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We were in Hopkinsville, KY. Just got home yesterday. We were about a dozen miles from the point of greatest eclipse, giving us 2:40.1 of totality. It was simply amazing, and nowhere near long enough.
We had reworked an already scheduled weeklong camping trip to make an eclipse trip with camping at the end. Before and after the eclipse we were staying near Mammoth Cave, and had planned to leave there at 4:00 am to get to Hopkinsville around 6:00. But everyone we talked to- in the campground, at the park or in stores, was going to Hopkinsville too. So we left at 3:00.
No worries, we got there at 5:00, well ahead of any crowd. We had bought a ticket for Ruff Park, so we knew where we were going, we knew we'd be able to park, etc. We were the second car through when they opened the gate. We found our spot, set up chairs and a tent, then got my wife's 8" scope set up and worked on getting the camera mounted. Then we suffered through being in the South in August.
The camera was a no-go, don't ask me why. Not having it mounted actually helped- we could check out the whole thing without trying to stand where we could look through the camera, and lots of people in the area came by to see it through the scope. We got good at taking phone pics through the scope, too. She got a really good one during totality, but no picture I've seen comes even close to showing how beautiful it was.
When it was over we set the kids up in the park's pavillion and cooked burgers and dogs on our tabletop grill, finally leaving around 4:00. The Hopkinsville traffic had settled down a lot, but I-65 was brutal. It took us 4 hours to make the 2 hour trip back to Mammoth cave.
Two solid days of driving later, we made it home just in time to repack the van from the "camping in cabins with a huge telescope" load plan to the "camping in our pop-up with two kayaks" load plan. And our regularly scheduled week with friends up at the lake was shortened to 3 days.
Now if the kids had actually let us relax during those 3 days... Hell of a trip.
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Originally Posted by sheepdog44
Transmission type Efficiency
Manual neutral engine off.100% @∞MPG <----- Fun Fact.
Manual 1:1 gear ratio .......98%
CVT belt ............................88%
Automatic .........................86%
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