Trying to decide when to leave for the eclipse. My plan is to go to (or near) St. Johnsbury, Vermont and I'm afraid that's going to be also the plan of ten million other people and I did not secure lodging.
I would like to go the night before and sleep in my car, but it's going to be below freezing and I can't run the car heater all night and still have enough gas to get home if the gas stations are sold out. Do I want to chance just bundling up in a comical number of layers? Seems really risky. Also I'm not sure where I can park without it being a problem--I mean it's small-town Vermont so there's free street parking basically anywhere, but that's on normal days and residents/cops may be a little more defensive on Eclipse Eve.
Probably the thing to do is to not exactly stay over, but just plan to have a realllllly long day where I start heading north at like 3-4 AM. (It's about a 2.5 hour drive for me with normal traffic--I'm expecting not normal traffic but hopefully the roads won't be impassibly congested until sunrise?) Then I want to procrastinate heading back until well into the evening in hopes the roads will have improved a little. It'll be a looooong day but I'll nap whenever I can and I still figure it's a less bad plan than intending to sleep alone on a rural roadside in 23F weather.
Regardless, I'm going to pack for car camping, with all the warmest clothes and blankets I've got and enough food and water for at least three days. (Also paper maps and downloaded entertainment, on the assumption the cell towers will be completely fried.) That way if the whole highway is truly bricked up I'll be in a little less distress. Also I'm doing all my shopping and packing tomorrow so I can try to nap as much as humanly possible on Sunday.
I really have no idea how bad to expect things to be; yes everyone on the East Coast is sprinting for the eclipse path, but also the eclipse path is hundreds of square miles? But also there's not that many highways in this region? I'm not sure what this translates to, traffic-wise. But I have no particular schedule to get home by and I'll try to be as prepared for an overnight as I can be.
yes, I know about mud season
