Excitement for eclipse

"It's like somebody took a bite out of the moon."

That's how Thompson Falls fourth-grade student Makoy Schoenfeldt described Monday's solar eclipse. Elementary students waited on the playground for short glimpses of the sun Monday afternoon. Each time an opening would appear in the clouds and the eclipse came into view, the dozens of students would erupt with cheers and shouts of "I see it!"

School nurse Becky Beckman had ordered extra glasses online and they also came with a camera filter. She was able to capture the historic moment with her cellphone.

Tom and Bina Eggensperger of Thompson Falls traveled to Arkansas to visit relatives who lived in the path of totality. Tom said that it was pretty dark at the peak of the eclipse. "There were no birds flying around. We could see stars and the shadows disappeared," he said.

According to NASA, the next total solar eclipse that will be seen from the contiguous United States will occur on August 23, 2044.