Drove all over upstate SC between 11 and 4 today, running errands and meeting up with long-lost college mates down for the eclipse. Traffic is running heavy but clear on the interstates and major arteries, gas is abundant and the grocery stores haven’t even run out of milk!
Worst traffic jam was at the local Krispy Kreme donut shop - there is already a run on their ‘eclipse’ chocolate glazed donuts. We got in at 4:30 and the manager said they’ll be out by midnight tonight if the demand keeps up. Their supplies were supposed to last til tomorrow night.
It was a beautiful clear day: hot as all hells. If you’ll be in the upstate tomorrow then stick close to shade or AC and don’t forget your water.
WHAT?! Eclipse specific donuts??!?!?!? Going to see if I can still find some.
Any ways, I’m in Charleston, S.C. and the worst traffic was around the university. Then again, I’m from DC so my tolerance is high. Looking at Google maps and traffic it appears to be all green up and down the coast for a few hundred miles in each direction. Then again, the weather is calling for the typical, coastal, cloudy stuff.
Could be that people took note of the impending Carmageddon. In DC when Obama was first inaugurated there was a huge hoopla about it and when I left for work that morning the beltway was empty. I mean, like empty as I have never seen it, ever. Even less traffic then one would see at 3AM empty. I could have taken a nap in the middle of the road.
Mid day Sunday the traffic along US 123 in Easley, SC just west of Greenville was somewhat heavier than normal. There was a noticeable uptick in vehicles towing campers too. Here it comes.
Yesterday I drove from CT to VA — a trip that MapQuest pegged at 7.5 hours — in 9 hours (three different construction detours in PA slowed things down, plus I stopped a few times).
Last night I stayed in a hotel room I’d booked 48 hours earlier at the normal price of $120.
Today I drove from VA to SC — along a route MapQuest said would take 6 hours — in 5 hours and 10 minutes (I didn’t make any stops).
Tonight and tomorrow night I’m staying in a room I booked three months ago for $68/night.
I’ve filled up three times and never paid more than $2.50/gallon.
I’ve deliberately held my tongue … er … I mean, fingers … on this board for the past few days. Now I wish I’d posted something so that now I could say, “Tolja so.”
P.S. Lasciel and others were right about the temperature. Ye gods, people actually live here willingly?
Google maps sure doesn’t show any significant slowdowns heading towards for the totality zone at the moment, other than some slow areas heading from Tacoma WA to Portland OR, and from Kankakee to Mattoon IL.
I just came from Junction City to gas up. Everything is fine, after all. Just looks like another normal day in town on Highway 99.
No hotels in the Corvallis area, though. I did a quick check and cheapest I found was $489.00. Some were asking $1,200.00.
I’m going to chance it, just for the day. Starting at 3:00 a.m., I’ll go as far north as it looks like I can find a place to stake out for a few hours, maybe a cemetery or a parking lot. Will probably end up somewhere outside Philomath.
I live in a suburb of St. Louis, where we’ll get a little bit of totality, but I’m going to drive 40 miles to St. Clair, MO tomorrow. I plan to avoid the interstate almost entirely. Normally the drive is right at an hour. Hopefully if I leave at 7:30 or so, I can be in my parking spot ($30) before the show starts at about 11:48.
Hmm…my plan is to drive from Asheville to Greenville tomorrow. It’s an interstate drive that normally takes 1 hour, and we’re thinking of leaving around 9 am, so we can get to Furman University in time.
I’m hoping this doesn’t make me an idiot. If things get too bad, we can pull off somewhere; we’ll have water and food.
Son of a bitch. The predictions of gridlock and empty gas pumps made me cancel my plans. Looks like me and a million other people.
Now I wonder if everybody within a few hours’ drive will change their minds back, and all try to get there tomorrow morning, creating an even worse gridlock.
From what I’m hearing, the big problems in Oregon are in and around Portland. Lots of people from that area will be trying to get south to Salem or Albany. All the good trains and buses are sold out but there are a few seats left on the ones that are at inconvenient times, e.g. Amtrak from Albany to Eugene at 5:45 PM Monday or Greyhound from Corvallis to Eugene 1:10 AM Tuesday.
I’ll be driving up from Eugene to Corvallis at 2 AM Monday. I don’t expect much traffic. Driving back is a question mark. Fortunately I don’t have any kind of deadline for getting home to Eugene. If it takes an hour, fine. If it takes four hours, that’s fine too. We’ll only be 40 miles from home and we’ll have food, water, blankets, and a full tank of gas.
I’m not traveling for the eclipse, but did return to the Seattle metro area today from a family vacation in Vancouver. I-5 traffic was bad, but within normal parameters (something annoying always seems to be happening on that stretch of road). The border crossing however seemed much worse than your typical southbound Sunday afternoon; we waited over 50 minutes. I suspect a lot of Canadians were heading south for the eclipse.
I live in the Portland area. Friends of ours have a timeshare in Newport, OR, which they booked for this weekend. They all left on Friday, but I’m teaching a Saturday class this summer, so I couldn’t go down until Saturday afternoon. One of the colleges I teach at did not have enough common sense to close down Monday (the other did, fortunately), so I had to drive home tonight (Sunday) to ensure I can make it to my class tomorrow (I’ll have to fight my way across the Columbia into Vancouver).
Anyway, I had no problem driving to Newport on Saturday. We were out and about the town today, and it was no different than any typical weekend day. Driving home tonight, there was no sign of any traffic. BUT…
About 9:00 PM, just north of Albany, I saw there was a rest stop coming up, and decided I should stop to take a leak. I wish I would have glanced over at it before getting off the freeway. It was like a concert parking lot. The entire place was jam-packed - every available inch of shoulder had a car parked on it, even all the way up and down the off-ramp and on-ramp, right up to the freeway. Tents were set up in defiance of the “no camping” signs. It took me ten minutes just to drive through and get back on the freeway. I couldn’t even pull over and find a bush or something.
I listened to all the prognosticators and skipped the eclipse. As of last week, my wife (Mrs. Charming and Rested) and I could have gotten a hotel an hour from the path of totality at a regular price. We could have loaded up the car with food and gas and had a lovely picnic. We planned to go to the eastern U.S., but not right on the coast and not on the I-95 corridor.
Mrs. Charming and Rested had some conference calls to do today and I warned her that we probably wouldn’t have enough cell phone coverage to make that practical.
Looking at Google Maps now, there is no traffic to be seen on the route we would have taken. My plan to leave at 7:30 AM means that by now, we would be at our picnic stop and reading, chatting, playing games and enjoying nice weather. We would have seen the eclipse in a few hours and even with an hour or two of traffic on the way back, we’d have been home by midnight. I really regret not taking the chance. There’s always April 8, 2024.
We’re in the zone now, northern Georgia on back roads. Gas prices are up a bit, but that might just be due to being rural. The traffic is fine, and there are still plenty of spots in the lot where we’re parked.
He said Oregon right up there in the first sentence. All of those towns are in Oregon, except Vancouver. Oregon is in the path, Maine, New York and Rhode Island are not.
Let me know if you want any restaurant recs or anything.