https://www.cloudynights.com/forum/135-north-american-total-solar-eclipse-2017/

There are a dozen or more good threads on how, why, when what etc in that forum.

99%!??!?!?!?!??!?! FUCK!! you are going to miss the good stuff, and now I'm a bit mad. The sky will get dark, but not quite dark enough to see the full corona. You will get to see the shadow of the moon race toward and away from you. You will see Venus, certainly, but it will not get dark enough to see stars. Depending on where exactly you are and what exactly "99%" is, you should see a ripple of Bailey's Beads across the limb of the sun and weird shadow phenomena on the ground. It will also get cooler than it was at the start, you will see the "shadow bands" as the sun goes from a disk to a point source of light and trees will cast interesting odd shadows.

Bring a colander with you and get a picture of the hundreds of little crescents!

And remember even at 99% you should use eye protection, solar glasses, #14 welder's glass etc. I assume you already know that but the NASA training is beaten into me at this point.

Get as far north on the site as you can. http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2017_GoogleMapFull.html Find exactly where you will be and get the times of all the events so you can plan accordingly.

Have fun, get some good shots and if you can, share them!