Editor’s note: This story is part of The Dallas Morning News’ coverage of the 2024 total solar eclipse. For more, visit dallasnews.com/eclipse.
The forecast showed little respite for North Texas. Meteorologists cautioned for days about poor visibility across Dallas-Fort Worth during its precious time in the path of totality. While some solar eclipse hopefuls stuck out the morning’s cloud cover and were rewarded with open skies, others couldn’t bear the thought of missing a clear viewing of the moon obscuring the sun for nearly four minutes. So they headed northeast and chased the sun.
In Royse City, some thirty miles from Dallas, eclipse chasers leaned against their cars at Buc-ee’s under cloudy skies as they ate breakfast and strategized where they’d travel in the coming hours to get the best sight.
Sipping a Dr Pepper Icee at 10:30 a.m., Aaron Steele mapped out his last leg. Steele, 40, flew from Tucson, Arizona to Dallas to see the eclipse. But when projections of visibility soured, a friend invited him to his home in Sulphur Springs, about 75 miles northeast of Dallas.
He and his two friends snagged a deal on a rental car back in October for $113, hundreds less than the going rates days ahead of the eclipse.
Siblings Ethan Vaughan, 23, James Vaughan, 28, and Lisa Vaughan, 24, hadn’t decided where they’d settle. They had planned to go to Waco but were pivoting in order to find the bluest skies. The California siblings road-tripped from Oakland and Santa Barbara in a plasma yellow pearl Subaru.
“It’s such a rare thing,” James said between bites of a breakfast taco. “I felt I wouldn’t regret it.”
Driving east along Interstate 30, blue, orange and white wildflowers dot the highway as the sky progressively cleared. In New Boston, a city more than 150 miles from Dallas, more than one hundred eclipse watchers gathered from Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and France, ultimately deciding the town of 4,500 would be their best bet.
In red camping chairs off U.S. Highway 82, three generations of women awaited totality. “Hello Darkness My Old Friend,” read their bright scarlet shirts.
The grandmother, mother and daughter, each named Mahaley, drove across the state line from Oil City and Anacoco, Louisiana, to escape overcast weather in the eclipse’s path.
“Mother’s getting wise in years and she wanted a lifetime experience with them,” said the eldest, Mahaley Pershing, 68.
Ever since watching the moon landing as a teenager, Clay Duos has been interested in what’s above us. With the path of totality four and a half hours from his house in Eunice, Louisiana, and a place to stay with his sibling in Shreveport, Duos went north.
“I’m 69 years old, I’ll never get another chance to see the eclipse,” Duos said.
Cutting the dark lenses of solar eclipse glasses to fit his camera, Duos tried to rig a film to capture the waning sun at a picnic table at an outdoor pavilion. “I hope I don’t go blind,” he joked as he tried to tape two lenses together.
In their cooler, they had Moon Pies, Milky Ways and a full bag of Sun Chips.
As the light was faded with less than 10 minutes until the total eclipse, Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side Of The Moon,” rang out of a Toyota Tundra pickup. Cooks and servers from Maria’s Tex-Mex Restaurant, wearing blue aprons, faced the park of a hundred watchers and looked to the sky. Soon people too grew still, with their necks craned up.
The Tundra no longer played Pink Floyd. It was almost entirely quiet. As the moon completely covered the sun around 1:45 p.m., the park erupted in muted cheers and laughter. Lamp posts turned on and traffic lights shined against the dark blue backdrop.
A minute into the newfound darkness, watchers began to turn their gaze away from the sky and toward each other. One couple nodded in awe, another pooled their hands into one lap.
A young couple traveling the U.S. from the French Riviera, Nayah Bernardi and Jean Felix Daniel, had planned to see the eclipse from Dallas. But they had flown and driven so far to see totality. With the threat of poor visibility, they drove northeast. Bernardi and Daniel Facetimed their parents throughout the four minutes.
“It was scary, but at the same time, it’s amazing,” Bernardi, 19, said. “This is a thing I’ve never seen before. The birds stop singing.”
For a few moments, a quiet town became even more quiet. A mother wiped streaming tears from her six-year-old daughter’s eyes. How the darkness came so quickly, the mother explained about her daughter’s fear.
As the day’s light resurfaced, minutes away from 2 p.m., engines began to roar as cars drove away from the park’s lot. The watchers moved coolers and foldable chairs into trunks. Mothers chased small children. Lori Springer, a vice president of business development at State Bank, tallied up the few remaining memorabilia t-shirts of the 400 they ordered.
Above the horizon, tiny flashes came down from a lone paraglider photographing the landscape beneath them.
Duos didn’t get the camera to work, too much light was seeping in. He took a few photos on his iPhone as the sky returned from darkness to light. He figures he’ll find professional photos online, but the pictures don’t matter at the end of the day. He saw it with his own eyes, in a row of camping chairs beside his wife and his siblings.
“It was just beautiful,” Duos said.
