I'm with James and John on this spectacular event. My wife and I and the two dogs drove from the suburbs of Chicago down to Paducah, KY to get into the line of 'totality'. We had the glasses (even two extras if either dog wanted one). The first 40-minutes was standard eclipsion, with the sun becoming a banana shape and then thinner and thinner. Then it gets exciting when just a sliver is left. What happens next surprised me. When the sun was blocked in totality, I thought you would see the corona through the eclipse glasses. Instead it just went totally black. That is also when it is safe to watch with the naked eye. I took off the glasses and there it was, just like in pictures. It is hard to put in words how I felt. 'Awesome' is the descriptive word I ended up using (even though I hate when I hear this word used today). I even felt a tear forming. Not sure why other than the reality and beauty of the universe being shown to anyone wishing to view it. It was just a great feeling. And as was said above, the partial eclipse does not compare in awesomeness (there I use it again) to the totality state. It still is a great scientific event to watch, but the totality state just takes it to a new level. I hope I am around for the next one.
A lot of travel pain went into this event for us, and I was questioning whether it was worth it. What was expected to be about a 7.5-hour drive down to Paducah ended up being about 9.5-hours due to Illinois highway department road construction. It brought traffic to practically walking pace for about 15-miles. Finally made it to our location late Sunday night and was able to sleep in and get rested. After watching the eclipse, it was mid-afternoon Monday and our plan was to head home and get in late evening. Were we in for a surprise. It seems that everyone and their mother from northern Illinois apparently drove down to the southern Illinois region to witness this event. I-57 northbound couldn't handle all the traffic. Traffic would literally stop for up to 5-minutes at a time.... on an Interstate highway. We gave up after 4.5 hours of this tedium because we still had another estimated 5.5 hours of driving in normal traffic. It may have taken us another 12-hours. So we found a nice hotel and stayed another night Was a relaxing evening so it paid off. All in all, I still hope to attend the next eclipse, but will make it a mini-vacation and arrive a couple days before and stay a couple days after.