Elissa Schleig, a postmaster who lives in Strasburg, Virginia, drove more than 400 miles southwest to the Smoky Mountains to see the 2017 solar eclipse. The travel experience was miserable. “It should have taken us about six to seven hours to go down there but it took us about a little over six hours just to go about two hours south of here. It was insane,” said Schleig, who began to drive down the day before the eclipse.
At least 5 million people traveled for the 2017 eclipse, according to a journal by the Institute of Transportation Engineers, but even more are expected to gather to witness this year’s“Having a total solar eclipse pass through the U.S. is kind of like having 20 or 30 Super Bowls happening all at once,” says Richard Fienberg, project manager of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Eclipse Task Force. “So many people are gathering for the spectacle over a long distance