Should I Stay (In) or Go (Out) Now? The Vermont Eclipse Dilemma

The Vermont Eclipse Dilemma: do we leave our houses and go out and enjoy all the eclipse-related festivities? Or do we just stay at home and leave all the events to the 534,873,937 people that are expected to arrive here to visit?  (Not the actual number, but that’s what it feels like according to the media articles!🤣)

In case you weren’t aware, there’s a solar eclipse happening on this coming Monday, April 8, 2024. And we here in northwestern Vermont are right in the path of “totality”. For about 3 minutes on Monday afternoon, the moon will completely block the sun. It’s supposed to be amazing by those who have seen it!

And … ABC News and other sources have declared the Burlington, VT, area to be THE best place in the USA to view the eclipse! 😲🤯😱

Now, the “path of totality” stretches from western Mexico up through Texas, Ohio, and on up through northern New York (including Niagra Falls), northern Vermont and New Hampshire, and then through Maine into New Brunswick and maritime Canada.

Everywhere along that path, hotel and AirBnB rooms sold out months ago. You can’t book any rooms unless you want to pay obscene amounts of money. Events are sold out. Everything’s sold out! People have been planning trips for years, in some cases. And with all the media attention, so many people are expected to drive to the path of totality on Monday.

Here’s the thing… we here in Vermont were expecting to see some visitors, but in early April it’s usually cloudy and rainy. The early predictions were for all of that. If you really wanted to see the eclipse, the smart approach was to head to Texas where the chances of sun were SIGNIFICANTLY higher!

Still, we have prepared. Our schools are closed on Monday. Many businesses have encouraged people who can work remotely to do so. Everyone has been encouraged to do all their grocery shopping before the weekend. Big signs on the highways are telling everyone to STAY HOME if at all possible!

You see, we’re a rural state. We only have around 646,000 people in total.  And about 150,000 of those people live up in the northwest corner when I live. We have only two Interstate highways: I-91 running up the east side, and I-89 going diagonally northwest across the top half of the state.

Outside of those two interstates, almost all of our other roads are your regular old two lane roads (one going one direction, one going the other). Sure, we sometimes might have sections with two lanes on both sides. Sometimes we’ll throw in a passing lane or a turning lane in the middle. We might even have small stretches of divided highway.

But most of our roads are small. We don’t need them to be huge.

And so… what happens when 10s of thousands - or maybe 100s of thousands! - of people come up to visit? On roads that are really more for hundreds of people? (If that!)

Yeah… that’s why we closed our schools and told everyone to stay home!

And of course, with the weather being as unpredictable as it is, current forecasts for Texas are that it will be CLOUDY on Monday! 🤦‍♂️

And we… are expected to have bright, sunny, clear skies! 🤯

Hence the news from ABC and other places that Vermont is the place to be! 

Add to this the fact that we’re only a few hours drive for people down in Massachusetts and even Pennsylvania and New York… there truly are 100s of thousands of people who could make the drive.

So we’re ready… we have so many different events planned. Restaurants that usually are closed on Monday are all opening up. Massive events are planned for the Burlington waterfront, the airport, and in so many other places. We’ll welcome you all up here warmly!

But for Vermonters we do have the dilemma… do we actually go out and join in any of the festivities? Or do we leave those for the visitors … and just watch the eclipse from our yards? 

Either way… we’ve got our eclipse glasses and we’re excited to experience this once-in-a-lifetime event!

Bring it on!

P.S. Good luck to all the visitors trying to get home on Monday after the eclipse… did I mention about our small roads and only two Interstate highways?  Have you considered staying until Tuesday? 😀