As we all wind down from the excitement of Monday’s total solar eclipse, I thought I would weigh in on what worked, what didn’t, and what was fun and what wasn’t.

For more than a year, Tulsa photographer Robert Stinson and I planned to travel to the Moon.

The drive from Ada to Moon, Oklahoma, a town that is little more than a wide spot in the road and a mark on the map, took about three hours, about what we expected.

We got an early start, so we were just the second vehicle to arrive in Moon, but as the time of totality got closer, more people arrived.

As some had predicted, we had clouds for most of the day in Moon, but that didn’t squelch the mood at all. In fact, the crowd at Moon grew and became more festive, almost like a block party.

A Native American woman held a sage smudging ceremony.

A man played a quartz chakra bowl, telling me, “this is a chakra bowl for the third eye chakra, for balance and harmony.”

A family showed up with blankets, then played baseball on the gravel road to pass the time as we waited.

As the totality arrived, we had cloud cover, so the experience of the moment became the sudden, profound darkness and quiet. The clouds parted briefly, so we did get to see the totality for maybe 30 seconds.

All that, rather than the actual eclipse, ended up being the best part of the day, and on a bigger scale, the shared experience of millions of people became the most memorable part of the Great North American Eclipse.

On the drive back to Ada, we experienced a 45-minute traffic stoppage south of Antlers, which was exactly what happened to Abby and me on the drive home from the 2017 eclipse. It was the only negative thing about the whole day, and it really wasn’t a big deal.

Overall, the trip to the moon was a great experience.

You can read more about the Great North American Total Eclipse on my travel site here (link.)

To paraphrase Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, “That’s one small step for Moon, one giant leap for Moonkind.”