Halloween Road Trip Through Adams County in a Chevy Traverse

Southern Ohio’s Appalachian foothills don’t do subtle in October. The two-lane roads that wind through Adams County roll hard over ridges, drop into creek hollows, and throw blind curves at you where the tree canopy closes in overhead. Ohio’s fall foliage peaks around October 19-24 statewide, with southern Ohio typically reaching its best color in late October. Plan your Halloween run for those days and you’ll catch the county at its most atmospheric, which is also when the roads start demanding a vehicle that handles the conditions and not just the scenery.

When families on the lot ask what fits a day like this, we point them at the 2026 Chevrolet Traverse. Three rows for the crew, cargo room for the costumes and the pumpkins, AWD for roads that turn slick with wet leaves in the shade, and a fuel tank big enough that you’re not hunting a gas station in the middle of Peebles at dusk.

Why Does This Vehicle Fit These Roads?

The Traverse fits these roads because Adams County trades interstate cruising for real terrain, and State Route 41’s southern portion runs quite hilly as it passes through scenic areas with state parks and monuments, the kind of grades that reward power and grip. Add SR-125 cutting east-west through the foothill terrain, and you have a county where the driving stays genuinely engaging in a way that punishes an underpowered, undergripped vehicle. Each condition below gets its own answer.

The EPA rates the front-wheel-drive Traverse at 20 mpg city and 26 mpg highway; AWD models come in at 20 mpg city and 24 mpg highway. For a county road trip that mixes stop-and-start village driving with rolling highway stretches, you’ll find that AWD figure holds up fine across a full day.

The Cargo Situation Is the Real Argument

What makes or breaks a Halloween family road trip is whether you can fit everyone plus the costumes, the prop bag, and the impulse pumpkin-patch haul, and on that count the 2026 Traverse has room to spare with 22.9 cubic feet of cargo space behind the third row and a maximum of 97.6 cubic feet once the rear rows fold. That number isn’t marketing. It means two adults in the back seat and a third row of kids still leaves you a trunk the size of a compact pickup bed.

The Traverse also runs Smart Slide second-row seats and an AutoSense Power Liftgate on every trim. The power liftgate earns its keep when you’re holding a carved pumpkin and a tote of cider donuts from a roadside stand. Smart Slide seats simplify third-row access without making you unload cargo first. Small thing, but it’s huge on a day when you’re loading and unloading at three stops.

One tradeoff is worth naming. The Traverse is large, and if you’re used to a compact crossover, the turning circle takes a moment to recalibrate. Front legroom is a generous 44.3 inches, and the second row gets 41.5 inches. The size earns its keep in comfort on a two-hour run each way. If you’re a solo driver making a quick solo stop, the Equinox is the easier parking choice. But our topic here is Halloween road trips with a full family, and for that, the Traverse is the right fit.

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Serpent Mound: The Only Halloween Stop That Needs No Decoration

Serpent Mound earns the trip on its own, a giant earthen mound in Adams County nearly a quarter of a mile long that represents a giant snake and stands as the largest serpent effigy in the world, needing no decoration at all. A National Historic Landmark, it sits right there on State Route 73 near Peebles, about 12 miles north of West Union. No haunted house in the greater Cincinnati region even competes on atmosphere. None. You won’t find a prop that beats it.

Plan your drive to arrive by 3 p.m. at the latest, since you’ll want time to walk the full loop and get back to the gate before it closes. Admission is per vehicle. The site is closed Mondays; Tuesday through Saturday hours run 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with final entry at 4 p.m., and the site closes promptly at 5 p.m. A short October day makes that a real constraint, and the Traverse’s Google Maps integration means you’re not guessing about drive times on roads that don’t always behave as expected.

Browse our current Traverse inventory to see which trims and configurations we’ve got on the lot right now.

A Vehicle That Fits the Drive Home, Too

The Traverse handles the drive home as well as the drive out, and the return leg is the one nobody plans for, after dark with tired kids in the third row and the SR-41 grades between Peebles and West Union running through patches of blowing leaves. Adams County sits at the Edge of Appalachia, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Those foothills don’t flatten out just because it’s October. The Traverse’s AWD and its 328-horsepower turbo keep the drive home confident instead of anxious.

We also want to be straight with you. If your family is three people and a dog, the Traverse is more SUV than you need for a day trip. The Trailblazer parks easier and uses less fuel. But when the headcount is five or more, when the cargo includes gear plus costumes plus whatever the kids convinced you to bring home from the roadside stand, the Traverse stops being “a lot of vehicle” and starts being exactly enough vehicle. That difference shows up on the drive.

AWD models carry a 21.7-gallon tank. The bigger tank offsets the slightly lower highway rating, and estimated range lands at about 456 miles. West Union to Serpent Mound and back is well under 30 miles round-trip. You’re doing this whole day on a single fill.