Eclipse Frenzy–2017

I guess I’m one of the lucky few who will not need to travel ANYWHERE to see the Eclipse. Apparently, I live right in The Path of Totality (sounds ominous, right?). Since I live right smack in the middle of Missouri (we call it Mid-Mo) right smack in the middle of the US and we’ll have something like 2 1/2 minutes in the shadow, it seems ALL of the general public is expected to travel to us. Really?
“They” say we are to expect 400,000 people to descend on our big, little city of 120,000. “They” say we are to expect congested roads and traffic delays for the weekend proceeding and the hours following. I’ve even heard some of “them” say, “I have a friend who is renting out rooms in his home (at $500/room) for the eclipse.” “They” are even warning us to gas the cars up and get groceries prior to the weekend. It drives me nuts when I don’t have a clue who “they” are.
Of course, since Missouri is the Show-Me State, I turned to the tools I am familiar with so I could see for myself what the expectation should be. A quick check of Expedia shows that some of the rumors are true. There is not a hotel room to be had in a 30 mile radius for Sunday and Monday. VRBO has 3 homes left to be rented (but I would suspect these home were recently listed). The local campgrounds are booked, and I stopped short of calling local Porta-Potty services to see if they have any inventory left to rent. I figured that’s another good way to gauge crowd expectations in the area.
So, it looks like “they” are right. A huge amount of people are coming to our town. I’ll be prepared though!  I’ll have the car gassed up, and groceries bought. I already have my Solar Eclipse Glasses – CE and ISO Certified Safe and a back up pair.
Now I just have to decide–TO LOOK OR NOT TO LOOK?  Drop me a comment and let me know if you will be looking at the Eclipse where you are.