Around 6,000 people enjoy eclipse at Thompson Park

WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) - A crowd of about 6,000 people gathered at Thompson Park for Watertown’s “Total Eclipse of the Park” event.

Folks from all over the northeast were there. The anticipation built all afternoon as the crowd grew in size and when totality began, they let it all out with cheers and applause.

“It looks like a diamond now. I’m with my kids and my sister. This is just totally sick,” said Laura Ekblade, who was visiting from Connecticut.

As the moon settled in front of the sun, the boiling excitement of the amassed crowd bubbled over.

“I traveled 6 hours with my family today. It was worth every bit just to see this. Bringing you live from Watertown, New York, thank you guys,” said Avi Rosenthal of New Jersey.

For 3 and a half brief minutes, day turned to night. It was the show everyone came for.

David Young traveled from New York City, meeting friends in Binghamton and then driving up Monday morning. It was his second time seeing a total eclipse.

“It gets dark all of a sudden and the birds start flying out. It’s just such a cool experience seeing it turn to night and then back to day,” he said.

Doug Bayne of New Jersey was also there for his second eclipse.

“After the last eclipse, 2017, I knew exactly where I was going to be on this day,” he said.

Bayne set up a massive telescope, hoping to get great pictures of totality

“It’s hard to describe. It’s just awesome. I’m a space geek, so I just love it,” he said.

Andrew and Lisa Messina traveled in from Pennsylvania.

“We saw that Thompson Park was having the event and we thought, oh, that’s perfect. We were just gonna park somewhere and maybe look up. Then we found out about this with the shuttle buses and all the activities, we thought it would be a perfect place to come and so far it has been,” said Lisa.

The clouds built up throughout the day but did not get in the way of seeing a rare and breathtaking event.

“Just to realize how splendid the earth is,” said Duane Latouche of Theresa.

The park cleared out fairly quickly after the moment of totality.

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