I took the kids down to Illinois to see the eclipse on Monday. Ian's off doing Army things so I was on my own with all the driving. (We left Milwaukee at 5 in the morning and got home at about 9:30 at night.)
We had our NASA approved viewing glasses that we picked up from American Science and Surplus a week ago before they were sold out. We had a bag of car snacks the kids had picked out at Target the day before (grapes, carrots, granola, pop tarts...) and we filled up our bottles with familiar Milwaukee water. I had an iPod of podcasts to listen to if radio had nothing to offer. The kids had some multi-player game that they could coordinate on their little devices. We had the GPS and the iPass and everyone settled into their respective seats in the minivan as we hit the road while it was still dark.
My kids love a road trip. They had been looking forward to it for weeks. They are good travelers and undaunted by long stretches in the car. They never whine. They never ask to stop unless they need to use the bathroom, and even then they give as much warning as possible in case it will take time to find an exit. They don't get carsick. They can sleep when they need to as we roll along. They sing sometimes, although they tend to amuse themselves quietly. When they were younger and their heads didn't pop above the seats it was possible to forget they were even back there.
I had planned to get us to Carbondale, Illinois where big eclipse festivities were going on and where totality viewing would be one of the longest in the country. I plugged a random restaurant with a Carbondale address into the GPS and gave us a cushion of well over an hour to reach it.
The problem is it doesn't always matter how much you prepare or plan. Life doesn't work that way.
My own space apart from the babble of the internet