I had seen the Milky Way many times over my life, I just didn’t realize I was seeing it. I was recently on vacation in a low light pollution location and was counting satellites that were passing by and noticed what I thought was a faint white cloud. After three days of it being in the same place at about the same time it dawned on me that it was the Milky Way.
Milky Way rises in East and sets in West but will most likely be overhead. Right now the milky way is overhead so you just want to look up at the zenith and it should be there :)