Hi. I'm caught up in here, yay! I love you guys, reading all these posts in a big chunk has been wonderful.
We had a most excellent eclipse experience. The farm that my nephew's D&D compatriot friend has that we lucked into was great. The weather was stupid clear. Traffic was surprisingly easy both going and coming. Eclipse glasses worked, Mom's pinhole cards worked, Mom's hat shadow worked, interlacing fingers worked, the colander that the guy camping behind us brought over to show us when he saw us doing the finger interlacing was very cool, and moving Lee's cot into the shade to better show the dancing leaves shadows with their crescent bits of light worked. Birds made going-to-sleep calls and crickets got loud as we approached totality. We had to put on jackets and carefully observed the changes in the quality of the light. My sister observed that looking at the crisp shadows with the dim sunlight was like having a streetlight on at night. Saw the diamond ring, Sirius, Venus, and shadow bands. It was awesome and joyful.
We didn't even run into bad traffic coming back to California except the one spot where a car fire had us at a standstill for a while, but even that was only half an hour or so. Unfortunately there were no hotel rooms to be had so I just kept driving with a couple of naps in rest areas, but that was okay. Slept for about 10 hours last night and feel pretty well-rested today.