Friends, an Eclipse, and Bears, Oh My!!

Dave, Dick, Pat, Mary Lou, Betsy and Dan enjoy salmon at Park's Peak

With the bathroom complete and the renovations on hold, it was time to celebrate!  We invited the Browns, Kuklentz and Pat Kelly to come and help us celebrate.  The fact that a once in a lifetime eclipse was scheduled for the weekend only made the celebration more special.

We were ready to "show off" the house and our hard work during the last 9 months!  The former owners had literally left everything in the house.  Dozens of trips to the landfill, and several visits by Habitat, Goodwill and Hickory Nut Community Partners were required to clean out the house!  When you own a vacation home, it tends to be the place where old furniture "goes to die".  Deb helped many pieces find their place in furniture heaven (or probably hell!!).  The only upholstered piece we kept was the sofa.  Deb became a regular at the Habitat Store, Sleepy Poet, and other antique and consignment stores. She refinished several pieces and painted the bedrooms. She ordered quilts from Black Mountain Quilts.  This along with Dave's new bathroom (see Blog post #1), and we were ready to enjoy the house with friends!

The Den

The Master Bedroom

The Loft

The Upstairs' Bedroom

A school desk from a 1 room school in Red Bank SC where my mother attended is in the corner

The New Bathroom

While cleaning and getting ready for our friends' arrival, Dave pressure washed the porches and Deb washed all of the sheets.  This resulted in our depleting the well's reserve and our first guests regularly ran out of water!!  Flushing and showers had to be rationed and dishes washed by hand.  They were really good sports about it!  Pat was the only one who had visited before and on her first visit, we had a power outage.  We laughed and said she had endured no power and no water, and a frozen toothbrush.... what would be next?

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we enjoyed playing card and dice games, explored Hendersonville, 2 wineries, and dined in a restaurant in Asheville that was made out of shipping containers.  Dave grilled salmon Sunday night.  We were delighted when our friends were as excited as we are at each sunset and regularly stopped what they were doing to go out on the deck and take yet another picture of the ever changing view! 

We had heard dire predictions of traffic for the Eclipse and almost decided to stay at Park's Peak to observe it as the eclipse would be 99.4% observable from our deck.  But this would be our last chance to observe a full eclipse and we decided to leave for Clemson where the zone of totality would pass directly over us. We left nearly at dawn, and arrived about 9:30  encountering very little traffic but almost full parking lots!!  The eclipse would not occur until 2:37 pm.  so we set up "shop" in the shade of a large oak on the grounds of the library and Innovation Center.  Quickly the field filled up and we enjoyed playing bridge, our picnic, and meeting folks from all over the United States who had come to Clemson to enjoy the view.  As the moon began to cover the sun, a few whispy clouds came by, but the totality was clear and we were glad we had endured the heat to experience the total eclipse!  The difference in light between 99% and 100% was literally like night and day!!

Waiting for the Eclipse to begin

First view!

A big screen kept us updated

The oak tree became a myriad of "pin hole cameras" creating interesting shadows

Dave tries to use his glasses to take a picture with his phone!

At 100% we did not need our glasses

But soon they were again required

After the Eclipse, Dave and I wandered around Clemson and reminiscenced  about our college days:  having a drink in "The Study Hall", driving by our old apartment (maybe, we weren't sure!), buying Eclipse T shirts downtown, and ending at Gene and Marty Copenhaver's house for supper!  What a delightful time we had with them, catching up on family, RV trips and enjoying each other's company!

On the way back to Park's Peak about 9:30 pm., we got a text from Dan and Betsy  that they were just then getting home.  While we avoided traffic, they could not!!  Even taking a circuitous route to minimize traveling on I-85, the 3 hour trip took more than 6!! 

The next morning while cleaning and packing up, a bear got into David's open jeep and pulled out a bag of kitchen garbage.  We saw him about 20 yards away in the woods having the "last" meal of the weekend!  Unfortunately, we could not get close enough for good pictures and we were not about to disturb him!!

What shall we name him?  Yogi?  Boo Boo?