They watched. They whooped. They wept.
Millions of people in Oregon and across the country gazed to the sky on Monday to witness a celestial event that suspended the din of daily life momentarily and instilled countless with a sense of awe and wonder.
The temperature dropped and the sounds of life grew silent as a total eclipse carved a darkened path across the state mid-morning. People packed city parks and crammed into campgrounds along the 60-mile-wide path of totality -- where the moon completely covered the sun -- to watch the day turn dark.
Some boarded airplanes, kayaks or river rafts to find a perfect vantage point. Thousands more fanned out across the state's natural wonders.
"I felt a kind of excitement, an ecstatic reverence," said Dan Currin of Portland, who watched the eclipse unfold from Timothy Lake, nestled in the shadow of Mount Hood. "It was downright eerie and amazing."
Monday's total solar eclipse was the first in a century to traverse the U.S. from coast to coast and the first to transfix Americans in the internet era. Millions livestreamed the event or loaded photos snapped on smart phones to social media.
But screens alone could not capture the entirety of the once-in-a-generation experience. The last time a total eclipse occurred in the continental U.S. was 1979, but only a handful of states tasted total darkness.
Shortly after 10:15 a.m., as Monday's eclipse made landfall on Boiler Bay -- the Oregon coast was ground zero for its path across the country --Josh Adams sat cross-legged on a picnic table meditating.
A false dusk had descended on the rugged viewpoint moments earlier, the light fading from gray to mauve to an almost purple before a temporary night fell for just under two minutes.
A cheer rose from the dozens of people gathered near Adams, 26, as the last light slowly faded. The faint odor of cannabis wafted and a champagne cork popped in the distance.
As the light slowly returned, Adams, of Dallas, Texas, sat in a blissful state.
"It was a mystical experience," he said. "It makes you feel small, but at the same time part of something larger. It was celestial magic."
Don Winters, who arrived form Kent, Washington, described what he saw in similar terms.
"That was absolutely awesome," he said. "It makes you feel the power of the world. The power of the universe. It reinforces that none of this is an accident, that there's a hand guiding everything in the universe."
Patches of thick fog and clouds, however, obscured perfect views for some eclipse watchers along the coast and left others playing an awkward game of chicken with the weather.
Roughly 200 miles east of the coast, the spectacle brought some to tears at the Symbiosis Gathering where tens of thousands had gathered for a week-long electronic music festival outside of Prineville.
Near the festival's main stage, Kinsey Smyth, 20, wept as she watched the sun wink out through her eclipse glasses. She laughed and cried, tears pouring down her cheeks. They were tears of both sadness and joy, Smyth said.
"I'm going to let go of a lot that I have been holding on to," Smyth said. "Past pain, problems."
Traffic problems immediately brought some eclipse watchers down to earth, though the gridlock was far more tame than many feared.
For months, state and local leaders braced for what was billed as the largest tourist event in Oregon history. Official estimates predicted more than 1 million people alone would descend along the path of totality. Towns prepared for the influx in visitors as they would a natural disaster while hospitals stocked up on extra blood and snakebite antidote.
Emergency personnel, meanwhile, prepared for the possibility for raging wildfires, intolerable traffic or sweeping health scares that could send the state spiraling into chaos.
In the end, none of the worst-case-scenarios came to fruition, allowing multitudes to marvel at the eclipse with relative ease.
More than 5,000 people gathered at the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes stadium to watch the home team take on the Hillsboro Hops -- and the moon completely blot out the sun.
These weren't just regular baseball fans. People from 34 different states and eight countries, including Great Britain, Japan and Colombia, decided that a minor-league baseball game was the place to experience one of the rarest of astronomical phenomena.
As the eclipse hit totality, the temperature in the stadium dipped, and there were gasps. "Oh my God!" "Incredible!" "Look at that!"
"I honestly got chills," said Amy Goebel of Portland, who was celebrating her birthday at the game with her husband and two sons.
Monday's Volcanoes game made a little history, too: It was the first professional baseball game delayed by solar eclipse.
Families who ventured off to remote areas in central Oregon were also not disappointed. Mini Sharma-Ogle, 43, of Portland wanted her two children to be astounded by the cosmic spectacle, which is why she schlepped them out to the Oregon State Cascades Black and Orange Eclipse Festival in Culver.
"It's hard to make them amazed" these days, she said. Sharma-Ogle added that she hoped this experience would get her children Manav, 5, and Manali, 7, excited about science.
As a daytime dusk covered Mount Jefferson and the shadow of the moon raced towards the Culver High football field, it appeared to be working.
"I'm speechless," Manav said, as the sky darkened.
"Take a picture! Take a picture!" his sister implored their mother.
When it was done, the family stood on the edge of the field, almost in shock.
"It was so amazing," Manav said.
"Times a million!" Manali added.
Their grandmother, Leela Sharma, 86, visiting from India, shook her head.
"Amazing," Leela Sharma said.
"By that she means times infinity," Manav said.
"Yeah, times infinity," Manali agreed.
The nation's last coast-to-coast total eclipse occurred in 1918. The next total solar eclipse in the U.S. will be in 2024. And the next coast-to-coast one will not occur until 2045.
Even those outside the path of totality managed to experience the wonder of this rare event. In Portland, where the sun was more than 99 percent blocked, hundreds gathered at places like OMSI, Pittock Mansion and the Tom McCall Waterfront Park.
When it was all said and done, hordes of travelers hit the road throughout the state, creating the nightmarish gridlock that was largely avoided in the days leading up to the eclipse. Drivers experienced hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic along U.S. 97 near Madras while it took several hours for those heading north on I-5 between Salem and Portland to drive the 50 miles.
Meanwhile, nearly 400 planes -- many of them privately owned -- waited on Monday to leave tiny Madras Municipal Airport, one of the few airports within the path of totality.
"I think it probably would've been a lot worse than this" had there been less warning and preparation for congestion, said Oregon Department of Transportation spokesman Thomas Fuller. "This about the best we can expect."
-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh
skavanaugh@oregonian.com
503-294-7632 II @shanedkavanaugh
Reporters Lizzy Acker, Samantha Bakall, Grant Butler, Eder Campuzano, Jamie Hale, Dave Killen, Elliott Njus, Kale Williams, and Fedor Zarkhin contributed to this report.