Damn, missed this poll. I did drive, the 1 minute, 45 seconds of totality was completely worth the 8 hours I had to spend in the car.
I saw the big event in Fulton, Missouri. Wonderful experience, and I plan to do this again in 2024. If I’m still here in 2045, when we will have another one in the southern U.S. (it will end at sundown in Arkansas) and am capable of traveling to see it at the ripe old age of 81, I’ll see that one too.
The next two will be in the southern hemisphere, and cross Chile and Argentina. I’m not THAT excited about it.
It was awesome. I live in the Seattle area. Rather than go down I5 to the central Oregon coast, which was guaranteed to be a mess. I went down central Washington with my kids on Sunday and we camped near the Washington Oregon border. Hit the road at 7am for the 90 minute drive to Shaniko Oregon, which experienced 92.8 seconds of totality. Very clear skies. Town of 300 with maybe a couple thousand visitors. I’m sure heavier than normal traffic going to Shaniko, but we flew down the two lane.
We left maybe 15 minutes after the totality. Was able to drive 50-60 back into Washington. Probably a 5 minute back up at the Columbia river, and another 5 minute back up on the way to Goldendale. Later we went back to the Columbia river to mess around, and then it was 30-60 minute backup (probably people coming from Madras), which we avoided by going to Stonehenge.
I didn’t see the news but does anyone know if Madras to Bend was a cluster post eclipse? What about I5?
Agreed with everyone else: the time spent in the car was absolutely worth it. I knew people said it was impressive, but I had no idea how much it’d move me, that instant when I took my dorky eclipse glasses off and saw the brilliant reality of the full eclipse.
Before Monday, I thought there was no way in hell I’d try to make it to the 2024 eclipse. Now? I’m very tempted.
Meanwhile, here deep in the zone of totality, my next door neighbor was bailing hay during the eclipse. I didn’t notice if he paused for the totality or not (field is big enough for the sound to fade from one end to the other.) A cousin works next door to a shop that does stone work–she and her fellow workers were outside for the totality, and she says that the workers didn’t stop cutting even for the 2.5 minutes of totality.
Neil Degrasse Tyson was wondering if this might be the most viewed eclipse in history. How many people will see the Great American Eclipse - YouTube