I drove from Panama City Florida to make the viewing in White House Tennessee. Scoped it out as an easy off, easy on exit with a Walmart just off the exit. Also several restaurants within walking distance.
We arrived two hours early to find the Walmart parking lot full of motor homes and tents with lots of telescopes setup. I drove towards the rear of the store and there it was, one rather large parallel
parking spot. I was a bit confused why it was open, but I took it.
We walked to a Mexican restaurant and had a good meal. All the stafflooked to be Mexican and none had any eclipse glasses. One guy kept trying to look, he didn't find it easy! I had picked up two extra pair of eclipse glasses so I gave them to the one of the staff, so they kept trading the glasses back and forth.
After lunch we went back to the car, put a blanket up over the
windshield, opened the sunroof, and adjusted our seats. We just happened to pick a local radio station that was playing eclipse music, anything to do with the sun or moon.
We got out of the car shortly before totality, the temperature dropped, and at totality the crowd came to life with a loud owww! Just as totality started ,the radio station played
"Dark side of the moon", by Pink Floyd. It was all very cool to watch, I think we had over two minutes of totality. I could see Mars and some pink areas in three
spots around the halo.
We didn't watch long after totality, I had an easy exit from the Walmart parking lot, within 2 minutes I was on the highway again headed North to visit family in Michigan.
The highway was running fine until, each highwayentrance had traffic entering so
it wasn't long and it was very slow. I'm traveling with my 25 year old daughter, she has an app going, and told me you need to get off the highway up here and take the back roads it will be much faster. Then after 15 or 20 miles, she said, OK this will be getting slower, so you need to get back on the highway. After that we had about 10 minutes of slow traffic and we were clear of the jam up.
We arrived in Michigan to my sisters house late Monday night. She's been without hot water for (to long) so Tuesday I replaced her water heater. But that is another story!