Funny, I didn't see this thread til today. I thought there would be one.
Anyway- we drove 6 hours, stayed overnight in NY and went to a big city park on the shore of Lake Ontario. Lots of people but not over-packed, but mostly cloudy. Experiencing totality darkness was the highlight and yes, it was cool being with people and hearing crowd reaction when there was a break and we could glimpse some stage of it.
We left right after and had an extra 2.5 hours on our drive. That made for a long day. That was not so much fun but we didn't want the extra night stay. We were glad enough that we'd dressed properly and everything else about the trip was ok.
