EV Trailering On The Turnpikes, Cuyahoga Valley National Park

For many people, a turnpike is just a normal fact of life. You get on, you pay (either then or later, or way later with late fees), and it otherwise runs just like any other freeway. But, for me it was a new experience. In this article, I want to share some of the ups and downs, especially for an EV truck pulling a travel trailer. Along the way, I also got to visit a national park!

The Bottom Corner of Michigan

Before I get to the turnpike experience, I want to talk about my first time in Michigan. Sadly, I didn’t get to check out the whole state, but my wife wanted to put the Michigan magnet on the fridge, so after we left Indiana Dunes, we went north a bit and drove along the bottom of the state for a while.

One thing that surprised me a bit about driving that way was how much earlier in the year it seemed. In the southwest, April is practically summer. Spring is pretty much over, and it’s getting HOT. But, in northern Indiana and southern Michigan, the trees were still brown and some of the trees looked like it might’ve still been fall. Again, this is something people living up north might be completely used to, but for me it was strange.

Along the way, we didn’t see that much after leaving Lake Michigan. We went throughs some towns, went over lots of rolling hills, and then dropped back into Indiana to charge up at a Rivian station and then get back on the Turnpike.

Our next charging stop was at a the Tiffin River turnpike service plaza. As I pointed out in past articles, rest areas out west on regular interstates are basically just a place to pee and maybe a place to sleep if you have an RV or you’re a trucker. But on the turnpikes, they’re loaded with amenities. Fuel, food, and nicer bathrooms await. But, as with other service plazas with charging that I’d been seeing since Oklahoma, there was one problem.

 

Just as with most normal interstate rest areas, the traffic is sorted into cars and trucks/RVs. Normally, this makes sense, because trucks, buses, and RVs need larger areas to park. The Indiana and Ohio turnpikes even had little RV parks with spaces you could rent cheap with 50-amp hookups for the night. The problem arises when you take a closer look at the picture and see that all of the Tesla and Electrify America charging was placed solidly on the “car” side of the plaza.

 

To get a charge, I had to maneuver the truck and the trailer into the car side, do some figure 8 maneuvering, and then park alongside the empty Electrify America station to charge without unhooking the trailer. It was one of the more expensive charges on the trip, so I can see why nobody was there. I wasn’t in anyone’s way, so I just stayed with the truck so I could move it if anyone showed up wanting to charge.

My Heart Was Literally In Ohio

When we continued along the turnpike and arrived in Ohio, I had to torture the kids with Ohio Is For Lovers by Hawthorne Heights. I mean, I had never been to Ohio before, so it seemed fitting to put the track on. But, the lady at the first toll booth was far less than amused. So, I screamo’d the chorus as I pulled away. She totally had that coming!

We stayed at a truck stop in Perrysburg that night, and then left the turnpike to see the shores of Lake Erie. We drove on the closest roads, and one of them was just feet from the water. Sadly, the weather turned foul as we ate in Port Clinton, so I wasn’t able to get the drone up in the air or get any good pictures of the area. But, here’s some proof that I got stuck in construction in the area and actually saw a second Great Lake:

Finding A Place To Sleep

Things were pretty uneventful as we made our way toward Cleveland. It was getting dark, so we decided to find a place to stay for the night. A city park with RV spaces near Cuyahoga National Park was the only thing open, and when we pulled up, it was clear that our trailer simply wasn’t going to fit in the space. Everything else was reserved, so we sat in a high school parking lot debating what to do.

We were near a national park and there had to be plentiful RV sites, right? Right? Sadly, April is outside of the tourist season for Cuyahoga. The KOA and basically every other RV park we could find was still closed for the season, opening up about a week later.

The only place to sleep that we could find was in one of the turnpike RV parks. So, we stopped at Walmart, picked up some meals, and drove back onto it to find the next service plaza. As promised, there was 50-amp hookups, pavement, and a safe place to park for the night. The space was short and I had to unhook, so I put my truck on an adjacent “aux” power pedestal to charge alongside my trailer.

As I was unhooking and doing all of this, I learned why none of the regular RV parks were open for the season: cold air and lots of drizzling, soaking rain.

A Cold Visit To Cuyahoga National Park

The next morning wasn’t much better. We drove back into town and to the Boston Mill visitor center for Cuyahoga. Sadly, again, we weren’t able to get any great pictures of the river, the train, or anything else. It was still an enjoyable experience, mostly because we had both jackets and umbrellas. Also, the heat pump in our camper was still working great.

But, as we made our way south along the Cuyahoga river and the canal, the weather cleared up a bit and we got to get a little hiking and scenery in at Beaver Marsh.

The most common and noisy animal there was the red-winged black bird. They were swooping, picking at floating logs, and doing anything else they could to find some food. But, for no apparent reason, they’d randomly stop and scream, making that stereotypical fishing video noise. But, I later learned that they were probably either screeching at me for being too close to their territory or they were calling for mates. I’m hoping I had nothing to do with that latter part, because that would be super weird.

There was also an abundance of geese in the area. Most of them were hunting, mating (yep, we learned something about goose mating that day), or sleeping. We accidentally surprised one that was sleeping next to the path, and he jumped up and started hissing (something I didn’t know they could do). All in all, it was a nice day.

We’ll have to take our e-bikes and visit the park again sometime in the main season.

Heading To West Virginia

In my next travelogue article, I’ll continue our journey across Ohio and into the very top little “spike” of West Virginia.