To really get the full experience of Monday's solar eclipse, you had to get yourself inside the path of totality.
Fortunately, the moon's shadow passed over several Ohio state parks, which attracted eclipse chasers from across Ohio and all around the world.
"We have been preparing for this event for years," said Natalie Foos, Land and Water Resources Administrator for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Those preparations all came down to just about three minutes of totality at Delaware State Park.
Sharon Goldfarb came from Hilliard with her husband, Lew, and their dog, Sadie.
"We decided to make the trip from Hilliard up here because 48 seconds wasn't enough. We wanted to see almost three minutes of this total solar eclipse," Goldfarb said.
Another eclipse chaser, Sean Lally, is a physics professor from Maryland. This is his third total solar eclipse.
He described the phenomenon as a religious experience.
"It's just an amazing thing to see," Lally said. "The sun is blotted out circularly, perfectly in the sky for an incredibly predictable amount of minutes and seconds. It's kind of amazing."
People from as far away as India came to be a part of the celestial celebrations at the park.
"We have folks from Texas, Oklahoma, the Carolinas, Virginia," Foos said. "It's been really incredible that all these people from across the United States and other countries have come here to join us in little old Ohio."
The park offered special programing Monday, facilitated by ODNR naturalist Jeff Large, who encouraged young people to listen for changes in wildlife during the eclipse.
"So the birds should stop kind of singing and maybe the frogs and other things start coming out," Large said.
But it almost didn't happen. Like much of the state, Delaware County has seen a lot of rain in recent days. The lake remained high on Monday, with the beach completely submerged.
But that didn't stop eclipse revelers from having a good time, some of them grilling out and others playing a few rounds of cornhole.
As the sun continued to disappear behind the moon, the light dimmed and the temperature noticeably dropped.
The gathered crowd let out a burst of applause as totality arrived. People lowered their sun shades and rushed to snap images of the sun's corona, when it came into full view.
"It was incredible," said Jake Buszek, of Columbus. "It was very, very cool just to see, watching the light go away and seeing what looked like the sunset around the entire horizon."
David Ross, of Lewis Center, mused about the last total solar eclipse in Ohio in 1806.
"I was trying to imagine myself being here 218 years ago when it last happened. And just to think what I would have felt if I saw that, like I thought the world was coming to an end," Ross said.
The eclipse was a break from the noise of modern life for Felicia Alexander. She traveled from Columbus to see her first total solar eclipse with her daughter, Milan.
"This was the most enjoyable—no politics, no nothing. People coming together. This was the American dream. This is what we waited for," Alexander said.
Everyone gathered for a few fleeting moments—all coming together to simply gaze into the sky and wonder.
"You feel like you're part of a global community of everybody wanting to be a part of something," said Cathy Wood, of Lancaster. "It feels like it's a bonding type of event because everybody's sharing in the same moment."
"I wish my parents could have seen it, because it truly was a once in a lifetime thing," Ross said.
