A number of factors converged after Christmas to cause me to take an unexpected but ultimately amazing road. Now working for a company that closed between Christmas and New Year, needing to use vacation days before they expire, a spouse who had to work, kids who are almost grown, and a good dose of the winter blues. So, I looked for a destination.
I read an article recently about cheap land in the San Luis Valley in Colorado and wondered what it would be like to have a vacation home among the small marijuana farmers and off-griders. While I was never serious about buying land there, at the same time I noticed Great Sand Dunes National Park was there, too. My annual Park Pass that I got for my cross-country road trip last spring was still good for a couple of months. So, I took off on the morning of December 26 in a hurry to get to the West.
Day-by-Day
The problem with living in the East is you have to drive a long way to get to the West The first three days of driving were slogs over interstates that I had mostly traveled before. The good news was that superchargers in the East are so frequent that charging was a non-issue. The only thing worth noting on the first day was that, because I now had a CCS adapter, I didn't have to detour into Nashville to charge. I just skirted the northeast side of town and charged at the Electrify America station right off I-24 in Clarksville, TN. I spent the first night in a hotel with Level 2 charging in Paducah, KY. I know you shouldn't rely on hotel charging on a trip, but on this trip, I was actually able charge at hotels every night. I sometimes had to a few miles out of the way from where I expected to stay, but on the other hand, hotels with chargers tend to be cleaner, have fitness centers, and offer free breakfast.
After a boring first day of driving, I broke up the second day by stopping in St. Louis late morning to go up in the Gateway Arch. It's technically a national park, but my pass only got me a $3 discount of the tram ride up. The views were worth it, especially since this was at the tail end of the arctic blast that swept the country, and left the Mississippi River half frozen. Because I spent more time at the Arch than I had planned and I ended up waiting in line at a local sandwich shop--the Blues City Deli--for lunch, I was too tired to reach my original goal of Salina, KS, and spent the night in Topeka instead.
The third day was a long haul across the rest of Kansas and eastern Colorado with two highlights. The first was a 30-minute detour south of I-70 at Oakley to hike in Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park. While small, the park is a pleasant surprise to find in the middle of the prairie. A couple of cautions: I had to do a deep charge in Hays while I ate lunch in order to get to the state park and then back to Colby for my next charge. (A planned supercharger in Oakley will make this detour trivial.) Also, the last 5 miles or so in and out to the park are dirt road.
The second highlight of the day was after charging up in Limon, CO, and leaving the interstate to take the two-lane US-24 to Colorado Springs. About 30 miles outside of "the Springs" as all the local say, after it was good and dark, it started snowing. I quickly found myself driving 30 mph in ruts. If there hadn't been cars also going slow ahead and behind me, I would have been tempted to just pull over and test whether a Model Y with 30% battery could have kept me warm overnight. Of course, I soon as I got to plowed roads inside the city limits, the snow turned to rain.
Ended up staying in downtown Colorado Springs for two nights, to cover from the drive in the snow and explore. The Antler Hotel has been in CO for over 100 years, although this is their third building. Car was out of the weather in an underground garage with three Level 2 chargers. First morning I met @Bighorn, another forum member, and his spouse for coffee, as they were passing through town on the way to visit family. They said the snow had been worse coming down from Wyoming into Denver. Then, lunch at Rudy's BBQ. The front desk clerk recommended it when I asked for local BBQ--turns out it was the only Colorado location of a Texas chain. Then, I drove as far up Pike's Peak as was open because of snow. They told at the gate only six miles, but when I got the gift shop at milepost 6, they had just opened it up to milepost 9. On the way back, I went through one of the coolest city parks, Garden of the Gods.
The fifth day, I drove down to Walsenburg, CO, where I was able to use the CCS adapter to top off at a diner called George's Drive Inn, before heading over La Veta Pass into the San Luis Valley. I spent the afternoon looking at lots in out-of-the-way developments of dirt roads. (Some were so bumpy, I lost one of my arrow wheel covers somewhere.) After hitting a self-car wash in Alamosa, I had an interesting chat with the woman staffing the Alamosa Visitors Center. I also tried out a ChargePoint DC charger in their parking lot, but didn't really need to charge at all. Drove all the way to the Great Sand Dunes parking lot to see the milky way, but the rare cloudy night and bright moon kept me from seeing much. Back to the Hampton Inn in Alamosa for the night, which is the first hotel I've stayed that gave you a fob to use their Level 2 charger.
The sixth day, I hiked High Dune at Great Sand Dunes National Park. I underestimated how hard such a short hike could be, with the cold, wind, and sand where you sank up to your ankles on most steps. Then, I paid $5 to charge on a NEMA 14-50 in an RV park in Blanca, CO, while I ate lunch at the local diner next door. I did this charge so I wouldn't have to go back over the pass to I-25, but could go straight down the San Luis Valley and Rio Grande gorge through Taos and Santa Fe to Albuquerque, NM. Had to scramble to find a hotel on New Year's Eve, but didn't pay too much for the downtown Sheraton with Level 2 chargers literally right by the front door.
The seventh day, I took the tram up to Sandia Peak, where I hiked the Crest Trail in good bit of fresh snow to the CCC cabin and then the end of the parkway overlook. Another snowstorm was blowing in as I took the tram down. Then, a long drive to Amarillo, TX. Instead of the Tesla superchargers in Santa Rosa and Tucumcari, NM, I used the nearby Electrify America stations. At the first one, there was a Rivian seemingly camped out, with a father asleep in the driver's seat, and a young adult son on his phone the entire 15 minutes I was there. I think I must not be doing it right, because at every EA station I stopped that had other people, I was the last to plug in and the first to leave.
Day eight, I went south about 30 minutes from Amarillo to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, where drove to the bottom and hiked the Lighthouse Trail, with seemingly hundreds of other people. It is supposed second in area in North America only to the Grand Canyon, and it just seems to fall away out of the prairie. Definitely worth the detour. Even though I took state highways down to Denton, TX, for the night, I was getting back to that phenomenon of the Eastern U.S., where there are more superchargers than you need.
Days nine and ten ended up mainly being driving days, just to get back home. I skirted north of the Dallas area to get to I-30, up to Little Rock, AK, where I used another EA station, on to I-40 and another EA station at Forrest City, AK. Then, I picked up I-22 in Memphis for a night in Tupelo, MS, at a hotel where I was the only one using one of four Level 2 chargers. I did check out the Natchez Trace Visitor Center before leaving town; it looks like it might be a fun drive to do with my spouse when I get a little older. On down to Birmingham, AL, then I-20 to Atlanta, GA, and finally the awful I-85 back to Charlotte.
Charging
You may have noticed that apart from calling out hotel destination charging, and a few CCS stations that I tried successfully, I said almost nothing about Tesla superchargers, or how long I charged, or what my car's efficiency was. That's in part because this was totally a selfish mental health getaway, when I didn't want to stress about charging. But also, in part, because even with all the little detours and spontaneous destinations I chose, charging was largely a non-event. If I hadn't a charger at my hotel in Alamosa, there was a CCS charger in town I could have used. Even the RV park top-off charge was more to say I had used my 14-50 adapter somewhere besides my house, and it was probably a little more convenient than going back to Alamosa.
I don't deny that not everyone has the time, or a route that allows for such easy charging. If you're making a road trip as a necessary evil to get to a vacation, then using an EV--even a Tesla--would add 20% more time per day. But for a road trip in the style of Jack Kerouac or William Least Half-Moon, to paraphrase the most common anti-EV cliche, we are there, now.
Postscript
If you are really interested in some numbers, here are some for you:
Regarding time spent charging, I haven't bothered to add them all up, but unless I was eating or had a long charging desert in front of me, my average charging stop was short, between 10 and 20 minutes. Of course, I'm middle-aged and so needed to stretch my legs often--I would stop at least every 2–2.5 hours even if I hadn't had to charge.
Regarding cost, if I hadn't stayed in hotels with Level 2 chargers, my rough calculation is that the fuel cost for this trip would have been a wash with an efficient gas-only car, or slightly more than with a good hybrid. The hotels made it cheaper, in addition to being more convenient.
I read an article recently about cheap land in the San Luis Valley in Colorado and wondered what it would be like to have a vacation home among the small marijuana farmers and off-griders. While I was never serious about buying land there, at the same time I noticed Great Sand Dunes National Park was there, too. My annual Park Pass that I got for my cross-country road trip last spring was still good for a couple of months. So, I took off on the morning of December 26 in a hurry to get to the West.
Day-by-Day
The problem with living in the East is you have to drive a long way to get to the West The first three days of driving were slogs over interstates that I had mostly traveled before. The good news was that superchargers in the East are so frequent that charging was a non-issue. The only thing worth noting on the first day was that, because I now had a CCS adapter, I didn't have to detour into Nashville to charge. I just skirted the northeast side of town and charged at the Electrify America station right off I-24 in Clarksville, TN. I spent the first night in a hotel with Level 2 charging in Paducah, KY. I know you shouldn't rely on hotel charging on a trip, but on this trip, I was actually able charge at hotels every night. I sometimes had to a few miles out of the way from where I expected to stay, but on the other hand, hotels with chargers tend to be cleaner, have fitness centers, and offer free breakfast.
After a boring first day of driving, I broke up the second day by stopping in St. Louis late morning to go up in the Gateway Arch. It's technically a national park, but my pass only got me a $3 discount of the tram ride up. The views were worth it, especially since this was at the tail end of the arctic blast that swept the country, and left the Mississippi River half frozen. Because I spent more time at the Arch than I had planned and I ended up waiting in line at a local sandwich shop--the Blues City Deli--for lunch, I was too tired to reach my original goal of Salina, KS, and spent the night in Topeka instead.
The third day was a long haul across the rest of Kansas and eastern Colorado with two highlights. The first was a 30-minute detour south of I-70 at Oakley to hike in Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park. While small, the park is a pleasant surprise to find in the middle of the prairie. A couple of cautions: I had to do a deep charge in Hays while I ate lunch in order to get to the state park and then back to Colby for my next charge. (A planned supercharger in Oakley will make this detour trivial.) Also, the last 5 miles or so in and out to the park are dirt road.
The second highlight of the day was after charging up in Limon, CO, and leaving the interstate to take the two-lane US-24 to Colorado Springs. About 30 miles outside of "the Springs" as all the local say, after it was good and dark, it started snowing. I quickly found myself driving 30 mph in ruts. If there hadn't been cars also going slow ahead and behind me, I would have been tempted to just pull over and test whether a Model Y with 30% battery could have kept me warm overnight. Of course, I soon as I got to plowed roads inside the city limits, the snow turned to rain.
Ended up staying in downtown Colorado Springs for two nights, to cover from the drive in the snow and explore. The Antler Hotel has been in CO for over 100 years, although this is their third building. Car was out of the weather in an underground garage with three Level 2 chargers. First morning I met @Bighorn, another forum member, and his spouse for coffee, as they were passing through town on the way to visit family. They said the snow had been worse coming down from Wyoming into Denver. Then, lunch at Rudy's BBQ. The front desk clerk recommended it when I asked for local BBQ--turns out it was the only Colorado location of a Texas chain. Then, I drove as far up Pike's Peak as was open because of snow. They told at the gate only six miles, but when I got the gift shop at milepost 6, they had just opened it up to milepost 9. On the way back, I went through one of the coolest city parks, Garden of the Gods.
The fifth day, I drove down to Walsenburg, CO, where I was able to use the CCS adapter to top off at a diner called George's Drive Inn, before heading over La Veta Pass into the San Luis Valley. I spent the afternoon looking at lots in out-of-the-way developments of dirt roads. (Some were so bumpy, I lost one of my arrow wheel covers somewhere.) After hitting a self-car wash in Alamosa, I had an interesting chat with the woman staffing the Alamosa Visitors Center. I also tried out a ChargePoint DC charger in their parking lot, but didn't really need to charge at all. Drove all the way to the Great Sand Dunes parking lot to see the milky way, but the rare cloudy night and bright moon kept me from seeing much. Back to the Hampton Inn in Alamosa for the night, which is the first hotel I've stayed that gave you a fob to use their Level 2 charger.
The sixth day, I hiked High Dune at Great Sand Dunes National Park. I underestimated how hard such a short hike could be, with the cold, wind, and sand where you sank up to your ankles on most steps. Then, I paid $5 to charge on a NEMA 14-50 in an RV park in Blanca, CO, while I ate lunch at the local diner next door. I did this charge so I wouldn't have to go back over the pass to I-25, but could go straight down the San Luis Valley and Rio Grande gorge through Taos and Santa Fe to Albuquerque, NM. Had to scramble to find a hotel on New Year's Eve, but didn't pay too much for the downtown Sheraton with Level 2 chargers literally right by the front door.
The seventh day, I took the tram up to Sandia Peak, where I hiked the Crest Trail in good bit of fresh snow to the CCC cabin and then the end of the parkway overlook. Another snowstorm was blowing in as I took the tram down. Then, a long drive to Amarillo, TX. Instead of the Tesla superchargers in Santa Rosa and Tucumcari, NM, I used the nearby Electrify America stations. At the first one, there was a Rivian seemingly camped out, with a father asleep in the driver's seat, and a young adult son on his phone the entire 15 minutes I was there. I think I must not be doing it right, because at every EA station I stopped that had other people, I was the last to plug in and the first to leave.
Day eight, I went south about 30 minutes from Amarillo to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, where drove to the bottom and hiked the Lighthouse Trail, with seemingly hundreds of other people. It is supposed second in area in North America only to the Grand Canyon, and it just seems to fall away out of the prairie. Definitely worth the detour. Even though I took state highways down to Denton, TX, for the night, I was getting back to that phenomenon of the Eastern U.S., where there are more superchargers than you need.
Days nine and ten ended up mainly being driving days, just to get back home. I skirted north of the Dallas area to get to I-30, up to Little Rock, AK, where I used another EA station, on to I-40 and another EA station at Forrest City, AK. Then, I picked up I-22 in Memphis for a night in Tupelo, MS, at a hotel where I was the only one using one of four Level 2 chargers. I did check out the Natchez Trace Visitor Center before leaving town; it looks like it might be a fun drive to do with my spouse when I get a little older. On down to Birmingham, AL, then I-20 to Atlanta, GA, and finally the awful I-85 back to Charlotte.
Charging
You may have noticed that apart from calling out hotel destination charging, and a few CCS stations that I tried successfully, I said almost nothing about Tesla superchargers, or how long I charged, or what my car's efficiency was. That's in part because this was totally a selfish mental health getaway, when I didn't want to stress about charging. But also, in part, because even with all the little detours and spontaneous destinations I chose, charging was largely a non-event. If I hadn't a charger at my hotel in Alamosa, there was a CCS charger in town I could have used. Even the RV park top-off charge was more to say I had used my 14-50 adapter somewhere besides my house, and it was probably a little more convenient than going back to Alamosa.
I don't deny that not everyone has the time, or a route that allows for such easy charging. If you're making a road trip as a necessary evil to get to a vacation, then using an EV--even a Tesla--would add 20% more time per day. But for a road trip in the style of Jack Kerouac or William Least Half-Moon, to paraphrase the most common anti-EV cliche, we are there, now.
Postscript
If you are really interested in some numbers, here are some for you:
- Total miles driven: 4,218
- Total energy used: 1,349 kWh
- Average energy: 320 Wh/mi
Regarding time spent charging, I haven't bothered to add them all up, but unless I was eating or had a long charging desert in front of me, my average charging stop was short, between 10 and 20 minutes. Of course, I'm middle-aged and so needed to stretch my legs often--I would stop at least every 2–2.5 hours even if I hadn't had to charge.
Regarding cost, if I hadn't stayed in hotels with Level 2 chargers, my rough calculation is that the fuel cost for this trip would have been a wash with an efficient gas-only car, or slightly more than with a good hybrid. The hotels made it cheaper, in addition to being more convenient.
