We were pleasantly surprised to find that despite all the hype/warnings about heavy traffic being expected, the drive from Early to Lampasas took under an hour and a half. We had finally arrived at our "first destination" in one piece!
For those that don't know, our reason for making Lampasas the first scheduled destination on our Trek was an eclipse-viewing meet-up arranged through the Travato Owners and Wannabees (TOWB) Facebook Group that we (Christine) are members of. Forty-one Travatos (carrying 70-ish people and 30-ish pets) were scheduled to attend.
(The meet-up logo was designed by our talented organizer, Marilyn.)
The streets of Lampasas were amazingly deserted when we arrived on Sunday. It appeared that porta-potties had been set up in every spare parking lot in their historic downtown area in anticipation of some huge crowds that had yet to appear. We arrived a few hours before we could check-in at our venue, so our plan was stop by Wal-Mart to top off our gas (in case there was a shortage when the predicted hordes arrived) and pick up groceries, and then see some of the sights that Christine had researched in the historic area. On the way to Wal-Mart, we noticed what appeared to be a farmer's market set up in one of the parking lots where we'd be headed, so we parked around there on our way back. (We got a little turned around trying to find the market from our eventual street-parking spot, and a friendly family noticed and helped us out; everyone we've met so far in Texas has been ultra-friendly!)
The building ended up being the county courthouse, and not only was there a farmer's market but they were also setting up for a pre-eclipse concert/party later that evening.
As we were perusing the booths, we were approached by a man who said he was with a local news station, wanted to know if we were there for the eclipse, and asked if we'd be willing to be interviewed on camera. "Uh...we guess so?" The interview lasted a few minutes, and he asked us our names, where we were from, how we chose Lampasas (so we had a chance to talk about our Travato meet-up; he was particularly interested to hear whether the meet-up was just for Californians and we got to tell him that we had folks coming from all across the country), and our journey to get there. We didn't have the presence of mind to ask which news station he worked for, but we eventually found a copy of the story online at https://www.kwtx.com/2024/04/08/lampasas-county-chamber-commerce-hosts-weekend-events-eclipse-crowds/?outputType=amp We're not sure how long it'll be available there, so at the risk of violating some sort of copyright we downloaded a copy and are putting the applicable segment here for posterity.
Only a few seconds of our interview made it into the actual broadcast (and unfortunately everything about the meet-up ended up on the cutting room floor), but now we've had our few seconds of fame in Lampasas! 😜
After the farmer's market, we took a little walking tour around the historic area to view some of its historic buildings:
and murals.
(That last one being relatively new, obviously 😉.)
We also explored their outdoor sculpture park, which kind of reminded us of the one we visited in Hakone, Japan.
Our favorite pieces include "Starburst" (because we love kinetic sculptures):
And this piece whose real name we can't remember, but we choose to call "Woman In Love With Eclipse"
On the way to the venue, we stopped by a park to photograph the World's Largest Spur (because how can you visit Lampasas and
not?)
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We arrived at the venue a little before 3 pm. This is what the main gate looks like (you can see some Travatos already on the other side), but none of us actually used it because one member had the foresight to ask "has anyone actually measured the gate to make sure our Travatos will fit under it?" after seeing a photo online. We all used a secondary gate a few yards down the road, which has no archway over it.
We had the choice of parking in the "official" parking lot which has little/no shade, or in the tree area visible above, and we chose the latter. We found out during check-in that there had been a wedding at the venue the day before and they left the fancy chairs/tablecloths set up for us so things were nicer than we had been expecting.
And of course, it wouldn't be a "real" Texas ranch without some cows.
The activity the first night was just socializing in the Barn Reception Area (pictured above) at 7 pm, where we chatted with our first set of fellow TOWB members. The experience was a little surreal (finally meeting in-person folks whose posts you've read enough to feel like you kind of know them - and that you may have even "conversed" with through comments - but may or may not bear any actual resemblance to their Facebook photos so they don't quite seem like the people you've imaged you've been talking to all this time) and lots of fun - and educational as well. We came away with a couple of extra apps that we "needed" to install on our phones for our Trek.
When the location of the meet-up was first selected last year, Texas was predicted as having one of the best chances of clear weather for the eclipse. A week or two before the event, though, the forecast changed - originally calling for thunderstorms in Lampasas on eclipse-day and then changing to just being overcast for most of the day, with thunderstorms starting that evening. Needless to say, this caused a bit of anxiety among the group. Tom took and posted this photo to the TOWB group at 8 am on eclipse day, with the caption "8 am at the Lampasas, TX Eclipse Meet-up. We have plenty of bluebonnets and Travatos - now all we need is some actual SUN 😉🤞.":
Ah yes, the venue had patches of bluebonnets! Here's what they look like, when you're not flying by them at 65 mph:
He also took some photos of the lots full of Travatos:
But the best such photo came from fellow member Duke, who took this with his drone (you can see our T42 hiding in the trees in the upper right hand corner):
We headed over to pick up our eclipse glasses a little before noon. Tom was originally not going to attempt to take photos except during totality - when no special filters are required to prevent damage to your equipment - but since there were going to be extra eclipse glasses available he decided to dissect a pair in order to MacGyver some filters for his phone and Nikon walkabout lenses.
Then it was just a matter of waiting for the eclipse to start at 12:18:
The sun proceeded to play a game of peek-a-boo through the clouds for the next few hours. At times it would be completely overcast, but occasionally the sun would shine fully or partially through - adding to the overall suspense and excitement.
As 1:35 (and our anticipated 4 minutes, 27 seconds of totality) drew nearer, two banks of clouds threatened to criss-cross over the sun at the key moment. It soon became apparent that the area was getting darker not just because of the thickening clouds overhead, but because totality was about to occur. We've read/heard about how dark it gets during a total eclipse, but experiencing it is really something else altogether!
Perhaps more importantly, the sun valiantly managed to poke through a few times, rewarding everyone with views and Tom with a few photos with his unfiltered zoom lens. In one of his favorites, he was able to capture flares (or more correctly, "prominences") around the edges.
His absolute favorite was arguably snapped a second or two past the point when he should have switched back to a filtered lens.
While a cloudless day would have been ideal, we were both thrilled with the weather we got (since things could have been
much worse).
In a somewhat failed experiment, we had also set up a phone camera on exposure-locked time-lapse in the parking lot before the eclipse. Unfortunately, iPhones time compress all time-lapses to a total running time of about 30 seconds, so the effective frame rate over the 3.5 hours of recording ended up being something like 3.7 frames per minute - so totality lasts about 0.5 second in this video. But if you scrub through it slowly, you can get an idea of how dark totality got around the 15 second mark in the video.
(UPDATE 4/10) Here's a trimmed and re-time-stretched version of just the minutes around totality that should be a little less painful to watch.
Dinner that night was catered BBQ (thanks to unexpected contributions from Winnebago, when they heard about the meet-up), but the menu didn't include a real vegetable (and almost no meatless selections; this is Texas, after all). Christine and a couple of the other (pseudo) vegetarians had been sub-organizing a side dish for themselves, and Marilyn asked if they could maybe come up with something for the whole group too. Eventually, a variation of "cowboy caviar" was decided upon (we had the joy of having to step over the two cases of canned corn and 3 bottles of dressing for the dish, which were stored between our two front seats, the entire trip out to Lampasas - and were so glad to finally be able to unload them on arrival 😉) and we joined Karen and Amanda shortly after the eclipse to prepare the dish before dinner. It was a big hit!
The catered meal was unexpectedly good as well. It sounded extremely similar to what Tom had had in Austin on a business trip when the locals took them out to the "best BBQ in town" - smoked brisket and sausage with potato salad and beans - which he didn't care for (a mix of dry and fatty meat). But this brisket was melt-in-your mouth tender, with the fat not being overbearing, and the sausages were well balanced as well. A leftover container made its way into the T42 fridge the next morning 🤤.
We chatted with a different set of TOWB members during dinner.
After dinner there was a group photo:
followed by more socializing, and then groups of us played a dice game called CLR (Center, Left, Right). There were originally supposed to be gambling and non-gambling tables, but because of the number of people playing they both ended up being gambling tables - which worked out okay, because Tom ended up winning at our table and left $24 richer.
We had a great experience at our first meet-up, and were sad to have leave early the next morning for our next destination.
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