I quite like this summary map of traffic comditions in the US yesterday evening. It highlights where the key traffic problems were at around 6pm EST and, apart from the usual foul-ups in city centres, you can clearly trace the sweeping path of the eclipse across the country by the areas with the most conjestion and highest number of incidents.
This is particulalry close to my heart as it took me quite a long time to get west across the state of Tennessee yesterday after I escaped from Spring City. There were areas where the traffic didn’t move at all but he main problem was that the traffic on the interstate was constantly very heavy. For an hour or two that’s ok but, after six or seven hours, maintaining the concentration can become quite taxing. This wasn’t helped by the fact that many of the ‘Rest Area’ on the interstate had been closed to prevent them being taken over by eclipse watchers and the one that was open was a) packed and b) a bit of a dump. It’s almost as if the state of Tennessee read the kind words I wrote about rest areas earlier in is trip and said ‘right, we’ll show him’. The one open ‘Rest Area’ was old, falling apart and only had a single functioning vending machine – which stole my money. This didn’t go down particulalry well, particulalry as there was a relatively intense thunderstorm going on at the time.
I suppose there are fifty states in the union and one of them has to come last in the Rest Area league table. Congratulations Tennessee – you’ve picked up that award.
The Muscovy Duck 