Here is my eclipse report.First off I had an almost trafficless trip in the wee hours down there,hardly a car on the road,that is until I got to Knoxville about 10 AM.I had built three extra hours into my time line in case of traffic.It was barely enogh to get to where I was going.It took me 3 hours to go 40 miles and I had to do some tricky route finding down some back roads to get there or I never would have made itI pulled into Meigs county park just as the moon was starting to take a bite out of the sun.Every parking space was taken,they had the park gated off and people were in the woods along the road.Tennessee woods are planted with Poison Oak,it is literally everywhere in thestate.If it isn't Kudzu it's Ivy.The cops turned ma around and now i had to drive back out to 68 and head back down the road.People were gouging along the road offering parking in their yards and fields for up to 50 bucks but I will say one thing,they were handing out free eclipse glasses whereas Jersey was stone out before the eclipse. There were Sheriffs parked all up and down the road and since there were flashing signs along all the interstate all the way down that there was to be no eclipse parking along highways I assumed that the state road shoulders were off as well.I stopped and asked a Sheriff if I could park across the road from HIm. He said as long as i didn't block the road or git in the way.I said Thank You! and parked across the street.I was the first one there but within 30 minutes had three other vehicles for company.By the time I parked it was about 120 pm and about 10% of the disc was covered.It was 104 degrees according to the truck thermometer.It was probably really about 95 or 96.There were cumulus clouds playing tag with the sun and for a bit it was dicey until about 20 minutes to totality and then it cleared dramatically around the sun.There was no appreciable darkening until about 80% was covered and then it started looking like I had sunglasses on or like maybe the sun was getting close to setting or there was smoke after a fire.I had binoculars with me but was afraid to look through them even with glasses on till totality.Then the last minute as the sun went down to a sliver it got really orange out and as the last biut blinked out I yanked the glasses off and the sun grew a white furry looking ball around it and the corona appeared!,it took about another minute and then I started seeing pink flars and jets along the lower right edge. Momma was trying to get pics and I"m basically hollering F the camera you got to see this S*&T! She looked out the binoculars and OOHED and AHEDD! and then went back to the camera.Acoustically some weird sounds appeared.A mockingbird started calling and one lonely 17 year cicada started whooping across the street.Seriously one 17 year locust started it's UFO whooping in the trees across the street.Momma had the pic up as I seen the edge start to get really bright and I hollered HERE COMES THE SUN! Git yer glasses!.I yanked the binoculars down and bang! here was the sun!Oh yeah I forgot to mention.Venus appeared and several starts also.It basically looked like dusk and blue like about a half hour after sunset only the entire 360 degree horizon was light like the sun had just went down everywhere at once with it being darker closer to us.Also the temperature dropped about 20 degrees starting a couple minutes before totality and the heat came searing back a couple minutes after totality.We Jumped in the car about ten minutes after the total phase and tried to get out of there before the traffic got bad.Folks this was the worst traffic experience I have ever been in in my life.It was relatively easy for 15 miles till I hit I 75.The road was already at a total stop.It took me four hours to go 20 miles.I got off the highway once and tried to go up state 11 and I got one mile off the road into the town of Lenoir and get this.The busiest day in this towns miserable history and they chose to block the main highway 1 off and have a friggin eclipse fair in the middle of town.The place was packed with traffic,they were turning everyone around back to the interstate which was dead stopped.I spent two hours going one mile into town getting turned around and one mile back to where I started.I was planning on going straight home that night. After a total of four hours driving or sittting staring at a line of traffic really we started calling motels in Knoxville using my truck GPS for phone numbers.After getting rejected by 20 motels because we had dogs over 15 lbs.(My wife repeatedly told them that a 15 lb dog was not a dog but a chew toy for our dogs) we finally got accepted at a Super 8 10 miles away,we were the last room and they were out.Everyone else was getting fed up as well and filling up the motels.It took us another two hours to go ten miles to the motel.When i got there the lady was arguing with a big british dude because the automatic booking service was sending her people after she reported full.She spun the monitor around and hollered look I"m full! he said there I am right there in a list of twenty people.She said YES! Thats the list of people they sent me after I told them I"m full!The another one popped up and she said THERE is another friggin one!He glared at me when she accepted me because Momma made her reservation with the woman by phone.I thought I was going to have to Revolution his big ass!So all in all the eclipse was friggin great! Would I have went if I had of known what lay in store? No friggin way.I would have watched it on youtube.Will I go again in 2024? Only if I can go a couple days in advance,camp right on the track and stay a day or two late.I will never take a chance on ending up in another highway hell like that again.I was literally trapped in the "Highway Tennessee" You can check out anytime you like but you ass will not leave,at least not tonight!We slept from 9pm to1 am,got up and headed out.The roads had miraculously became deserted but all the way home (I got home at 1245 pm today)There were thousands of tractor trailers and cars parked everywhere besides the highways.All rest areas were full and literally people pulled over everywhere.I feel sorry for the poor truckers.They did not make a damn dime yesterday.What really pisses me off was i have been waiting for this eclipse for ten years.Most of the folks who made my trip so miserable probably found out about it last week.I don't know how many people over the last week asked me what a solar eclipse was.And I would say at least 90% ofd the traffic down there was local Tennessee people.I did not see a whole lot of shoobies down there.I did notice the people were a lot more likely to let people out into traffic down there then here but I seen some crap down there that for shear ignorance would make the best jersey driver proud.I seen an almost fist fight in the middle of an I 75 entrance ramp right in front of me.I had just let one ignorant ass in front of me when he cut another guy off who jumped out of his truck and was banging on the guys hood and he wouldn't get out of his car.I was in the car hollering PILEDRIVE HIM! Momma was shaking her head at me and telling me to knock it off.By the time I got to the motel I was literally shaking.Momma took a few not so great pics.The camera is on it's last leg and she really had no experience taking sun shots and was not prepared.My attitude was F the camera,watch this S&*T! So all I can say was a GREAT ECLIPSE! and here is a great big middle finger to Tennessee!The dog pics are during the eclipse.Soon as it got dark the silver lab Shiloh stared nodding off.
