ATLANTA – Local drink specials on Corona. Moon pies with chocolate superimposed over vanilla. Obscured-sun themed T-shirts at every turn.

Solar eclipse fever in Georgia is perhaps burning hottest in a small mountain community in northeast Georgia that will experience one of the longest durations of darkness in the country.

At Rabun County’s tourism development authority, the phone doesn’t stopped ringing. The community is preparing for the 10,000 people who are expected to watch the Aug. 21 eclipse at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, which is an official NASA viewing site.

“We’ve sold tickets to people in Mexico, in Scotland, in upstate New York, in Omaha, Nebraska, in Louisiana. I feel like the entire state of Florida is going to be here,” said Laura Gurley, who chairs the authority’s board. “The calls come from everywhere.”

Six callers tried to ring through in just four minutes as Gurley talked on a recent afternoon. Nearly 7,000 tickets had been sold for an event that will no doubt sell out.

But the intensity really started locally more than a year ago, when hotels and campgrounds sold their last spots. The special glasses needed to safely watch the eclipse have been hard to come by for weeks all throughout northeast Georgia, where the path of total darkness will rip through the corner of the state.

The centerline, which offers the longest period of darkness, will snip through just 12.5 miles of Georgia – in Rabun County.

More than 55,000 carloads of people are expected to swarm the county, which is home to nearly 17,000 people, to witness a celestial show that will last a quick two and half minutes.

As exciting as the eclipse is, it can also be just as terrifying for some. What if the roads become parking lots? What if the gas tanks run dry? These are real enough possibilities to drive county officials to draft contingency plans.

“I don’t think anybody knows until it happens how this is going to shake out,” said Greg James, who chairs the Rabun County Commission.

Gurley said the local apprehension reminds her of the concerns people in Atlanta had about the 1996 summer Olympics. Fear of being stuck in nightmare traffic kept many people at home.

“I’m hearing people say, ‘Well, we’re not doing that anymore.’ OK, fine. You’re just clearing up traffic for me,” Gurley said with a laugh.

But traveling to the path of totality is worth the madness, said Lesley Simanton-Coogan, an astronomy professor at the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega. For many folks, the eclipse represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Even people near the path’s edge risk missing the full experience, such as the corona of the sun. Beyond the path, the eclipse may just have the effect of a gloomy day, Simanton-Coogan said.

“Ninety-nine percent of the sun covered is still ten thousand times brighter than 100 percent of the sun covered,” she said. “It’s a big difference in brightness if any part of the sun is exposed.”

But even for those who cannot make it to northeast Georgia, Simanton-Coogan said a partial eclipse holds its own allure. Communities all across the state are planning local events.

“For a lot of people, I think it’s this really abstract concept when they just read about it in a textbook in school,” she said. “So actually seeing, ‘Oh no, the moon really is a rock going around our rock and it’s between us and our sun now’ and these things aren’t just something that you see in a movie.

“That’s something that’s really nice about the eclipse,” she added. “It helps people realize where they are in the universe.”

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.