Lights, Camera, Eclipse

Clark Lovelace was a little skeptical when a package with a pair of cardboard eclipse glasses showed up in his mailbox two years ago. He put them on, but couldn’t see a thing through the opaque black film, so off they came. Inside the envelope, he found a cryptic letter offering discounts on bulk orders of eclipse glasses.

“It said ‘You may not be aware but you are in the path of totality,’” recalled Lovelace, the head of the Transylvania County Tourism Authority in Brevard, North Carolina.

An eclipse, he thought. Cool. And he tucked the envelope away in his desk. But the eclipse started making cameos nearly everywhere Lovelace went.

“At a tourism conference someone says ‘Hey man have you heard about this eclipse thing?’ and then someone else chimes and in and says ‘Yeah, I heard to was going to be huge,’” Lovelace said.

And so unfolded a series of epiphanies that the tourism stars had aligned over his corner of the Smokies, placing Brevard at ground zero for the event of the century.

“Every time, how big it is going to be has grown in my mind,” Lovelace said. 

Meanwhile, rangers in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park were having a similar revelation. A little Googling last year revealed the park was being billed as a top viewing venue in the nation.

“I assumed the country would go into eclipse mania, but only in the weeks leading up to the eclipse,” said Clay Jordan, the Smokies associate superintendent.

But when the park went live with tickets to a special Clingman’s Dome viewing event, the 1,325 slots sold out in just four minutes. It was a harbinger of what might happen once the eclipse rises to national consciousness.

“It is sort of like the Power Ball. Most people don’t follow it until it gets up to about $400 million,” said Nick Breedlove, director of the tourism authority in Jackson County, North Carolina, one of the lucky communities in the path of totality.

For mountain tourist towns that lie in the path totality, the Great American Eclipse is a gift from the heavens.

“I said ‘Thank you God to let this come to Rabun County,’” said Teka Earnhardt, tourism director in Rabun County, Georgia.

The trick now is leveraging the eclipse trippers into repeat visitors for years to come.

“There are going to be little towns just loving this influx,” said John Innes, director of the Partners of Cherokee National Forest Interpretive Association in Tennessee. “It will be a really big boon to them and a chance for to make an impression.”

That’s exactly what the tourism communities in the Smokies are hoping for.

“People are coming for the eclipse but we want them to experience what we have to offer here—the waterfalls, the hikes, the craft breweries, farm to table restaurants—and we think they’ll fall in love with the area,” Breedlove said. “I think the economic impact will be huge for Jackson County.”

By late March, 25 percent of the overnight lodging was already booked for eclipse weekend, he said.

“We don’t have enough hotel rooms in Jackson County to accommodate everyone. They are booking up like crazy,” Breedlove said.

In North Georgia, state park campgrounds and cabins sold out a year in advance.

“They started selling out before they realized the event was even coming,” said Candace Lee, president of the Towns County Chamber of Commerce.

Reaching for the Stars

While millions of Americans will journey to totality, the 70-mile-wide path passes over a lot of territory—12 states to be exact—to catch the sky action. But with some creative event planning and clever marketing, mountain towns across the Smokies have jockeyed their way to the top of national eclipse destinations.

“It’s just rolling,” said Earnhardt, who’s leading the ‘OutASight’ eclipse travel campaign in Rabun County. “It is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for most people, and we are trying to make this a memory for people who come experience it with us.”

From diners and campgrounds to B&Bs and golf resorts, the community has piled on with a slew of events, specials and packages.

“We said ‘If all these people are going to be here all weekend, we need to give them things to do centered around the eclipse.’ It has definitely taken on a life of its own,” said Earnhardt. 

Earnhardt spent $10,000 on 10,000 pairs of eclipse glasses, and she’s now hoping it will be enough.

Across the mountains in Sweetwater, Tennessee, the eclipse spirit has also been contagious. 

Merchants are gearing up to sell Moonpies, Blue Moon Beer, Mars Bars and Eclipse chewing gum. Eclipse banners hang from the downtown lampposts and an eclipse festival is in the works.

“It has ballooned into this enormous thing,” said Jessica Morgan, the Sweetwater town clerk. “But we still say the star of the show is the eclipse.”

While the path of totality will just miss Dahlonega, Georgia, the community is rolling out the welcome mat to catch the eclipse overflow.

“They are having fun with it and starting to think up fun packages, like ‘The Day the Lights Went Out in Georgia’ package,” said David Zunker, tourism director of the Dahlonega-Lumpkin Chamber of Commerce.

After Zunker’s own eclipse awakening last year, he relished spreading the news that Dahlonega was “on the cusp of the path of totality.” It had a foreboding ring to it, so he sometimes declared it in an ominous tone just for fun, before explaining that it is a very good thing.

“We are a charming, lovely, delightful town, so we’re telling folks to escape Atlanta and make a weekend out of it,” Zunker said.

A clincher that really makes Dahlonega an eclipse contender is a pre-game astronomy day hosted by the University of Georgia’s Coleman Planetarium—including planetarium shows, eclipse science, history talks and solar telescope viewing. 

“So it’s not just having popcorn and snacks and watching the moon blot out the sun, but it is a legitimate educational experience,” said Zunker.

There’s a big demand for professional and amateur astronomers to serve as resident eclipse experts, from festivals billing astronomy talks to resorts promising star-gazing sessions as part of their packages. 

Members of the Atlanta Astronomy Club have been tapped to appear at an eclipse tailgating party at the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds in Hiwassee.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is training their own legion of college interns to serve as eclipse ambassadors in the park, and the Pisgah Astronomical Research Center has conducted eclipse workshops for teachers in the region. 

More tourist attractions have jumped on the moon shadow bandwagon.

The Great Smoky Mountains Railroad will run an eclipse viewing train. Adventures Unlimited will lead an eclipse rafting trip down the Ocoee River. And Chattooga Belle Farms will turn its rolling fields into a ticketed eclipse party in Long Creek, South Carolina.

“Last summer we had some visitors from England and they said ‘We will see you next August for the big eclipse,’” recalled Libby Imbody, the marketing director for Chattooga Belle.

It was the first they heard of it, but they wasted no time. They quickly scored the web page “solareclipsefest2017” and began planning an on-farm eclipse party.

The agri-tourism site has an orchard distillery, so they rolled out a commemorative Dark Sky Vodka label, commissioned hundreds of eclipse-branded “Shot in the Dark” shot glasses and ordered 5,000 pairs of eclipse glasses.

The eclipse weekend calendar is loaded in Jackson County, North Carolina. Aside from two signature eclipse festivals at public parks, there’s a two-mile Moonlight run and talks by astronomy professors, alongside the outdoor concerts, craft fairs and other events that would normally fill summer weekends in the mountains anyway.

Local microbreweries are coming out with a keepsake eclipse beer. Downtown shops will hold moonlight madness shopping hours. Restaurants will offer specials topped with “sunny side down” eggs. And space-themed movies will play.

Eclipse counters—ticking off the days, hours, minutes and seconds to totality—have popped up on mountain travel web sites everywhere, along with how-to guides for viewing the eclipse.

The top advice: make your plans early.

Despite the best efforts of travel promoters, hapless families who wake up on August 21 and point their car toward the eclipse path could be out of luck. As the clock approaches totality, expect a standstill to set in.

“I am sure that day there will people stopped all over the side of the road,” said Knox Warde, a member of the Asheville Astronomy Club.

Avoid giant Walmart parking lots at all costs, Warde said.

“Once it becomes total eclipse, the huge dawn-to-dusk lights are going to pop on and you won’t see anything,” Warde said.

Warde nearly hopped on a plane to Indonesia to see the last solar eclipse in March 2016.

“If you are lucky you might see it once in a lifetime, but there are people who live for that. They fly all over the world,” Warde said.

With an eclipse on American soil, Warde isn’t taking any chances. Even though his home in Nantahala, North Carolina, lies in totality—he could simply step outside to see the eclipse—he’s heading to the Oregon desert where there’s no risk of rain or clouds.

“It is a crap shoot,” Warde said of the weather here at home.

While the threat of clouds on eclipse day is a taboo subject in these hills, Breedlove looked at the positive side.

“The eclipse will happen rain or shine,” Breedlove said. There’s just no stopping it.