Yeah I'm sure you are right that the highways are very likely to be jammed Cynique.
I plan to drive to to either TN, GA, NC, or SC. depending on who has the best forecast.
Yeah Del the sky will change outside the path of the totality, but by all accounts that I've read it is a completely different experience. The following account is one of the more subdued ones I've read:
"I doubt if the effect of witnessing a total eclipse ever quite passes away. The impression is singularly vivid and quieting for days, and can never be wholly lost. A startling nearness to the gigantic forces of nature and their inconceivable operation seems to have been established. Personalities and towns and cities, and hates and jealousies, and even mundane hopes, grow very small and very far away.Professor Langley says of this superb sight: ‘The spectacle is one of which, though the man of science may prosaically state the facts, perhaps only the poet could render the impression." --Professor Langley