The next day was Sunday, the day before the eclipse. We packed up our things in Wichita and headed north to Kearney, Nebraska. Google Maps said the fastest route was to take the back roads, so that's what we did. We had no idea how busy the roads would be, given the dire predictions of "hurricane-evacuation level traffic". Fortunately, there was absolutely no traffic at all. We drove through very pretty parts of Kansas I'd never seen before. For lunch, we stopped at a park in Osborne, KS and had a picnic, thanks to a cooler we borrowed from Bill and Beth that we filled with food and frozen water bottles. We also filled up with gas every chance we got, because, again, dire predictions.
We made it to our hotel in Kearney without any problems and filled the car up with gas as soon as we got there (that was one of the tasks on my to-do list). Apparently everyone else had the same idea; the gas station was packed and we had to wait in line, but only for a few minutes.
When we checked in to our hotel, Wendy asked if they were completely booked, and to our surprise, they said no, there were still a few rooms left. They gave us a free gift bag of eclipse-related items, including two eclipse glasses. They were also giving out free moon pies, so we took a couple. After we got settled into our room, we worked on completing another task on my to-do list: scouting out the roads to Ravenna.
Our hotel was directly in the path of totality, so if nothing else, we could just step outside and experience 1m 50s of totality. But I had planned a second option: if we drove 40 minutes north to the town of Ravenna, we could get 2m 35s of totality, which is only 7 seconds shy of the maximum totality possible. Ravenna was planning a big eclipse-watching event at two high school baseball fields, and were selling tickets for $10 per person. I had purchased tickets for us online a few weeks prior.
So we drove to Ravenna and located the baseball fields. This turned out to be a great idea for two reasons:
- We learned the main roads to Ravenna went through the downtown area and had some busy and tricky traffic intersections. Now we knew we should try to find an easier route.
- Ravenna was having a festival at the baseball fields that day. We were hoping to gauge how big the crowd would be for the eclipse by how big the crowd was at the festival:
As you can see, there were a good 10-20 people there. We were amused and relieved. There wouldn't be an apocalyptic number of people. It was just a small town; there would probably be small-town-sized crowds at the event. We headed back to our hotel, but via a different, and much easier, route. The trip had been worthwhile.
Back at our hotel room, I focused my attention on something completely unproductive: worrying about the weather! It still wasn't looking great; the weather forecast now called for, at best, 50% cloud cover throughout the state of Nebraska. It was all coming down to a coin toss, essentially. Not great odds. I did consider whether we should drive to Wyoming, which would have improved our odds, but we had no place to stay once we got there, and it would mean a 7-hour drive there and a 7-hour drive back, if traffic was perfect. So we stayed put.
When we bought supplies at the grocery store in Kansas, I bought a bag of Hershey's kisses and a bag of Andes chocolate mints. I told myself they would either be celebratory sweets, or morsels of misery. It was now the night before the eclipse. We didn't know if we would be able to see it. Uncertainty loomed large, and I had already begun mentally preparing myself for disappointment. I opened my bag of morsels and started eating...