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MESOPOTAMIA -- While dropping off a delivery at the End of the Commons General Store a few weeks ago, Colin Reinhart, an Amazon employee and student of Kent State University, had an idea.
"I was thinking, when I was delivering here earlier, that this was a really good spot to just take a moment and (watch)," he said.
Reinhart is one of the dozens of people who descended upon Mesopotamia to watch the total solar eclipse Monday.
While Reinhart said his day of deliveries was pretty typical, he said one of his stops helped him prepare for the eclipse.
"When I delivered out to a business around here, they were like 'Do you have any glasses?" And I was like 'No,' and so they handed me some," he said. "I was really thankful for that."
Mesopotamia, which sits on the border of both Ashtabula and Geauga counties, was one of the best locations to watch the eclipse in Trumbull as it lasted about three minutes and 11 seconds, one of the longest viewing durations in the county.
The event drew visitors from across the country to the township.
Teague Lyons traveled with his mother to Mesopotamia from Washington, D.C., to see the eclipse. He said he spent a while looking on Google Maps for areas that fell within the line of totality. Ultimately, he settled on Mesopotamia.
"I looked at street view of Mesopotamia and it seemed like a really nice little small town," Lyons said. "It had a little general store, and I figured it was among the shorter drives for us, among the closest, so that's how we chose it."
Matt Bryan of Salem said he and his family had initially planned to watch the eclipse at a site just north of the Trumbull County border. But, while driving up state Route 534, Bryan instead chose to stop in Mesopotamia.
"My brother actually went to college at Lake Erie College in Painesville, so I've driven through here a handful of times and it's always been a cool little community," he said. "I'm from a small town, too, so it's normal to me, it's like home."
Peter Schaden, owner of End of the Commons, said the general store saw an uptick in customers starting at 9 a.m. and continuing until after the eclipse.
"A couple people made the comment, 'This is like what we see during the Ox Roast,''' he said. "It was close but it was manageable."
The store had eclipse-themed products for sale including white cherry "eclipse popcorn," Sun Chips, Eclipse-brand gum and MoonPies.
"People set up chairs in the park, (those) who wanted to avoid the 50,000-people crowds," Schaden said. "They came out to the country where they could be spaced out, put their blankets down and their chairs, they had their little kids with them to have a picnic, they enjoyed it."
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