My daughter, her 4 children aged 9-14 and I left at 5 this morning to head over the mountains. My sister and her husband are driving up from San Diego to join us. We are in Madras, Oregon on the centerline of the total eclipse on Monday morning. NASA has set up here and they have sold 5500 dry camp spots in a grass field. Madras is the first spot almost guaranteed to be clear at 10 AM. The Oregon coast and the Williamette valley are often cloudy in the morning. We are East of the Cascade mountains in the high desert. They expect 30,000 to 50,000 people to show up here each day for the next three days. This is a small city of 6,000 people. We will stay until Tuesday afternoon so maybe the traffic will clear out some. For some reason that I cannot explain I offered to help my company if needed help while over on this side of the mountain. My boss called me at home on Monday( my day off), and asked if I was serious anout my offer. I told him yes and my company paid me stock my shop truck and they had it delivered to Madras. They will be paying me 20% standby pay for Saturday, Sunday and Monday. They expect total gridlock on the rural highways in and out of here. This town is supported for a city 50 miles South. They are paying a line crew standby also plus providing camping spots at the service center.

 

Awesome news, Andy. Enjoy the show. If I had the money, I could travel the 870 miles back to my hometown in TN and watch it. It's right in the path too. I'll just watch it on tv. I got too much stuff to do around here to get away anyway.

 

I just drove my family through the night in our 2000 SW2 from Moneta, Va to Franklin, NC. We're going to hang out at the Macon County Parks and Rec on Rt. 23 and watch the eclipse. The car did seem to struggle a bit getting over the many passes through the Smokie Mountains. We also seemed to have developed an oil leak on the way. I'm not used to smelling oil burning on this car. The tranny's making a new noise now too. Hopefully it'll hold together on the way back.

 

Enjoy the show, next to witnessing the birth of my daughter 35 years ago this was the most amazing thing I have seen.

 

Eh, not much to see here in Wisconsin. kinda like a dud firecracker

 

Not that impressive here in FL, either. I don't see what all the uproar was about anyway. There's going to be another one in 7 years.

 

We might have to drive to Waco, TX. April 2024

 

Rube, the last one like this was almost 100 years ago, hence the commotion.
It's always a crap shoot anyway since you are always subject to the weather, like trying to watch a meteor shower.
Where we went was pretty close to the center line of the 70 mile wide totality zone and it was pretty darned impressive even with some light cloud cover trying to block things right at the last minute (literally).
The over 12 hours exodus home was almost as impressive, especially since it became obvious that everyone was using Google maps to find their way home around the traffic jams. Nothing like getting stuck in a traffic jam on a tiny, winding country road because everyone was given the same directions by some stupid app. The poor town of Sylva was brought to a standstill because of it.
Good news is the Saturn didn't give us any trouble on the way home. :-)