A lovely day-trip from Toronto, Kelso Conservation Area is found just west of Milton,ON. Its about 60-70 km along the 401, so close enough that you need not charge my 2018 Nissan Leaf. We do wind up stopping at the Mary-Browns Chicken outlet in Milton, which has a Flo station across the road allowing the car to graze on some electrons while we enjoy our lunch. Kelso offers hiking, biking, swimming, paddle boarding and more. Plus it hosts Glen Eden ski area in the winter, so plenty of fun year around.
Roundtrip it is only about 120 km or so, hence even my 2015 Nissan Leaf could make it there and back. But as its on the 401 for the most part, you might find yourself driving at 100 km/hr or so, which does impact your range (see this post). Charging while we enjoy lunch is therefore a good idea if you are in an older EV. Milton has a pair of L2 Flo chargers and a L3 fast charger near the Canadian Tire gas station on Martin Avenue. Note that the Canadian Tire gas station is located a few kilometers a part from the Canadian Tire store itself, which can be somewhat confusing. I have used the L3 fast charger once, as it was cold and my wife wanted to use the heater, plus I had my roof-racks on, but otherwise I tend to plug into the L2 stations for some electron grazing as that’s all that I usually need.
It did take us a while to inflate the paddle boards, but we did get them inflated in the end. We have a pump from amazon that plugs into the 12V “cigarette-lighter” plug, while slow, it does inflate them nicely. Do note that you need to get pretty close to 15 PSI in order to stand comfortably on the boards, although sometimes the kids just want something that floats hence 5 PSI can be sufficient if they are very keen on getting into the water.
Kelso is managed by Conservation Halton, and they do require reservations in advance, we opted for the family annual membership as it is a fairly reasonable expense.
Electric car adventures 