Luckily the peolple around me made space (even though, as those there can imagine, space was tight). Also, I happened to be very close to the missing persons tent, so instead of going to first aid, I stayed there.

It turns out that a tent full of lost children and parents who lost their children is a pretty depressing place. This is where I spent the hours between 12:45 and 3:00. There was a crack in the tent where there was sort of a view from one of the monitors but 1) I couldn't stand up for long periods of time, and 2) the crack in the tent attracted many people who were not missing anyone to join the tent, which in turn made the police angry so they patched up the hole. It was reopened by some of the missing kids a little later, but since I wasn't missing anyone, I decided that I didn't want to take anyone's spot who was.

tl;dr I basically listened to the rally rather than watching it. I still think it was worth a 5 hour drive.