This was our first participation in the Choctawhatcee Estuary Family Festival. The event was held in Rocky Bayou State Park. For those of you who have never visited it you are missing a great little park. It has a lot of trees….a lot of trees. But, during a recon visit several weeks ago we were able to find an area with a view of the sky free of the trees.
We arrived as early as the park would let us in and setup the pop-up for shade and started setting up telescopes for a day of solar viewing. Frank Atchison, Bob Schritter and Tom Haugh set up scopes with white light filters, while Dave Halupowski and Dennis Hausch tag teamed Dennis’ H-alpha scope. The sky was solid clear and the weather was perfect. There were a couple of sunspot groups; not as prominent as the week before, but still a good view. There were also several prominences visible in the H-alpha scope.
The tree free area was just outside of the main festival area and in the direction of some of the parking so we had a steady stream of guest observers throughout the day. The event sponsors were also running a scavenger hunt of sorts and we had decided to participate. That meant the contestants came looking for us. It proved a fortuitous choice, as the sun ended up totally blocked from view; it just wasn’t the trees.
About 11:00 some clouds were visible to the west and by 12:00 the sky was overcast. But the attendees kept coming to get their scavenger card stamped. We met a lot of new people, handed out every one of our club flyers, made a bunch of new friends and met some possible new members.
We would like to thank the Department of Environmental Protections Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park, the Friends of the Emerald Coast State Parks, Inc. and the Mattie M. Kelly Cultural & Environmental Institute of Northwest Florida State College for inviting us to their festival. Even though the sun was blocked by clouds most of the day, we consider this a successful event and we had a lot of fun. We will be looking forward to next years festival.