Glad you had such a great experience, Janet! What luck to see be near someone who let you view through his telescope!
We went to St. Joseph, MO, nine hours away, which was the shortest drive to totality for us. Spent the night before in Overland Park KS. We pre-arranged parking at the airport which sold tickets for 5,000 cars. Our porta-potty situation was much better than Emily K decribes - thank goodness! Astronomers from Astronomy Magazine were there to provide play-by-play via live-tweet.
Unfortunately we had lots of clouds and some rain. We got maybe a 3-second clear view of totality, when the clouds parted a bit. It was rather amazing to hear the collective gasps and then whoops from I guess about 15,000 people in that moment. The clouds cleared about 20 minutes after totality so we got excellent views of the moon revealing the sun again. The clouds did not impede our experience of sudden darkness or the sunset effect. It was pretty amazing!
I saw the 1970 eclipse under similar conditions. Cloudy skies, but still decent opportunities to see the show.
Traffic coming home was dreadful. At one point Monday night we only travelled 25 miles in 2 hours on I-35. I'm so glad we found someone to keep our dog. That traffic jam would have been a nightmare for her.
Who knows if we will still be living here when we're in the zone of totality for 2024, but we'll definitely try to see that one as well. I would love to see a full eclipse from beginning to end in this lifetime.