Midwest Road Trip
Part 1
From November 2-9, 2023, Elyse, our friend Kyle, and I did a road trip out to the Midwest, spending much of our time in the Chicagoland area. I got to spend some time with my sister and brother-in-law, and we had a lot of fun adventures. This was an eight-day trip, and it was planned as a road trip, with the drive out and back’s being as much a part of the adventure as the destination.
The planning for this trip went through a few different iterations. Initially, the idea was to run this the same way that we had always done our big road trips, where we took one day to drive out, spend five days on site, and then take one day to drive back. That seemed reasonable enough at a glance, but I really didn’t want to do eleven hours in the car in one day, especially when you consider how much time stops can take, i.e. it could easily get up into 14, 15, or 16 hours before it was all over with. That led to my sacrificing a Chicago day to add an additional travel day on the way back, with the idea of overnighting in Pittsburgh and having a small Pittsburgh adventure before doing the final four hours home. We then soon realized that there was a lot that we wanted to do in Pittsburgh – far more than we could fit into a single day – so we split Pittsburgh out and planned it as its own weekend trip, which happened at the end of May. So with Pittsburgh out, the overnight destination shifted to Cleveland, in order to split the return trip somewhat evenly, while still doing the outbound trip as a single day. Under that plan, we had planned a very short side trip to “touch Michigan”, i.e. get off the freeway and then just drive into Michigan and do some token activity there just to say that we had been to Michigan, since the highway already ran very close to the Indiana-Michigan border (I-90 comes about 1,000 feet from the Michigan border at its closest point, but never enters Michigan). Then I realized that I wanted to go to The Henry Ford in order to see a photo of mine in an exhibit. That shifted the overnight location from Cleveland to Detroit, with the idea’s being to drive the four hours from Chicago to Detroit, see The Henry Ford, stay the night in the Detroit area, and then make the final day a driving day, doing the final eight hours home. However, I was a bit uneasy about that plan, because (A) I was kind of looking forward to seeing Cleveland, and that plan would have sacrificed it, and (B) I was worried that a late start out of Chicago would cause us to miss The Henry Ford, which would have been the only reason for making such a sizable detour in the first place. Additionally, I wanted to make sure to have enough time to see everything there, i.e. making sure that we get our time and money’s worth out of that detour. Taking all of that into consideration, I made the decision to extend the trip out by an additional day, taking it from seven days to eight, sacrificing a rest day between my last day of work and the first travel day in order to fit everything. That would put The Henry Ford on the outbound trip, and restore Cleveland to its original place on the return trip. Then we found out that our friend Kyle’s visit to the DC area was going to overlap with our trip, so it made enough sense to loop him into it, so that added a third person to our adventure.
With the itinerary all figured out, it was time to book rooms. That went through a few iterations as well. The first thought was to get one room for Elyse and me in each city, and a second, adjoining room for Kyle. Then as I was booking the rooms, I had an “aha” moment: suites. After all, one suite was cheaper than two adjoining rooms, and everyone still had plenty of space, plus with multiple rooms, anyone could still have some privacy if they desired. That led to some changing of reservations, plus the discovery that there were better options for hotels in Canada than there were in Detroit. So rather than stay in adjoining rooms at a Hampton Inn in Allen Park as I had originally planned, we would stay in a suite at a DoubleTree just over the river in Windsor. Then our hotel in the Chicagoland area was the Hilton Garden Inn in Evanston, where Mom and I had stayed on multiple occasions in the past, though this time, we booked a junior suite rather than a standard room. Then I also booked a suite for our one night in Cleveland at a Hampton Inn.
With the planning complete, the only thing left to do was to make the trip and execute everything. We left the house just after 11 AM, and our route took us on the usual trajectory for a location to our northwest: I-270 northbound to Frederick, and then I-70 to Breezewood. At Breezewood, we stopped at Sheetz.
I saw these prices, and was quite surprised, seeing as gas was quite a bit less expensive than this in Maryland. Good thing I was getting the 88 fuel. If I were filling up from a 100% empty tank, I would have saved $9.52 altogether using the 88 over the 87. I’ve never noticed a difference in performance between the 87 and 88 grades (88 contains 15% ethanol vs. 10% for 87), so as far as I’m concerned, cost is king, so 88 it is.
Our first souvenir of the trip was this LED sign that Elyse got with a neon-style treatment of the Sheetz logo.
Elyse and I love these quart-size milk jugs because of their squat shape, and we were just tickled to find them here, selling tea.
We then continued onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike, running it nonstop to the end and then crossing into Ohio, where the road continued as the Ohio Turnpike.
Nothing says “Welcome to Ohio!” quite like paying another toll. The Ohio Turnpike is part of the longest continuous toll road in the United States, stretching 773 miles east from Chicago, incorporating toll roads in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
For me, at least, crossing the boundary between Ohio and Pennsylvania felt like a big step, because at that point, we were no longer in the East, as Ohio really marks the beginning of the Midwest. Say what you want about Pittsburgh’s being more of a midwestern city than an eastern city, but generally speaking, Pennsylvania is largely considered part of the Northeast, while Ohio is unquestionably part of the Midwest. Having crossed that line, we were now firmly in the Midwest.
In Ohio, we noticed some things about the roads. First of all, we noticed trucks carrying triples, i.e. three trailers. That was a first for Elyse and me, since triple trailers are not allowed to operate in most places in the eastern US. The only states that permit triples east of the Mississippi are Ohio and Indiana, while they are allowed in twelve states in the western US. Additionally, one thing I noticed was the spacing of the reflectors on the roads. On most roads that I’m familiar with, reflectors are placed after every other stripe. So you alternate between a reflector and a blank space, one, two, one, two. In Ohio, it’s after every third stripe. It was consistent, but that extra blank space before a reflector just messed with my head, because I was so accustomed to every second stripe that every third just bothered me. It also felt like we were crossing county lines left and right in Ohio. It made me wonder if Ohio counties were smaller than in other states that I was familiar with, or if I just happened to hit the counties in such a way that I was crossing a bunch of them in fairly quick succession, but I couldn’t find anything conclusive about this when I researched later.
Not long after we entered Ohio, I spotted something that none of us expected to see. While we were traveling westbound on I-76, we saw a New Flyer Xcelsior transit bus going eastbound. The surprise was that it was in DASH livery. DASH, as in the transit system in Alexandria, Virginia. As it turned out, this was 709, a brand new bus that was on its way to DASH, on its delivery trip to Alexandria from New Flyer’s facility in Minnesota (transit buses are typically just driven from the factory to their destination).
Meanwhile, having spent the better part of three hours and 188 miles driving continuously, we were all ready for a break. Elyse found a Walmart in Austintown, which was not far off of our route about 24 miles northwest of the toll plaza (just outside of Youngstown), so we added it to Google and went there. On the way in, I noticed a large pipeline running over a lake, which I made a note of for later.
The Walmart was a conversion store, i.e. it was originally a non-Supercenter that had been expanded to the Supercenter format. Based on the exterior architecture, this most likely happened some time in the mid 2000s.
Cleveland Browns pajamas at Walmart. This was a big reminder that we weren’t in the east anymore.
Orange-flavored osmotic laxative (the name brand is Miralax). I use this product as needed to maintain regularity, but I had never seen it with an orange flavor before. Prior to this, I had only seen it come unflavored. I don’t know if I’d buy this, though, because I tend to mix it in milk and add sugar-free flavors of my own to it, and flavors that pharmaceuticals typically have are rarely very good. Elyse calls this concoction that I make “poison milk”.
The mental image for this one amused me thoroughly. In a word: whoosh.
Before we left, Elyse also wanted to make a visit to Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee, and I took the drone out for a quick flight around the immediate area while she did that.
The Walmart in Austintown.
The roof of the Walmart in Austintown. Note that only the rightmost part of the building contains skylights. This is consistent with a conversion store, where the original part of the building dates from the period when Walmart built stores with drop ceilings and no skylights, while the grocery expansion contains an open truss ceiling and skylights.
Parking lot in front of the Walmart in Austintown.
Dollar Tree and Goodwill, in a row with Walmart. These two stores are not the original tenants for their spaces. The Dollar Tree originally housed a store called “Deal$ Nothing Over A Dollar“, and the Goodwill formerly housed a Sears Appliance & Hardware store. The Sears store closed in late 2016, and the Goodwill opened in 2021.
After I landed, we got moving, with the intention of stopping again nearby so that I could fly the lake and see that pipeline. As we were leaving the shopping center, Elyse took the lid off of her coffee, and then got some on her hoodie when I stopped for a red light. Lovely. Elyse was now upset about getting coffee on a favorite hoodie, but there was not much that we could do about it right then, so I parked on the roadside and flew the lake in order to investigate that pipeline.
Mahoning Avenue as it crosses Meander Creek Reservoir. View facing approximately west.
The pipeline running across Meander Creek Reservoir. From what I could tell based on my research, this pipeline carries water between the reservoir and the Berlin Pumping Station.
The HR-V, parked on the side of Mahoning Avenue just east of the lake.
By the time I was done flying, Elyse had formulated a plan to address the coffee issue, and got a new hoodie from Walmart. This was an Ohio hoodie, which seemed fitting. We also stopped in at Dollar Tree, and photographed a transit bus.
The bus was a Gillig Low Floor operated by WRTA, or Western Reserve Transit Authority, which is the agency serving the Youngstown metropolitan area and Mahoning County.
That was the end of our time in Austintown. We then continued on for another hour and some change until we reached Cleveland. My original plan for Cleveland on the outbound trip was to just hit a fast food place near the highway and then keep it moving, but we ended up going all the way downtown in search of better food. We ended up at Geraci’s Slice Shop, which is a cute little pizza place on Prospect Avenue East.
Exterior sign for Geraci’s Pizza.
I got myself a slice of white pizza.
One thing I enjoyed here was the table lighting, with stained glass lamps of various designs hanging from the ceiling.
I also really liked this vintage Coke machine. Unfortunately, the machine was no longer in use.
A payphone! That’s a rare sight nowadays.
Geraci’s was attached to the 5th Street Arcade, an historic indoor shopping mall in Cleveland that traces its origins back to 1898.
When we finished at Geraci’s, it was time to hit the road again. Being in Ohio, we were well outside of where we would see any highway numbers that would be familiar to us in the mid-Atlantic region. On recent trips, we had largely followed familiar numbers to new places. For North Carolina, I-95 was a continuing thread, as was I-64 later on in the trip. On the Tennessee trip, I-81 and US 11 were continuing threads throughout. For Ottawa, the majority of our journey occurred on I-81. This time, once we finished with I-76 in eastern Ohio, it was a whole new world of highway numbers. The only exception was when we approached Sandusky. There, I spotted a rare familiar road number: US 250. Yep – that US 250, the same US 250 that exists in Virginia, which runs through Staunton and Waynesboro on its way to Charlottesville and ultimately to Richmond. I had forgotten that US 250 ran to Ohio, and then I remembered that the route’s western teminuus was in Sandusky.
As we traveled from between Cleveland and Detroit, we really appreciated seeing all of the industrial facilities, and we especially appreciated seeing the big gas burnoffs on some of the factories. If not that we had to make it somewhere in a reasonable amount of time, we would have all loved to stop to photograph some of these things. I would have especially loved to take my drone around some of these industrial sites.
Once we crossed into Michigan, we also noticed that there was a large number of billboards for various cannabis stores in the state. That led us to ask Google about the status of cannabis sales in the various states that we would be traveling through, and as it turns out, cannabis is legal for medical and recreational use in Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois, but it’s still fully illegal in Indiana (and none of us were surprised about that).
Entering Detroit, we were again enamored by all of the industrial facilities that we saw, and the accompanying gas burnoffs. Once in Detroit, I was taking us to the Ambassador Bridge, where we would cross into Canada. I found it interesting how many signs there were warning that this path would take someone the USA, and once on the road to Canada, there was a sign that said that if you made a wrong turn, to go to the duty free store. It made me wonder if all of these signs were indicative of a poor road design, as I had not seen this many signs at other border crossings. We intended to go to Canada, so we just plowed on through. We got to Canadian customs around 11 PM, and processing took a few minutes. I’ve never had a bad experience with Canadian customs. Say hello, quick check over documents, and then welcome to Canada.
This also marked my third visit to Canada in six months’ time, which is something that I never thought would happen at the beginning of this year. Clearly, I just can’t get enough of Canada, though this was my first visit to Canada that had nothing at all to do with Today’s Special.
Once we got into Canada, the plan was to get food on the way in and bring it back to the hotel to eat. We were going to get food from Harvey’s, which is a Canadian fast food chain that serves hamburgers and the like. I was looking forward to experiencing a Harvey’s where everyone spoke English, as compared to my visit in Gatineau where the cashier’s first question to me was, “Français?” and then they had to find someone who spoke English in order to take my order. I also took some quick phone shots outside Harvey’s while I was waiting for our order to be processed, to share immediately as proof that we were in Canada once again.
The Harvey’s near the Ambassador Bridge.
Then we headed to the DoubleTree. Or at least we tried to, as Google’s directions sent us to the back side of the building, where there was no entrance. After finding the front side, I found out from the guy working the front desk that it happens to everyone. A closer look on Google Maps indicated that the map marker is located too far back on the building, which led to the bad navigation. I attempted to fix it by moving the marker to the front, but Google did that passive-aggressive thing that they do where they accept your map edit and then instantly revert it, which they do to avoid hurt feelings. I find it extremely insulting that they will send me an approval notice and then immediately go behind my back and undo it, because if you approve my edit, I expect it to stay that way. I would rather that they just deny my edit if that’s their intention, because if you don’t like my edit, that’s fine, but be upfront about it. Doing that approve-and-revert move causes me more hurt feelings because I feel like it’s dishonest. They told me “great edit!” to my face and then immediately trashed it as soon as my back was turned. Not cool, Google.
In short: I tried, but Google is just like that sometimes.
Once we got checked in, we brought our stuff in, I put the HR-V in the garage across the street behind the hotel, and then we enjoyed our dinner. I had my hamburger, but couldn’t eat the poutine right away, so that went into the fridge for the morning. And then it was time for bed, as we had a full day planned.