The next morning, Tuesday, we checked out of our hotel. We had some time to kill before leaving Kearney, so we visited MONA, the Museum of Nebraska Art.
We actually got there a little too early, as it hadn't opened yet. We walked around for a few minutes to pass the time, and noticed a tall statue of a man, which was fairly unremarkable, except for the bird sitting on his head:
Then we walked through a sculpture garden behind the museum, where Wendy took a picture of me with this dude:
It turns out the sculpture is of Clifton Hillegass, the creator of Cliff's Notes! He was a lifelong Nebraskan, and donated 10% of his company's profits to charitable causes in the state.
By this time, the museum was open and we went on a tour. It was actually a pretty decent place. I was impressed. There were a number of pieces that I really liked.
After an hour or so, we finished our tour, got some lunch, and drove back to Kansas. Once again, we encountered almost no traffic.
We visited with Wendy's parents that evening, and had one more night of beautiful star gazing. The next day we drove to the Wichita airport and flew back to Chicago.
As we were unpacking when we got home, I opened up a closet and found a pack of eclipse glasses I'd forgotten to bring! I never even noticed during the trip that I was missing them. Apparently I collected way more than we needed!
Last weekend I went to a meeting of the local astronomy group that I mentioned in part one. It was the first meeting post-eclipse. Everyone got a few minutes to talk about their eclipse experience, which was really interesting. I learned that Wendy and I were very lucky! A number of other people from the group were also in Nebraska, and several didn't have very good views. One lady was in Carbondale, IL, at the Southern Illinois University football stadium, and she said one big cloud covered up the sun for almost the entire totality! Depending on where they were in the stadium, some people were able to catch a glimpse of it right before it ended. A guy who went to Missouri said the same thing happened to him; he called it the "Bill Buckner cloud from hell", or something along those lines.
A common theme from a number of people is that traffic going to the eclipse wasn't bad, but traffic afterwards was terrible. Several people said the 6-hour drive down to St. Louis turned into a 12-hour drive on the way back! I think Wendy and I had the right idea by staying at our hotel the night after the eclipse. It sounds like we avoided a lot of traffic thanks to that decision.
So, our trip was a success! And for that I am very thankful.