Midwest Total Solar Eclipse Trip Slideshow - 2024

I didn’t title this slideshow “Total Solar Eclipse” because there aren’t any photos of the eclipse itself. Yes, we enjoyed a glorious eclipse under surprisingly clear skies, but I didn’t bother to photograph it—I did that at the 2017 eclipse. This time I just went to marvel at the event without schleping and fussing with all of the equipment—and to enjoy the Midwest!

As you will see, we didn’t just fly out to the total eclipse path and then fly home. We enjoyed two weeks in parts of the country that we had never visited.

You may recall that we had a spring trip to Death Valley to see wildflowers and see the very rare temporary lake that had covered much of the valley floor. We got home from that trip with just enough time to do laundry and head back out and get to the vicinity of the eclipse path before the big day.

We flew into (and out of) Saint Louis, rented a car, and drove directly to Indianapolis. On the morning of the eclipse we drove to Bloomington, Indiana which was in the center of the path of totality and we had a wonderful afternoon with clear skies among other eclipse gazers. It was especially wonderful because it had rained the day before and was cloudy in the morning.

After the eclipse, we headed south for a city that I had long wanted to visit—Cairo, Illinois (pronounced “kay-row”). Cairo is the southern-most city in Illinois and is located where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi River and was of major importance during the years when river travel was king. The elevation of the city is the lowest in the state and thus the city is entirely surrounded by levees. The area of southern Illinois is know as “Little Egypt” – possibly because of the name of its prominent city and possibly because of the periodic flooding that took place in the region. U.S. Grant built Fort Defiance here in 1862 and the Union sited a navel base here during the Civil War. The government also built a Custom House and U.S. Circuit Court here, so it was once a very important city. Cairo gained literary fame as the destination of Huckleberry Finn and Jim in their bid to win Jim’s freedom—Jim would board a steamboat there to take the Ohio River to the free state of Ohio. Unfortunately, there was fog and Huck and Jim accidentally bypassed Cairo and the Ohio River. Bypassing of the city by railways and highways—and a history of racial violence—caused Cairo to become a near ghost town. But it still has some important buildings and some amazing signs of its important past. Sorry for the long detour into a fairly obscure city—I just wanted to answer the natural question “Why Cairo?”

Next we travelled north through Illinois. We spent a couple of days in Springfield (the capital—remember memorizing them in grammar school?) where we were steeped in Abraham Lincoln lore and stumbled into a tour of an amazing home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We went on to Champagne/Urbana and had a lovely visit with my cousin Melissa and her family. We took a quick side-trip to Danville, Illinois which is where several rail lines intersect, and then headed back to Saint Louis for a few days of sightseeing there and our return home.