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.   

Seen the eclipse and it was AWESOME. Never seen one before as I can recall. Stepped out my front door and there it was. Great thing to watch with my kids. 

Seen the eclipse and it was AWESOME. Never seen one before as I can recall. Stepped out my front door and there it was. Great thing to watch with my kids. 

LOSTinSWIRL
Oops didn't mean to post it three times. How do I fix that?

You don't.  It just happens, especially when the forum server is running slow.

There are plenty of photos . there's even one where the ISS photobombed.  Most people were gobsmacked by a 360 degree sunset. For me it was more a moment of awe. Isn't the universe beautiful?

 

 
John's video.
(Tip: Once the link goes blue you need to start over.  )

JohnKenn
Friends,
 
Me and my better half were unprepared for the event, as in poor planning ahead.
We wanted to document the phenomenon. Was a makeshift salvage effort to put eclipse glasses in front of the Nikons because we didn't get a proper filter in time. GoPro going dead twice eating up batteries for a time lapse.
 
Wife wanted some music in the background and ran off with one of my songs incomplete with no lyrics yet. We did what we had to did with the limited resources available.
 
Was truly a beautiful experience. Yesterdays news, but Youtube attached for what it is worth.
 
[tube]http://youtu.be/c_I6Tmzxvm8[/tube]
 
(edit) don't know what I'm not doing to make the link as cool as Craig can. The link however seems to work...
 
John

Cool vid John!!

I had to work and since our store is short-handed, lately they've been pulling people out of their assigned departments to help unload the truck and/or stock shelves with the freight unloaded from those trucks. But they left me alone in the garden center where I could walk out onto one of the patios and watch it.
Once word got around that I had the glasses, there was an unending stream of coworkers coming out there to borrow them and take a look.
Happy to help!
It was pretty cool, and maybe I'll remember it better than the one I saw at Hahn AFB, Germany in 1966.