I will admit to being excited about the eclipse, but then I'm that kind of geek. I traveled to the Oregon coast last week to see Oldest Daughter, who moved there a few months ago. Could have stayed for the Big Event, I suppose—the thing begins right there, after all—but finding a hotel this week was nigh on impossible. So hubby and I started back with no real plan except to wander our way back toward the midwest more or less along the path of totality.
It is really incredible what's going on out here. Oregon is a bloody
nightmare. There's this gigantic eclipse festival in central Oregon that lasts a whole week and I think something like 200K people are going there, on a plateau in the middle of a prairie in the middle of nowhere. Because they had clogged the roads so badly for days, the locals
closed the main road and detoured everyone to a back road leading more directly to the event. Only we weren't going to the event, didn't know about the event, hadn't the foggiest notion of where the heck in Oregon we actually were sixty miles later when we got to the event site, and ended up finally arriving back on the main road after what had been a three-hour detour. Oregon has lost its collective mind: every rancher seems to be offering up his property for eclipse camping. PortaPotties dot the landscape. It's nuts!
Now Wyoming, where I am tonight, is somewhat better, but probably only because of its lack of proximity to California. There are still tons of folks here from Utah and Colorado. And of course those who live here who don't live in the totality zone. As for us, tonight we're in Cody. Tomorrow we're going to Gillette. We have to bounce around a bit because of hotel price gouging. (I've seen Motel 6s and Super 8s and even cheap dive motels charging $400-550 a night for this weekend on booking.com. And they are selling out.) We'll have a two hour drive Monday morning to Casper. We figure it will likely take four or five, so we'll leave very early. As I said, it's nuts. But I wouldn't miss it.