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Driving at what time?

I left Bend around 4:45 am and I had fairly little traffic, but there was a bit of traffic just before Madras, but I'd say only a few minutes delay.

Each, most people focused on going to "central" places or advertised group places (the crazy big "SolarTown" camp on formland just outside Madras on the north side, for example), and since there were few hotels in the area, probably few people decided to head to specific natural environments.

I myself was at Mecca Flats Recreation Area, about 10 mi north of Madras along the Deschutes River just south of the Warm Springs Reservation. It was also a beautiful natural environment to view the eclipse away from the huge crowds, and although the parking lot was only half-full at 6 am, by 8ish am (about an hour before the start of the eclipse) it had filled up, but then it's a pretty small parking lot anyway (it seems to be an area normally frequented mostly by people fishing; in fact, I saw several people fishing in the hours before the eclipse started), and much closer to the main US 26 road than Cove Palisades State Park is. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people decided not to go to Cove Palisades State Park because they feared there would big crowds and no space for parking.

However, unless you hung out at the Cove Palisades State Park all day, I bet you had heavy traffic on the way out, no? I started leaving soon after totality ended, but it took me maybe 30ish minutes after totality ended before I got back to US 26, and by that time it was at a near standstill. And I heard it was just as bad in the southward direction too (the direction I presume you would have been going).