Visitors from all across the United States flocked to Jackson County to view a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

As the blue sky turned to the dark night, locals and visitors erupted in “oooohhs and ahhhhs” over the spectacle of the total solar eclipse that enveloped south central Indiana.

For many this was their first time seeing a total solar eclipse and, for some, possibly their last as south central Indiana won’t see another total eclipse until 2099.

All was quiet in downtown Seymour early Monday morning, but later on families and eclipse lovers began to trickle in.

Many businesses decided to stay open during the eclipse but were expecting a bigger turnout.

“It hasn’t been too crazy,” said Tonya Pacey, owner of the Pacey Apothecary in downtown Seymour. “I would compare it to a Thursday at the Oktoberfest.”

Pacey said Sunday she had many locals visit her shop and Monday there was a steady stream of out-of-town visitors.

“I stocked up on my T-shirts and I think I am down to two,” she said. “I talked to a similar shop in Hopkinsville and decided to stay open late and order more.”

Pacey said she was excited to know that her store is having some recognition outside of the state after an out-of-town visitor told her that the Pacey Apothecary was the first businesses that popped up when he googled Seymour.

Pacey’s daughter, Lola, said she was nervous to see the eclipse, but she was prepared with her paper plate eclipse mask.

“I loved it.” she said.

To commemorate this special moment, the Pacey family including Tonya, her mother Roberta Smith and her sister Rachel Doerflein got eclipse tattoos at the Dead Crow Collective.

Smith got her first tattoo at 57 years old to always remember the first time she saw a total eclipse.

“She said ‘This is the only time I am going to see it so, I want to remember it’,” Pacey said.

Down the street at the Magic of Books Bookstore, owner Jenna Martinez said while Monday was steady the weekend wasn’t as busy as they were hoping for.

“We stocked up on our high-selling books which are our blind date books,” she said. “They are wrapped and have just a little information about it, but it’s so you don’t judge a book by its cover.”

Martinez said she has seen a mix of local and out-of-town visitors including some from California and New Jersey.

At Crossroads Community Park blankets, chairs and telescopes were strewn about the green lawn as people anxiously wait for the moon to arrive.

Beth Clark, Len Bostock and Cheri Hauber, all from Kentucky, said they are not astronomy experts but were fascinated by the experience.

“We aren’t big nerds, we just hang out with them,” Clark said.

Besides celebrating a once-in-a-lifetime event, Bostock also celebrated her 65th birthday the same day with cake and a spectacular view of the eclipse.

“It is just incredible,” she said.

Jordan Baeker and her daughter Cerenda, 6, of Lexington, Kentucky, said this was their first time in Seymour and they wanted to find a smaller town to view the eclipse.

“I saw the partial eclipse in 2017 when I was pregnant with her and now, I am pregnant with another during this eclipse,” she said. “Now my girl can experience her first eclipse outside of the womb.”

Michael Ecoles from Madison said she drove to Hopkinsville, Tennessee in 2017 to see the solar eclipse and afterwards she started planning to scout the next one.

“It’s just so different,” she said. “When it is in totality, and it looks like a diamond ring in the sky that is the best part.”

While downtown Seymour was full of visitors and locals to view this spectacle, it wasn’t the only viewing site that gained attraction.

The parking lot at Freeman Municipal Airport was packed with cars on Monday, owing to an influx of visitors from out of town and out of state for the eclipse.

License plates from North Dakota, South Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois and more could be seen as one as they made their way through the lot to a field where multiple food stands were set up, including those selling kettle corn, pizza, hot dogs and ballpark franks served by the Seymour Noon Lion’s Club.

Mayor Matt Nicholson and January Rutherford, the city of Seymour’s public information specialist, greeted visitors and directed them to the shuttle/walkway to the field.

Of the hundreds of people camped out for the day at the airport, only a few brought their own telescope. Peter George and Mikayla Meek drove to Seymour from Louisville with George’s telescope to get a good look at the eclipse and chose the Freeman airport as their viewing site.

“We looked around for places to go and considered Indianapolis, but we decided we wanted to drive somewhere closer,” George said.

During the last eclipse in 2017, George had not purchased a telescope yet and did not have proper viewing eyewear.

“Last time we didn’t even have the eclipse glasses, we just had five sunglasses in front of each other,” George said.

Over on the runway, a family from Knoxville, Tennessee, had just arrived in a plane that very morning.

“We woke up this morning and decided to come here,” said Jason Clem, who is a pilot for Southwest Airlines. “We were going to go to Arkansas but there was some weather coming through and we didn’t want to ride on the north side of that front, so we were trying to find airports that had a control tower so we could get out and not have a departure or clearance time or anything like that.”

Clem’s son Adler, 8, was too young to experience the eclipse of 2017; however, Clem’s triplet nephews — Knox, Quinn and Chase Wilson — were 5 at the time and are now 11. Adler, the triplets and the triplets’ brother Brooke Wilson, 7, were all at Freeman Municipal Airport on Monday.

In addition to food stands, attendees enjoyed a performance from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on an Oktoberfest stage by The Les Masters Band, based in Louisville.

After the daylight returned many hopped in their cars to head back home gushing about the totality cool experience.

Tribune reporter Jared Reedy also contributed to this story.