I ran into clouds at the last eclipse. It was still cool, but I didn’t get to actually see it. I was thinking of going to Texas this time around, but will end up much further north. I’m hoping I get lucky. If not, I’ll be planning some international trips around future eclipses. This is a bucket list thing for me.
I have pretty vivid memories of my first partial solar eclipse from when I was in school, but being in the path of totality was a completely different experience, and about 10,000x better, even without seeing it.
Yeah. We have tickets to the event at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, but plan to keep driving southwest or turn back around and go northeast if it's supposed to be cloudy in southern. Drive all night, sleep in a field if we have to.
That's the great thing about this kind of event. You really don't have to be anywhere special once you're in the path. The side of the road is as good of a point as some field where they're charging money to attend. Just look up (with correct viewing glasses of course).
That's exactly what happened at the last eclipse back in 2017. To get to the path of totality, I had to drive on an unpaved forest service road for several miles. Where the road ended there was a big clearing with a bunch of people already there. Fortunately they were very friendly, it was kind of a party atmosphere.
Anyway, it was worth all the trouble. One thing was that I got some great photos of the eclipsed sun. I'm looking forward to the upcoming event in April. I'll be in Mexico where viewing should be good, bad weather being less likely in that region. Hopefully I'll be able to get even better photos this time around.
Countryside roads that normally get very little traffic can quickly get clogged. If you're prepared to sit in your car for a few hours you're good though.
Also no need for glasses during totality. Before totality, you can look at the shape of shadows through a piece of paper with a whole punched in it.
> Countryside roads that normally get very little traffic can quickly get clogged.
Truth. I have a piece of land way out in the sticks here in Mena, AR, and on the rare occasion, our little backroads get very clogged up (think hunting season mostly), though we are right in the path of totality for the eclipse, and the town is even having an "eclipse festival" building up to it.
I'm thankful my wife and I won't have to drive anywhere that day. We're going to hang out in the yard and view it in our little field. Keeping my fingers crossed for nice, clear skies that day. :)
We're going to De Queen (my father-in-law lives there so we have a place to stay) - should be interesting getting out of there. I'm hoping that we're helped by the fact that that corner of Arkansas isn't the "obvious" place for anybody to go. We may just end up staying Monday night but we have reasons to be back to our normal life on Tuesday...
In general it looks like the closer you go to Mexico, the better your odds — historically.