My GF & her husband drove to Texas for the eclipse. This is the San Antonio Board/River Walk during the eclipse. Looks deserted. Quote when asked about crowds:

It was but San Antonio emptied out early we left it till late morning & benefited by half empty roads in the main with just one 8 minute hold up. But I gather from fellow eclipse watchers where we stopped ( Helotes) that I 10 had Been really heavy & stop /start for miles. We avoided it completely

Texas was predicted to be cloudy so that may be why the Board walk was empty????

San Antonio has the River Walk, and that is the emptiest I've ever seen it!

Waco and towns around it were prepared for, and I quote, "hundreds of thousands" of visitors. It didn't happen. No traffic jams, no big crowds. Businesses who had hired extra help and stocked up on supplies took a bath Waco so wants to be important!

The clouds cleared shortly before the eclipse and we had an excellent view from our backyard, sitting with our special eyeglasses, a special filter on the camera, and a glass of wine.

Interstate heading into Paducah KY was backed up quite a bit. We bypassed them and headed into the countryside outside a town about 20 miles away. I thought the Bluegrass Parkway would be packed on the way there but it wasn't. The traffic didn't pick up until we were on one of the interestates much closer to the totality area. I only heard of one injury accident that day. Doesn't mean there weren't more, though. I saw the videos on people in crowds, cheering and yelling. I'm glad I wasn't in a big crowd of people.

Friends and colleagues who drove to zones of totality reported that their drives home took twice as long as normal.

Boss had horrible traffic, through Kentucky. Other co-worker met none, came and went through Tennessee to Cape Girardeau. Another officemate said his wife went to Dallas and it was wonderful. We had a speaker scheduled to come in and her flight was delayed to midnight, so she cancelled coming in person. I overheard flights were the most affected?

I went to a place about (usually) a 90 minute drive from home - north of Kenton, OH. Original plan was to take a nearby, 2 lane road west across town to get to Rt. 33 heading northwest - but I could see it was backed up, so I opted to hop onto rt. 315 north to the circle freeway. 315 was fine, but the freeway was stop, slow and go for miles - I probably would have made better time on my original route, since this part took me 3 or 4 times longer than it normally would. Once I exited that at Rt. 33, traffic was still very slow due to road construction happening (!) and an accident- just a fender bender. Once past that, it got better, and much better after the exit to the big metro park. From there it was mostly smooth sailing, a little bit of slowdown approaching Marysville, but after that maintained 70 mph right up until exiting to the local county road.

My biggest issue was trying to use Google maps to navigate the smaller roads - I don't know if it was lack of coverage or what, but although it would show me my location, it didn't identify any of the roads or names of the towns (including Kenton). As a result I made a wrong turn that added about 30 min. to my drive, on a winding rural road.

Coming back the traffic was very heavy, and slow, although not stopping, from just west of Marysville all the way back to the circle freeway - there were spots that it improved as people exited to other roads, then worsened again - I only saw one more accident on the way back, again a fender bender. I could see that the freeway was very congested and slow, the on ramps for both east and west were backed up - but the lanes for my original route were clear and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way home. I would say the return trip took maybe 50 minutes longer than usual.

I passed a wind farm on my way and was curious about the noise the windmills make, since I have read complaints about it (and passed several signs reading "No Wind, No Solar" at farms that I had passed) - so I took a little detour down a road that went right through the middle of them. Stopped the car, turned it off, and listened - heard and felt nothing except the sound of a mower that I could see a short distance away.

The Tuesday morning traffic report mentioned some delays into Chicago that they attributed to a higher volume of vehicles returning from eclipse watching.

We saw about 94% totality with clear skies while commuting to and from our back yard.

Lucky you Chisue - not only did you have clear skies for that 94% totality you also had an easy commute with convenient food and bathroom facilities

We were in sitting in our yard at our place in NE Pennsylvania which would have had 94% totality if it weren't for the clouds. The first 15 minutes were beautifully clear, then heavy clouds appeared and within 20 minutes our view shifted to a 100% totality of eclipse blocking. We could barely even see where the sun was supposed to be.

We went to a town near Temple Texas. The roads were clear of eclipse watchers at 7 am. People filtered in later. They drove in from other states like Minnesota, California, Colorado, etc., or flew into Austin and drove over. We met a family from Seattle who had done that. It was less of a crowd than expected. Leaving was a lot more crowded. The police were at intersections working the traffic lights. People were mainly polite.

The skies cleared up enough to see the eclipse, but the clouds were still there. I didn't get to see stars, but did see Venus and Jupiter was visible at times. It was an amazing few minutes. I'm thrilled I got to see it.