We were scheduled to go to Carbondale to see it in Saluki Stadium (that picture going around with all the people in a stadium was taken there), but a check of the weather the night before caused us to change our plans to Cerulean, KY. Up at 3am, another check of the weather sent us further east to Russellville, KY, instead, a 4 hour trip. We arrived a Logan County Library for free parking at 7:30am, grabbed a patch of grass, and settled in to wait.

I agree with everything Alex and Rand said, but even more so. The 1 minute lead-in to totality is an overwhelmingly surreal experience. The approaching shadow looming to the West, the breeze picking up, the cicadas stopping (which no one noticed until they fired up again when the Sun came back), the shadow diffractions on a piece of paper (nearly impossible to photograph, apparently, and the photos I've seen don't do them justice), then the disappearance of the Sun in one's eclipse glasses and the surrounding gasps of amazement and awe as everyone rips them off. Photos don't remotely capture the event: the human eye + brain is a much better camera than anything you can buy.

We're already planning for the next one. My advice: this is going to be April. Get a few staging hotel rooms scattered along the length of the shadow and pick one the day before. Use that as a base for the next day and just drive where the weather is going to be. Bring an awning, chairs, water, food, and games, and get there early. If you're lucky you can make it back to the hotel before the traffic gets insane (a co-worker spent 4.5 hours going 120 miles from Carbondale). Then spend the next day leisurely traveling back home (we stopped at the prehistoric Indian mounds in Anderson, IN).