I watched the lunar eclipse of 26 September, 1996, with friends, on the shores of Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland, California. Fog and scud to the east restricted visibility till approximately the onset of totality, and interfered from time to time thereafter, but there were plenty of opportunities for a great view. This eclipse was not particularly dark compared to some I have seen. The color at mid-totality appeared to me to be a pale pinkish copper, a little reminiscent of sodium vapor lights. Perhaps Oceanus Procellarum has been made into a parking lot; it's already paved, though a little rough. My 7x35 binocular was handy for improving the view when clouds partially obscured the disc of Luna. It also showed three moons of Jupiter, and revealed Saturn as elongated.

My companions were astronomical newcomers. It was fun using the eclipse as an opportunity to point out how the Moon moved against the sky background, with Saturn handy enough to make the motion in less than an hour quite noticeable. We could also tell from the changing distribution of brightness on the eclipsed Moon, that the Moon was passing somewhat to the north of the center of the Earth's shadow, and we could estimate the size of the shadow itself from the curvature of the edge of the umbra, as seen during the partial phase.