TOLEDO, Ohio — The once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse didn't disappoint on Monday as thousands of people traveled into the Toledo area and across northwest Ohio to witness something special.
Many of those travelers had to drive home, though, and faced bumper-to-bumper traffic on major roadways.
In the Perrysburg area along I-75 near Dixie Highway, drivers faced the backups for many miles.
For people who drove in from Michigan, a trip that takes one hour took about double the time.
"The GPS says about two hours to get back ... we're seeing lots of Michigan license plates on the way back," said Jared Fink, who drove from Michigan to see the eclipse in the path of totality.
The post-eclipse mass exodus created a traffic nightmare and I-75 at one point looked like a parking lot due to the amount of cars. Some people had to take alternate routes to not miss the event
"Took us about like, an hour and a half," said Shiva Eswaran, who drove in from Michigan. "The traffic was insane. There were so many people coming in to see the event, it was crazy. I actually had to take this separate route to even get here on time, and I was so happy I did because it was the most insane experience of my life."
Kelsie Hoagland, the public information officer for the Ohio Department of Transportation District 2 says many factors affected I-75 traffic on Monday.
"We had an incident on northbound (U.S.) 23, just north of Monroe Street, and then there was also a different incident on northbound (I-75). I think that was just over the Michigan line, actually, but those things definitely caused that flow to be disruptive," she said.
Hoagland says ODOT crews were prepared to help when needed.
"I think it was rolling pairs of two, so I think that we had between 12 and 20 trucks per county in our eight northwest counties," Hoagland said.