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Trip Report: Portland, OR, Summer 2021

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bmah

Moderator, Supercharger Hunter
Global Moderator
Mar 17, 2015
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Lafayette, CA, USA
We did a road trip during (sort of) the Independence Day 2021 weekend from the SF Bay Area to lovely Portland OR. This was our first road trip since pre-pandemic days. We knew a lot of people would be out on the road so we tried to time most of our driving for what we thought would be non-peak days of the weekend (and starting driving early in the day). The general plan was to drive from the Bay Area to Eugene/Springfield on Thursday, stay overnight, drive up to Portland on Friday and stay two nights, and then return back home on Sunday.

The first day, July 1, was a little complicated by the Salt Fire, a wildfire that had I-5 closed north of Redding, at least in the early morning when we left. So when we launched at 7:25AM with a full battery in our S85D (range 255 rated miles at 100% charge), we headed north on US-101. I'd casually scoped out this route earlier, so had some idea what to expect. (It pays to be flexible.) We knew this would take longer than I-5 due to distance, slower speeds, and road construction. The first charging stop for the day was Ukiah, CA. We didn't really need to charge here, but it was a nice "get out and stretch" break after 2 hours of driving. While here, I re-checked the road conditions on I-5 and found that it had re-opened. Oh well.

Our second charging stop was Laytonville, CA. We needed about 20 minutes of charge here for the next hop. (I generally try to get us to our next planned Supercharger with at least 15% SOC left.) We didn't see any other Teslas here, but we did see a Ford Mach-E pull in to one of the ChargePoint CCS stations co-located here.

The drive to Eureka was a little over two hours...scenic with forest and ocean. Very enjoyable although a bit long. Also we didn't have cell coverage for some parts of this drive (that was a topic of conversation for the next couple days). Part of the time included a stop at the Chandelier Drive-Thru Tree in Leggett. The Model S is a bit of tight fit, but one can gain a little extra clearance by retracting the side mirrors (which I did). The Eureka Supercharger was my 149th unique Supercharger visited in the "Most Superchargers Visited" competition on TMC. We took time out here for a late lunch at the food court in the Bayshore Mall. This 47-minute charge gave us plenty of juice to get to the Crescent City Supercharger.

We encountered some road construction (with one- way traffic control) between Eureka and Crescent City. I was somewhat worried about this when we launched but we didn't end up waiting more than about 20-30 minutes total, so not too bad. We did a 20 minute charge in Crescent City (150th unique Supercharger visited). This gave us enough energy to get to the Grants Pass Supercharger, even with my wife's somewhat spirited driving on this hop.

The Grants Pass Supercharger, behind the Black Bear Diner, was our dinner stop. The diner wasn't busy, but the Supercharger was (although not full). I didn't count this visit to Grants Pass because my wife drove the hop over from Crescent City...under the rules of the TMC "Most Superchargers Visited" context, the visit only counted if a contestant drives more than half the miles to the charger. I knew we'd be back this way again, so this wasn't a problem for me.

I finished off the day's driving to our hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn Springfield, arriving around 10PM. This hotel has a couple of destination chargers, one is a Tesla wall connector and the other is a GE-branded J1772 Level 2 charger. The Tesla wall connector gave a pathetic 2kW (despite showing as "up to 8kW"), so I put my J1772 adapter onto the GE charger and plugged in to get a more respectable 6kW. Lesson: The best chargers aren't always Tesla chargers, so bring all your adapters with you on a road trip.

The second day of the trip (July 2) started with a quick hop over to the Springfield Supercharger. This was just a touch-and-go (#151). Admittedly it might have been more convenient if we had stayed at one of the hotels adjacent to this Supercharger. We then headed west to the Oregon coast for a visit to the Sea Lion Caves. This claims to be the largest sea cave in the world. We enjoyed it and, as advertised saw a lot of sea lions in the cave was well as on the shore. We then headed up US-101 to Lincoln City, and the Lincoln City Supercharger (#152). We had a meh lunch at the outlet mall here, but our expectations were low and we were hungry. The car had a nearly full battery when we were done.

Next stop was Woodburn (#153) for a touch-and-go charge, except I had to plug in twice because some of the pedestals weren't working. We then we over to the adjacent outlet mall for a couple hours of "retail therapy" (no sales tax in Oregon). We then went to our hotel, the Marriott Downtown Waterfront Portland (picked for location and the fact there are destination chargers here). After unpacking we walked over to the waterfront and had a nice sushi/sashimi dinner at Yomi Sushi. While here, I also got my first in-person sighting of a 2021-refresh Model S (no badges, so couldn't tell if it was an LR or Plaid). If the owner is reading this, your car looks great and sorry if I accidentally triggered its Sentry mode from gawking at it.

After dinner, my family graciously offered to accompany me on a Supercharger hunting drive. So we picked up the car from the hotel and went out for touch-and-go charges at Vancouver (#154), Vancouver - NE Vancouver Mall Drive (#155), and Hillsboro (#156).

Saturday, the third day of our trip, had no charges but we hit up the Portland Japanese Garden (try to go when they open, it gets very busy in the area), lunch at Cartopia (one of many food truck pods around the city), and the Oregon Rail Heritage Museum (went to see Southern Pacific 4449, which I last saw in December 1975 when it was pulling the American Freedom Train). We did some more walking around downtown Portland. Dinner was at Jake's Famous Crawfish in Portland, yum!

Sunday was a travel day to come back home, so lots of Superchargers. We launched from Portland at 7:30 AM with a full battery (advantage of having a destination charger at your hotel, and props to the valets for keeping the car plugged in). We did a touch-and-go charge at Tigard (#157). This Supercharger took a little searching to find because it's on the lower level of a mall's parking garage but there are destination chargers on the upper level.

Next stop was Salem, OR. We stopped at the State Capitol building at my son's request (he had to learn all the state capitols in school a few year ago so he wanted to be able to say he'd been here). We then hit up the Salem Supercharger (#158) for a touch-and-go charge. Next stop was a revisit to the Springfield Supercharger, which we needed for enough energy to go south to Grants Pass. This was the only time on the trip when we had to actually wait for a stall, but was just a few minutes (also I always check the status of a charger on the nav display at various points on the way towards it, so this wasn't a huge surprise). I think it was here that we first noticed a couple of families who seemed to be traveling together in a pair of white Model Xs.

After a 30 minute charge, we did a 2-hour drive to Grants Pass, which I finally got to log as a visit (#159). It was busy while we were here but there was no waiting for the brief time we were here. We decided not to do the Black Bear Diner, but get some food farther on down the road. We saw the "two white Model X families" here as well.

Next stop was Medford (#160). This wasn't a long charge, and we spent most of the time going into the Target for the restrooms and drinks. In retrospect we should have hit the In-and-Out drive through first and then charged, but oh well.

Last new Supercharger for me was Yreka (#161). We finally got lunch at Carls Jr, and we overlapped with the two white Model Xs briefly. There are a lot of white Teslas now! I think when I buy my next Tesla it's going to be anything but white, because otherwise I'd never be able to find it. We never saw more than 2-3 other cars at Yreka.

My wife drove us to the Red Bluff Supercharger. We saw smoke from two active wildfires (the Lava and Salt Fires). If our car was newer we probably would have used Bioweapon Defense mode because the air quality was awful...we just closed the vents and turned up the fan. Further on, we did a brief stop at the Sundial Bridge in Redding. Red Bluff was super-busy. The two white Model X families were already there. There were free stalls when we arrived, but at one point there were three cars waiting. In a couple of instances, someone would pull up, see the full Supercharger, and then leave. After watching our charging rate slow (due to the usual and expected Supercharger tapering) I decided we'd try for one more stop in Vacaville (skipping Corning and Williams going southbound). I unplugged for a planned 6% reserve...it'd take less time to drive a little slower to Vacaville rather than stay at the Red Bluff Supercharger for longer.

I drove from Red Bluff to Vacaville just over the speed limit (72 mph) and got us there in a little under 2 hours. We plugged in with 9% SOC (I could have sped up a little at the end). Vacaville had only 2 other cars there on arrival and we treated everyone to the sound of our car's cooling fans running at full tilt as it charged at 120kW (at least at the start). After 17 minutes we had more than enough to get home. We saw the pair of white Model Xs for the last time, they arrived just before we left. (If you folks are reading this, hope you had a safe and pleasant trip to wherever you were going.)

We arrived back at home at about 9:30PM with 22% charge. A long day to finish the trip but it went well.

Summary:

Superchargers used (* indicates the site I hadn't visited before): Ukiah CA, Laytonville CA, Eureka CA*, Crescent City CA*, Grants Pass OR*, Springfield (Kruse Way) OR*, Lincoln City OR*, Woodburn OR*, Vancouver WA*, Vancouver (NE Vancouver Mall Drive) WA*, Hillsboro OR*, Tigard OR*, Salem OR*, Medford OR*, Yreka CA*, Red Bluff CA, Vacaville CA.

Destination chargers: Hilton Garden Inn Eugene/Springfield, Marriott Downtown Waterfront Portland

Stats from trip meters:

Distance: 1565.4
Total Energy: 486.5 kWh
Avg. Energy: 311 Wh/mi

Stats from TeslaFi:

Total miles driven: 1565.24
Time driven: 28 hours, 56 minutes
kWh used: 571.53 kWh
Wh/Mile: 365

Home charges: 2 (22.33 kWh)
Travel charges: 6 (115.34 kWh)
Supercharges: 20 (352.41 kWh, 6 hours 42 minutes)

Bruce.
 
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I would have thought MS 85D will have a lower than 365 Wh/Mi on a long trip. That's pretty similar to our MX 75D. Usually I set my AP speed to 80-85 mph depending on the average speed of other cars.

Sounds like a great trip, but it was a lot of driving!
 
Nice trip! Going to take a similar trip this summer. Was hoping the Roseburg / Myrtle creek sc shown on Tesla’s map would actually get built. Then could V3 from Salem to Roseburg to Medford. Don’t suppose you saw any signs of activity?
 
I would have thought MS 85D will have a lower than 365 Wh/Mi on a long trip. That's pretty similar to our MX 75D. Usually I set my AP speed to 80-85 mph depending on the average speed of other cars.

Sounds like a great trip, but it was a lot of driving!

You're right...365 Wh/Mi is really high. I just went out to the car to check the trip meter, and it said 486.5 kWh and 311 Wh/Mi, is which more like what I'd expect to see. I wonder if TeslaFi is including vampire drain or accessory use with the car turned off. We used climate control a lot at various stops because it was so hot this weekend. I'll edit my original post, thanks for bringing up this point.

Nice trip! Going to take a similar trip this summer. Was hoping the Roseburg / Myrtle creek sc shown on Tesla’s map would actually get built. Then could V3 from Salem to Roseburg to Medford. Don’t suppose you saw any signs of activity?

I didn't look, unfortunately. Putting a Supercharger at Myrtle Creek or Roseburg would make a lot of sense...that gap between Springfield and Grants Pass was a long one.

Bruce.
 
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You're right...365 Wh/Mi is really high. I just went out to the car to check the trip meter, and it said 486.5 kWh and 311 Wh/Mi, is which more like what I'd expect to see. I wonder if TeslaFi is including vampire drain or accessory use with the car turned off. We used climate control a lot at various stops because it was so hot this weekend. I'll edit my original post, thanks for bringing up this point.
I see. I only have trip meter. I think trip meter only counts energy usage when driving. TeslaFi probably counts everything including A/C usage at superchargers!
 
Avenue of the Giants

Zorg, the Avenue of the Giants follows the S. Fork of the Eel River. Here is US101 in Humboldt County.

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I remember doing it on our way back from Eureka right off 101. Gorgeous place too. What am I missing?

You will see the ocean if you leave 101 at the Ferndale exit, drive through Ferndale and take back roads through the Lost Coast through Capetown and Petrolia before returning to 101 south of Redcrest. I believe access to the Avenue of the Giants is right as Mattole Road meets 101.

But US101 itself goes nowhere near the ocean with the exception of a small distance along Humboldt Bay just south of Eureka and well before the exit to Ferndale.

:)