Okay, just got the chance to hop on here about our experience. We went out to a ranch in Llano, had a group of 17 folks camping out there. My wife's cousin is a hot-shot astronomer, and they have a group that travels to see as many total eclipses as possible, so we were talking about plans and best ways to make this local eclipse happen starting four years ago.
We go great weather, and the best wildflower display in 20+ years -- was really cool to show Texas off to them, coming from AZ, CA, PA Germany, and Spain. Several beloved family members, but also their friends. And....we knew these were "hotshot astronomers," but we really didn't realize HOW hotshot. Sunday evening, we're gazing up at the night sky and getting some explanations from the woman who fucking LEADS the SSDS (the project that is literally mapping.....everything in the universe. All of it. The whole known universe. You can watch her damned TED talk about it). That evening, I got to sit by the fire and sip a beer as she quizzed my wife, with genuine curiosity, about some big theological questions. I just sat there, drank my beer, looked at the stars, and listened to two incredibly smart women engage each other. And we got to hang out with the head of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, who is fucking cool as hell. Oh, and he gets to be in charge of building and stoking the campfire -- it's his thing, don't take that away from him. Or Bernhard, who is an eclipse junkie, and also in the Nobel Prize talk for his work in mathematics and AI (he's a pioneer of "causality," using math to determine whether different astronomical phenomena are coincidental or caused, in short form. His work helped find exoplanets, including the first one found in the habitable zone). Also, he fucking loved my brisket, and ate it three meals in a row.
We were like everyone else, tracking the clouds carefully, gambling on whether we should stay where we were or try to chase it. Bernhard chose to chase it, and he got a good view. We chose to stay, and we got a perfect view -- the clouds broke a few minutes before, and stayed clear the entire time. I don't know what I was expecting....but what we saw was MUCH more awesome than I expected. We were all grinning and laughing and patting each other on the back at how amazing the experience was. We hung out after and had a nice lunch, then broke camp a bit earlier than planned because of the forecast for stormy weather. Several of them didn't have a place to stay Monday night because they'd planned on camping. We have lots of room in our house, so we told them to bunk with us, and they did.
That evening, we sat around the table bullshitting, eating leftovers (Bernhard heated up brisket, again), and just having a damned pleasant visit. Again, with people who have their own freaking Wikipedia pages. We have an invitation to come and stay in Heidelberg now. AND....Bernhard's wife is Spanish, and has family in the zone of totality for the August 2026 eclipse that will pass over Spain, so we started talking plans for that.
It was an amazing experience on its own, objectively. It was made even better by being in a place so near and dear to us, that we could show off with some pride. And then made even better by experiencing it with family and new friends.
TLDR: if you haven't experienced a total eclipse, and think it's no big deal, think again. It's a top-5 lifetime experience, highly recommend. And experience it with great people, that makes it even better.
Oh, I still need to get a good emailed version of this, but this is a shot of the photo up on my TV - Bernhard shared it with us all Monday evening. He has a friend on the ISS, and when he realized when she would be there, he told her the timing and angle to get a good shot of the eclipse. So she took this one, and sent it to him via WhatsApp (yep, they have WhatsApp access on the ISS):