Traffic heavy, slow out of Neb., Wyo.

FORT COLLINS» They went. They saw the Great American Eclipse. And then they all jumped back in their cars and tried to get home.

Before the sun had made its full return, viewers had already started on their way back south, loading up their children, dogs and solar eclipse glasses in hopes of beating the return traffic from Wyoming and Nebraska.

The Colorado Department of Transportation expected 34,000 people to leave Wyoming for Colorado at the exact same time.

The exodus began to show itself in Colorado around noon, with the state Division of Homeland Security reporting 3,000 cars an hour pouring over the state line.

Traffic on Interstate 25 outside of Fort Collins started to slow around 2 p.m. By 2:30 p.m., speeds in the area were 30 mph or lower as a knot of vehicles began the creep back toward metro Denver.

Colorado and Wyoming issued urgent messages warning of the heavy traffic, and reminded people to fuel up where they could.

At the Forks 287 convenience store and deli located on U.S. 287 — right in the path of migration from Wyoming — customers were limited to purchasing no more than $20 worth of gas Monday afternoon because the rural outpost’s tanks were running low.

“We’re running out of everything,” Chana Fuller, a Forks 287 employee, said. “Our soda is low, water bottles are low and sandwiches are flying off the shelf.”

The 42-mile trip from Guernsey State Park, in eastern Wyoming, to Torrington took less than an hour going north but 3K hours on the return trip. At a gas station near the edge of Torrington, the line was 15 deep for the women’s restroom and seven deep for men.

Traffic was moving slow out of southwest Nebraska, too, with travelers reporting it was taking about three hours to drive from Alliance, home of Carhenge, to Scottsbluff, a trip that typically takes about an hour.

But travelers from Kearny, in north-central Nebraska, reported smooth sailing on Interstate 80 and Interstate 76 in Colorado.

The Wyoming Department of Transportation on Sunday estimated that 217,000 more vehicles than average traveled on the state’s roads. The state only has about 206,000 registered cars.

Traffic built hours before sunrise Monday as even more cars headed to Wyoming and Nebraska, the closest places where Coloradans could experience the total eclipse. At 4:50 a.m., traffic in Cheyenne resembled Denver rush hour at its worst. Shortly after 8 a.m., CDOT reported that there was a 10-mile backup on Interstate 25 in Wyoming near that state’s Glendo State Park.

Those who weren’t able — or willing — to make the trek up north stopped in Fort Collins.

Some drove up to Wyoming in hopes of finding a spot and were met with traffic jams and had to turn around. Lisa Benigno left Denver at 6:15 a.m. hoping to meet her friends for the eclipse and drove five hours — from I-76 to U.S. 85, up to Torrington and found herself running low on gas in traffic stopped dead.

She turned back to Colorado. Others didn’t even try. One father from Denver said it wasn’t worth it to get into the “mess,” and a mother from Centennial said her plan was to drive as far north as she could with her daughter and ended up in Fort Collins.

“We stopped here because we didn’t want to miss it,” said Amber Martinez, who left Centennial at 10 a.m.