It was AMAZING. I have been in many partials--it is ABSOLUTELY not the same. It is not what you see looking at the sun, or the moon over the sun, even though that in itself is awesome; rather it is the sheer weirdness of the dark yet no sunset-sunrise dusk/dawn feel of it all.
We were on the north bank of the Cumberland river at a boat ramp and the temperature went from 91 to 84 degrees, the streetlights came on, the birds went silent, and the stars came out.
Truly amazing.
If you weren't in the totality, get yerself there in 2024. You'll then know why.
I was over the mountains from you in Cherokee, NC. What amazed me was how vivid the blackness of the moon was against the corona, and how varied the corona was, all the wispy shapes coming off of it, two large ones that looked like wings. Then there was the bright red spot on the top right, I was told they were solar flares, two of them, visible with the right equipment, and that all the wispy stuff was due to the solar wind. It was very striking. We got stuck in endless traffic trying to come back east, gave up and got a hotel room. It was a parking lot from Cherokee through Asheville with no end in sight, threw in the towel after four hours of that and not even being out of the mountains yet, when the entire return trip should have taken about that much time.