Totality was awesome – but so was the traffic jam before and after.

My husband and I found a great viewing site (for a fee), including porta-potties, but we saw plenty of other people parked cheek-by-jowl in fields with no facilities.

Stopping on the side of the road was not allowed and there were plenty of police around to enforce this. Rest areas were closed once their parking lots filled up (MANY hours before totality).

We managed to find a reasonably-priced hotel a few months ahead, but it was hours away from our viewing site, and not really near anything else of interest. Rental car rates were unusually expensive.

So if you are thinking about attending the NFO Conference to view the 2024 eclipse, the time to plan is NOW. Remember that the next total eclipses viewable from the US are decades away: 2044 and 2045!