this was awfully close. Laurie asked me to describe it, and I was torn between “transcendent,” “cosmic,” and “stellar.” All I know is that it was worth all the driving we’d done, and all the driving yet to come.

Eventually, we put ourselves back together, and pulled back onto the road. We’d made contact with Julie and Carl, and planned to meet up with them for dinner on our way home. We drove to Lake Champlain (I’d only seen it once, a long time ago, from the Vermont side), crossed over into Vermont, and then headed south. Our GPS navigation system warned us not to get on I-89, suggesting instead some smaller roads that would make for a faster trip. If Waze was correct, the cars on I-89 must have been moving backward. We crawled south through a very pretty Vermont on a bunch of one-lane-each-way roads. We climbed one massive mountain on Vermont-17, which I’ve only now realized brought us to the Appalachian Gap. And still later, there was one stretch of Vermont-100 which took us 45 minutes to travel the seven miles from Granville to Rochester, during which time it got dark. Eventually, we made it to Julie and Carl’s house an hour or more after they expected us. But, wonderful friends that they are, they fed us a wonderfully prepared turkey dinner, gave us beverages and dessert, and then kicked us out after an hour, because we had more traffic to come. On a normal day, the 150 miles from their house to Laurie’s would take two and a half hours to cover; it took us four and a half. All of that traffic that all of the signs had warned us about Saturday and early Monday all appeared immediately after the eclipse. It was insane. Apparently every car in registered in Massachusetts and Rhode Island had traveled to Vermont to see the eclipse, and they were all on the road home with us. But as I said, it was totally worth it.

I slept the sleep of the dead Monday night at Laurie’s, before getting a late start home today, and finally arrived in time to eat the chicken wings for dinner.

In terms of eclipse watching, my choice to go to Buffalo was probably not the best I could have made. But combined with the sight-seeing, nostalgia, and time with friends, it was the ideal way to see the Great Solar Eclipse of 2024.