Bellevue – My ActiveE Made Me Accidentally Environmental

The Long Way Round – Day 07

With a hat-tip to the 2004 TV mini-series from Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. This is the seventh day in a series of posts written about our 2016 EV Roadtrip written in the same manner as our 2015 trip. Here, There, and EVerywhere Trip – Day 01, i.e. summaries written for each day of the trip, published each day, this time two months from the day of the trip. It may seem funny to some to have a summer trip published at the start of the Fall, think of it as some daily entertainment for those that are back in their offices thinking about their past summer trips that could have been or thinking about their next trip.

Missed the previous day’s post, click here to read Day 6 of this trip. You’re just joining us on this trip? Click here for Day 1 and start from the beginning!

So, why the long way round? Well… We got four referrals on the Fourth Tesla Referral Program (May 30, 2016 to July 15, 2016) and we expected to get an invite to the Gigafactory Party, so we thought to start our trip and go to Reno (a nearly 500 mile direct drive from home) via the Pacific Northwest (about a 1600 mile detour) with the intermediate goal of attending the EV Roadmap 9 Conference in Portland, visiting family who were spending time in Seattle, WA and family in Vancouver, BC before turning back for the party.

So, what do we have in store today? Today’s goal is to get to Vancouver, check into our hotel, and visit our relatives. We are staying at the Hilton Vancouver Metrotown, another hotel that showed up on the in-car Tesla Destination Charger map. This will be the first time that I will be crossing to Canada as an adult. The last time I went to Canada was as a child and it was at Niagara Falls.

Day 7 – Belleveue, WA to Vancouver, BC. July 24, 2016

We charged when we arrived ar the hotel yesterday evening and promptly moved the car to another spot when done charging. The thing with 80A Destination Chargers is with dual chargers (on classic Model S) or the higher charge option (on new fascia Model S or Model X) one can be recovering as quickly as 50 miles per hour. So it is important to monitor when charging will complete so that one can move one’s car when done charging. Remember that charging is a precious resource and we don’t want to be an “EV-hole” and stop others who may need a charge to use the chargers. I tend to use a sign of sorts, whether my old reliable EV Card from Plug in America or Jack Brown‘s EV Hangtags. However, the best practice is to just move the car when done charging. Especially when charging during waking hours. It’s a little tougher overnight at a hotel, and folks will understand that too.

I like to have at least 90%, but didn’t know what vampire drain was going to be liked outside, so I charged a little bit further. So when we rolled out of the hotel, we were at 240 miles, a range that is about 12 miles higher than our 90% charge, but lower than our range charge of around 253 miles. We had breakfast plans with a few buddies from college who I haven’t seen in decades a few miles South of the hotel, so I wanted to be cautiously above my normal comfort charge.

Today’s odometer shot was blurry, so we’ll have to settle with the Trip A and B settings…

As you can see, we drove 0.2 miles since completing our charge and repositioning our parking last night.

From the Hilton Bellevue, we headed to Goldergs’ Deli in Factoria for an early Sunday breakfast with a couple of my friends from college. I haven’t seen these guys in real life for several decades, though I communicate with one of them via Twitter over the past few years.

It was great catching up with the guys. Goldbergs’ had a great and filling Bobka French Toast that we had to try, and it was awesome. The thing with catching up with old friends is we got so caught up in chatting and the like that I did not take ANY food pictures.

Since the guys were local Washingtonians, they often visit Vancouver and were quick to give us some hints on how to avoid the traffic at the border crossing into Canada. My main takeaway was to take the commercial/truck crossing as that moves faster and regular citizens are allowed to cross there. However, as I mentioned earlier, I’m a tourist and haven’t done a border crossing into Canada since I was a kid, so I figured to just follow the more scenic border crossing.

Here’s our hotel from the freeway as we pass it again, this time headed toward Canada.

Fans of Costco would recognize the Costco house brand – Kirkland (which was entirely the reason why I asked my better half to get the camera ready and take a shot of this sign.)

So, I wonder if Kirkland, WA was chosen because Isaaquah (the location of Costco’s headquarters) just sounds strange. Or perhaps Costco was originally in Kirkland

More snow/glacier-capped mountains in the distance. It seems that all the states have at least one of them around.

We spot a water tower… We seemed to have spotted a lot more of these on our cross-country journey. I wonder if they don’t have as many here because they get all sorts of water that they don’t have to worry about storing it.

The drive between Bellevue and our only supercharger stop in Burlington, WA was pretty uneventful and we seem to making good time.

So, after a quick 78 mile drive from our hotel, to breakfast, and back North, we’re at the northernmost Tesla Supercharger in Washington State, Burlington, WA. Though we chose a hotel with a destination charger, we noted that there was no Superchargers within Vancouver, nor are there any more on our route until we head back South, so we decided to Range Charge here.

This location seems to be popular as we had some company, including a nice, new Model X.

This supercharger is located at a hotel, so basically makes it one of many destination superchargers. We’ve stayed in a few of those. They’re incredibly convenient, but we didn’t know what our previous day was going to be like, which is why we decided to stay at the Bellevue Hilton instead.

I thought to add a panoramic shot. By the time I took the shot, the Red Model S had already completed its charge.

When we hit 240 Miles, that seemed like enough miles, and figured since it matched what we had on the range when we left Bellevue. So we went ahead and kept rolling on. We do have late lunch plans with family today, so off we went.

Now I’m waiting for the Rolls sign…

Lots of greenery on this drive. I often get jealous of states that get a lot of water.

I guess they don’t take kindly to hitch hiking on Washington freeways. We’ve been spotting these signs and added it to our list of “funny” signs that we’ve seen.

Another Solar Farm…

Or should I say a Solar Barn.

Here’s a better “No Hitch-hiking sign” shot.

If you remember from earlier, my college buddies mentioned taking the faster commercial route to cross into Canada, they mentioned a sign…

I think this was it…

But, like I said earlier, I’m a tourist and want to see what the more “scenic” crossing looks like.

We’re not in the USA anymore… Time to switch the car’s settings from Miles to Kilometers. Besides there was a sign warning us of a speed limit change in Kilometers per hour and I didn’t understand what that was in Miles Per Hour.

Our first stop is to meet up with family for our lunch. We got to the border crossing around 1:00 PM and initial estimates had us there so that we would reach our relatives 30 minutes later. Boy was the GPS off.

I switched back to miles to get a grip of what the mileage means…

For those switching from metric to imperial and back, here’s where it is in settings.

Yes, we’re at the border, just in case we didn’t get it yet.

Looks like my better half captured me driving through the International Border. Any closer and that obelisk would look like I had sniffed it into my nose. 😉

This is the border sign to the US. My better half spotted it as we were entering Canada, and decided to take a picture, we’ll see that in a few days.

There’s a long line of cars heading into Canada this Sunday afternoon.

And the Canadian Border Protection folks have to do their job.

We’re getting close to the border check here. Remember that GPS estimate, it said that we would be at our relative’s place a minute ago… The GPS lies. 😉

The Model X that was charging with us at the last stop in Washington apparently has Nexxus and is in the “special lane.” Considering the quantity of times that we do this crossing, we don’t really need the Nexxus option.

Our border crossing into Canada was quick with a minor issue. At the booth, the Canadian officer asked us to roll down our tinted rear windows to peer into the vehicle. The windows rolled down easily, however, we had a hard time rolling them back up. It took us about two minutes to get them closed, the windows kept rolling back down thinking that they hit something.

Finally got through the border process, that took about 51 minutes from the time that we arrived at the border.

And the city of Surrey, BC makes us feel welcome.

About 62 miles per hour for the speed limit. This is one of the few places that I can say that I’ve driven the Model S at a hundred. I’m one of those that focuses on range efficiency rather than speed.

I was worried when the car switched to Edge for its data service. However, this was only for a short while before getting LTE again.

Cruising at the speed limit. Not sure how friendly the cops are here, and didn’t need to get to know them. As much as I wanted to see if they all looked like Dudley Doo-Right.

Looks like they have diamond lanes in British Columbia too, but doesn’t say anything about carpools or EVs, so promptly stayed away from these lanes.

We finally made it to our relatives place. We had lunch with family at a local restaurant and took our leave to head to the hotel for check in.

Hilton Vancouver Metrotown

Our hotel for the evening is at the Hilton Vancouver Metrotown.

I switched back to miles again as I had no concept of how much is left in “the tank” when it’s in Kilometers. Our plan was to head into town for dinner at a restaurant called “Ask for Luigi” and then drop our family members off to their home before we head back to the hotel. So, we decided to use the charging station at our hotel.

The Hilton Metrotown has a single Tesla Destination Charger rated at 80A and a J1772 charger rated at 30A. The ceiling for the destination charger is rather low, so Model X users should watch out and Model S with power liftgate should be careful when opening the trunk

We were getting 74 km per hour on the 80A HPWC. That should do well to get us recharged.

We were done in no time.

We had 8:00pm dinner plans and one of the things that I like to demonstrate to ICE driving family members is that pre-conditioning the car. It’s so much more convenient to do when the car is plugged in.

Because of our frequent guest status, we often get access to the Executive Lounge at many Hilton properties. This particular Hilton has a lounge and we thought to try it before we headed out for dinner.

Just had a few snacks and sodas to get us refreshed and ready to go to dinner.

Ask for Luigi

Ask for Luigi is our dinner destination in Vancouver this evening was recommended by Chef Jenn Louis from Lincoln Restaurant in Portland. She is friends with the chef/owner for Ask for Luigi. They normally do not take reservations, but she called ahead and they recommended that we swing by around 8:30 pm.

We didn’t know what we were in for, but knew that the food would be good.

Apparently, the restaurant was adjacent to some “scarier” parts of Vancouver. They were on alert, so we ended up on alert as well. We found street parking nearly adjacent to the restaurant and it would seem a “scary” Vancouver neighborhood is just “sketchy” for Los Angeles.

I think that the restaurant owners were betting that the neighborhood is on the upswing and looking at the building across from it and beside where we parked, I would have to agree. This would be what I would consider the start of gentrification.

Being a presidential election year, I had my better half take the following picture of an “interesting” Al Gore sighting in Vancouver.

We arrived at the restaurant ahead of our 8:30 PM reservation, so, after a brief wait, we were seated.

The restaurant itself was quite cozy.

We had selected a few items to share “family” style. We started with Luigi’s meatballs.

I think that this was the crispy polenta, escargot, and watercress.

When I visit a foreign country and drive our own Model S, I tend to stay away from alcohol as I don’t know how they enforce their DUI laws, so we went ahead to check out the bottled sodas that they had in their menu.

We also had the tuna crudo, stracciatella, and pickled mushrooms.

I think that this was the baccala fritters and saffron aioli.

We had two different sodas, and this was the other one.

I’m a big fan of spaghetti nero, and this was made with braised octopus and clams.

And the other pasta we got was the mafaldine, duck sugo, and black olives.

The meal and service was fantastic. But the family really went bonkers for the dessert.

With five of us to share the dessert, rather than choose a few desserts, we just ordered all three that desserts that the restaurant had.

Starting with the panna cotta.

The chocolate budino

and the Olive Oil Cake.

We had a wonderful dinner with family and headed back to their house to drop them off and return to our hotel for the evening.

The meal was so good that our relatives forgot about their apprehension with the neighborhood until we started to drive out of the area and encountered a soup kitchen a few blocks away.

We drove 68.6 kilometers from the hotel to dinner and back. And we switched to miles so that I can comprehend what I just typed.

I guess that means 42.6 miles… It looks like all our worries about lack of supercharging in the local area was overblown. As long as we have access to the destination charger in our hotel, we’ll be fine. Even the J1772 at 30A will work overnight.

I figured to go to sleep, but provide some information via the hangtags.

It turned out that this was going to be a short charge session of approximately 40 minutes to get to where I wanted to be, I figured to move the car when it is done.

And the car was done charging around midnight, and I was still awake. So, I went back down to see if I could find another spot to move the car to.

All the hotel spots, with the exception of the two charging station locations, were taken, so I decided to stay in the spot, but park close to the railing, so as to give space for any other Tesla that might show up so that they can also use the Tesla charger, if they needed to. I moved the EV Hangtag with my information on the dashboard so that anyone who may need me to move overnight can call.

I would have preferred to find another spot, like I did in Bellevue, WA, however, the number of spots assigned to the hotel were all taken, and I was unfamiliar with the rest of the parking nearby, so I felt this was the best course of action.

As you can see from the picture below, the EV spots are quite wide and two other cars could fit with our car scooted over to the wall as I did on this day.

I took note of the mileage and “kilometerage” of the various cars’ settings after unplugging and went back to the room.

In order to be ready for driving in Vancouver, I switched back to kilometers.

The next day of this series, Day 8, is available here.

It’s important to note that our Gigafactory invite would not have been possible had folks not used our referral code. So, I have to thank those that were convinced to pick up a Tesla Model S or Model X and decided to save some money by using our referral code. So, if you’re as inclined as those that took us up on the offer, and in the market for a Tesla Model S or Model X, you can save $1,000 USD/$1,200 CAD/£750 GBP (and whatever the equivalent is in your market) if you use our referral code – http://ts.la/dennis5317.

The Long Way Round – Day 06

With a hat-tip to the 2004 TV mini-series from Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. This is the sixth day in a series of posts written about our 2016 EV Roadtrip written in the same manner as our 2015 trip. Here, There, and EVerywhere Trip – Day 01, i.e. summaries written for each day of the trip, published each day, this time two months from the day of the trip. It may seem funny to some to have a summer trip published at the start of the Fall, think of it as some daily entertainment for those that are back in their offices thinking about their past summer trips that could have been or thinking about their next trip.

Missed the previous day’s post, click here to read Day 5 of this trip. You’re just joining us on this trip? Click here for Day 1 and start from the beginning!

So, what do we have in store today? So, we’re now on our way to the Gigafactory… But first we continue our visit to family in the Seattle area.

Day 6 – Belleveue, WA to a day in Seattle, WA and back to Bellevue, WA. July 23, 2016

Our charging was interrupted in the latter part of the process, in the early morning (after about six hours in.) The J1772 port that we used did not have the clip to latch on and must have loosened overnight. Luckily our charging neighbor was done and had moved, so I moved our car to the other spot and re-initated the rest of the charge. That last charge took about 2.5 hours.

The entire charging process took about 8:24:36 at a cost of $16.82. The first charging session went for 5:55:32 for a cost of $11.85 and the second, shorter session went for 2:29:04 for a cost of $4.97. Not the cheapest fill-up in the world, but provided us with enough driving around range to make several traversals around the city.

The Hyatt Regency Bellevue is a nice hotel. The rooms were clean, comfortable, and quiet. Since we took our niece out for the night, we had two Queen beds rather than one King on which gave us a bigger room.

The view was of downtown Bellevue, and the big buildings feel like many small cities around the country.

When we were booking our hotel, it was mentioned that the brunch at Eques, the restaurant attached to the hotel, is one of the better weekend brunches in the area, so we figured to try that out before we headed out to Seattle this Saturday.

The rating was well deserved. It seems that the restaurant is used to catering to Asian travelers as I found things on the brunch that I’ve seen on travels to Hong Kong, Hawaii, and other locations which get a large influx of Asian travelers.

At the same time, the cold cuts and smoked salmon spoke of a more continental traveler.

There were “healthier” options for breakfast as well, but I opted away from those.

Planning for a more full day, we went for some protein in our breakfast.

Having had our fill at breakfast, and having a limited time with our niece because of camp activities today, we finished up and got ready to check out of the Hyatt Bellevue. The Hyatt has great facilities, a comfortable room, pricey charging, and a really good brunch. I would probably recommend this hotel for the next traveler. We packed up our belongings and headed out.

As expensive as the charging was, it seems that the locals don’t mind. We got back to the charging stations and see all the other stations taken.

Scratch that, though the spots are taken, the Leaf doesn’t look to be charging. Merely parking. Perhaps some would consider this to be “EV-hole” behavior. I’m not one to judge. Perhaps the Leaf was waiting for us to leave. If it had been a free to use station, and the owner would have left their charging door open, I would have gladly plugged them in. However, it’s a pricey one, as I noted, and we just left on our way.

Our first activity with our niece is the sculpture garden at Olympic Park.

On our way back to Seattle, we found another interesting sign. Not an ominous one like our “nemesis” the Deer Crossing Sign, but a fairly innocuous and dare I say, a cute sign.

I think this is a swan or duck crossing (with its young.) We were on the look out for crossing water fowl, but were disappointed when none showed up.

The bridge toll is discounted for crossing with registered accounts, so as I suggested yesterday, go ahead and register a Good-to-Go visitor account before driving out to the Seattle area. Looks like the savings is $2.00 at this crossing time.

The bridge crossing today had no drama. We were through in “no-time”.

Looks like the boats in Seattle have “garages” or “boat”-ports (vs. carports.) I suppose it makes sense, with all the rain that Seattle supposedly gets (not that it rained much during our visit) it would be helpful to keep rain from filling up on boats.

Nothing says Seattle to those of us from out of town than the Space Needle, so here’s a few shots of Seattle’s iconic landmark. Since I have a fear of the sudden stop after a long fall, we opted to skip the Space Needle on our “hang out with our niece in Seattle day.”

We keep getting closer…

It turns out our GPS was going to direct us right by the Space Needle on our way to our first destination, Olympic Park.

This next Space Needle shot is my better half’s favorite picture of the series.

So, after a short ten mile drive, we get to the Olympic Park parking lot.

Olympic Park

Our niece had to be back at camp for some of her classes for a few hours, so we had to find activities to do with her that would be fun and/or educational and provide us with flexibility on time. So, we thought to check out the sculptures at Olympic Park. Besides, if you remember from earlier on the trip, we figured to play Pokemon Go on this trip and try to catch some Pokemon at the park. This turned out to be a popular suggestion as our niece had also recently started to play Pokemon Go as well, so, we were hanging with her and our virtual “friends’ ;-).

We arrived at Olympic Park and used the parking lot onsite. We walked right into piece called “Wake” and were greeted with a rather interesting sight behind us of dozens of people doing Yoga at the Park.

The yoga class was well attended, but aside from having to contort myself to get into my wife’s Roadster, yoga wasn’t on the schedule for this visit to Olympic Park.

We stayed on course to go catch some Pokemon and see the sculptures at the park.

So, we walked through the Wake (of copper) to get to the other pieces.

The next one was called “Sky Landscape”.

The next large piece was nicely juxtaposed by the smaller red chairs in the background. I had guessed the piece was going to be named “Chair”, but turns out that the piece is entitled “Eagle.” This “fail” on my part shows you how attuned to Modern Art I have become in adulthood. I used to appreciate modern art more in my youth.

This is also reflected in that I appreciated the more functional pieces. This one was calling me (because of my aching feet.)

Thought this was going to be called “Bench”, but it wasn’t.

I suppose it would be good to start playing “I spy with my little eye”. But some of the installations look back at you.

Then there are those that seem to be looking at something…

I would guess that the large head was enjoying the nice clear, sunny Seattle morning.

It was a pleasant stroll, but I think my enjoyment for modern art is not quite where it was in my youth.

Another view of the “Eagle” with the Space Needle behind it.

Just in case I was missing punctuation to join two concepts together, the artist provided one for us.

And with that, we headed back to take our niece to her late morning/afternoon classes before we briefly take her out again.

On the way to her classes, we randomly spot a new, blue Model X.

With a few hours from when we need to be back to reclaim her from class, we decided to head back over to check in to our hotel for the evening – the Hilton Bellevue. The hotel for the evening is part of Tesla’s Destination Charger program, so I fully expect a better level of EV charging, the hotel services, should still be pretty good as well. Hotel rates in Seattle for this weekend rivaled what we experience in New York City, so we opted to just do another bridge crossing, pay the toll, and still save money on the hotel.

The Hilton labels the amperage on their destination chargers and we select the 80A station to use our dual chargers and recover our used miles quickly. We tend to follow the “ABC” rule when we’re out and about on these long trips. That’s “Always Be Charging.” Especially when the energy is not charged directly.

Aside from the 80A that we used, there is a 40A HPWC and a 30A GE J1772 charger at this location.

After checking in to our hotel for the evening. Taking a short breather and getting a little refreshed, we pick up the car from the 80A charger.

Looks like we gained 37 miles in our brief stop at the Hilton Bellevue.

On the way back to pick up our niece, we spot another EV following us.

At the same time that the i3 was behind us, we were following another Model S.

We arrive at her camp slightly early. This provided us with the opportunity to seek parking near her class location. Apparently Seattle folks are really good with directions because we parked on the street and had to guess that we were on the “right” side of this sign. Had to double check on the Model S GPS which direction we were facing and as to where we were in relation to this sign.

Couldn’t you just paint the sidewalk? Then again, with all the weather, I wonder if it would wash off, or perhaps the color would get covered by snow(? or mud? or whatever?).

So, we reunite with our niece and take her on one last stop before we feed her something “non” camp related.

We were headed to the Seattle Great Wheel.

The Seattle Great Wheel is located in the “touristy” Seattle Waterfront and we are, unashamedly, tourists. So this was perfectly acceptable behavior. Considering my fear of a sudden stop after a long fall, I felt that I was “taking one for the team” with this amusement park choice.

We planned ahead and skipped the ticket booth because we bought our tickets online and were able to skip one line to get into another line.

That Great Wheel looks a little imposing.

At least the capsules are enclosed. I don’t have a fear of heights, as I’ve said before I have a fear of the sudden stop after the end of a long fall.

We spot some solar panels across the pier from the Seattle Great Wheel.

I try to be brave, but I’m having some serious doubts at this point.

I’m doing a good job hiding my fear in this photo.

We didn’t have enough people in our party to claim our own gondola, so we’re sharing with another party and we have a city-facing seat. Since we’re not local, that’s actually a good view for us.

A nice view of the sports stadiums in Seattle.

We’re pretty high up there.

That’s what’s behind our seats.

And just like that, we’re back on solid ground.

Thank goodness.

We caught a quick meal at the pier and brought our niece back to camp so that she can join her fellow campers for their Saturday night activity. We gave her our warmest regards and told her to behave as we checked her back into camp.

We then headed back to Bellevue to our hotel for the night.

On our way to Bellevue, we spotted Seattle’s bike share program. Bike sharing seem to be taking off all over the place.

We spot some Hybrid-Electric Buses… Not quite the BYD or Proterra full electric buses, but it’s a start.

We decided to take a different route to Bellevue as our hotel for the night is on the Southern side of the city. We took the bridge/freeway that goes through Mercer Island.

And we got back to the hotel with plenty of miles.

Our cars’ twin from Arkansas was charging on the 40A HPWC. So, we charged on the 80A HPWC again. We have dual chargers, so that is always a good option for us.

Looks like it will take shorter than an hour for the car to get charged all the way up, that we made a note of it so that we can move the car when it is done.

A shot of the two Blue Model S at the chargers.

We went back to the room to hang. We still had some of the provisions that MelindaV gave us back at Portland, so we figured to have some Washington Apples while in Washington. Beside, we figure we’re not allowed to carry produce across the border.

Aside from the healthy snacks, MelindaV provided us with some chocolate, and that tasted as good as it looks.

At 48 miles per hour, it wasn’t long and we moved the car to a more convenient parking spot.

We went back out and moved the car to park it overnight. We have an early start tomorrow as we have a quick get together with a couple of buddies from college for breakfast before we head to Canada.

The next day of this series, Day 7, is published here.

The Long Way Round – Day 05

With a hat-tip to the 2004 TV mini-series from Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. This is the fifth day in a series of posts written about our 2016 EV Roadtrip written in the same manner as our 2015 trip. Here, There, and EVerywhere Trip – Day 01, i.e. summaries written for each day of the trip, published each day, this time two months from the day of the trip. It may seem funny to some to have a summer trip published at the start of the Fall, think of it as some daily entertainment for those that are back in their offices thinking about their past summer trips that could have been or thinking about their next trip.

Missed the previous day’s post, click here to read Day 4 of this trip. You’re just joining us on this trip? Click here for Day 1 and start from the beginning!

So, what do we have in store today? We’ve achieved our intermediate goal and attended EV Roadmap 9 conference at Portland’s World Trade Center. So, we’re now on our way to the Gigafactory… After we visit family in the Seattle area and Vancouver, BC area.

Day 5 – Portland to Seattle, WA area. July 21, 2016

Interestingly enough, it looks like we had no vampire drain last night. We rolled in with 195 miles of range and rolled out with 195 miles of range. We had a little bit of a late start for our drive to Seattle. The distance between the two cities is rather short compared to our other drives that we figured that we should be fine even with the late start.

For those unfamiliar, Portland, OR is actually very close to the border with Washington State. So, when we headed North from our hotel toward Seattle, it wasn’t long until we saw the following sign on our bridge crossing.

And we were greeted with signs for Vancouver… Washington.

You know that the border crossing occurs often when the state sign is pretty understated.

Not quite at the border, there was a better state sign.

But the border was where the understated sign was.

We actually encountered some rain on this part of the drive and were quite happy about that. My expectations for a trip to the Pacific Northwest is to have some rain. As it was, we’ve had nothing but perfect weather. Apparently the rest of the country was suffering from a terrible heat wave.

We were being chased down by a Red Leaf in Vancouver, WA.

And then we were passed Vancouver, WA

Still driving along the Columbia River, I think..

Thanks to MelindaV, we had some good local provisions to hold us in place during this drive.

And we hit weather again.

We did have some interesting sights on the drive…

On the way to Centralia, spotted these interesting sculpture. Not sure whether it’s just aesthetic or functional, but looked cool.

Logging trucks are not one of the things that we often see around Southern California.

My better half made it her goal to try to follow the “logging industry” life-cycle on what we spot on the road. So, let’s consider this truck of cut trees as step one on this life-cycle plan. Our goal is to follow the wood through its process.

In the meantime, though we had some provisions from MelindaV, we were nearing one of the places that Chef Jenn Louis recommended. It was a Mexican restaurant in Centralia, WA that was about a mile from the superchargers.

As we got closer to Centralia, we saw some strangely colored Washington cows…

Downtown Centralia, WA

As I wrote about yesterday, Chef’s usually know good places to eat, so we took her suggestion and headed to Downtown Centralia, WA. The exit was one before the Tesla Supercharger in the same town.

La Tarasca is apparently an institution in Centralia (1001 W Main St, Centralia, WA 98531.) They’ve been open since 1997 and only a little over a mile away from the supercharger, a must stop. Some may supercharge and take local transportation to the restaurant and back. I would suggest to just stop, enjoy the meal, and then head over to the supercharger.

Here are the hours of operation for La Tarasca. It was good that we decided to have lunch here on Friday rather than try to squeeze them into the return drive. We plan on leaving Vancouver and head South on or around Tuesday and expect to pass Centralia on that day. It’s also important to note the sign that lets customers know that they do not serve “chips”.

We parked at the restaurant to eat lunch with plenty of range left on the battery.

So, we ordered our meal.

I was going to be a smart aleck, and ask for chips, but my shins hurt too much from my wife’s subtle reminder NOT to be a smart aleck. 😉

Instead of chips, they brought out these pickled vegetables. I tried one, it was ok, but it gets a big thumbs up from the better half.

The meal was a good authentic Mexican Food from Michoacan. We ordered the Chile Verde and

the Carnitas.

These are provided with freshly made corn tortillas, and not flour ones. Another “house rule”, no flour tortillas.

It was a filling meal and after fueling ourselves, we headed to the superchargers at Centralia (located at the outlet mall).

Centralia Supercharger

We took local roads to the Centralia Supercharger as it was about a mile away from where La Tarasca was located.

We had enough charge to get to our next stop, which was our hotel for the night. But not enough to do our driving around the Seattle area. We had a schedule to keep and wanted to have enough time to check in to our hotel in Bellevue, pick up our niece from Summer Camp in Seattle, and then drive up to Everett to see Billy Elliot, the Musical. We chose our hotel in Bellevue, the Hyatt Regency Bellevue, for the evening because it had some J1772 chargers according to Plugshare. The difference in cost for the hotel stay versus hotels on Tesla’s destination charger network made it worth it to pick our hotel, even though we would have to pay fees to charge on the J1772 at that location.

Since this was the start of a Summer Weekend, We noticed that this was a busy supercharger and we were joined briefly by a fellow Californian in a Signature Red Model X.

To minimize the Level 2 charging and to ensure that we have enough “driving around town” charge when we got to the Seattle area, we range charged at this supercharger. As we mentioned earlier, we need to travel between Bellevue, Seattle, and Everett for our evening plans.

We did a little outlet shopping at Centralia while the car charged. We were going to be hanging out with our niece for a few days and picked up a present for her and a few things for us.

So, with our battery near capacity, we rolled out of the supercharger to Bellevue.

We meet up with traffic in Olympia, Washington.

Spot a California Jedi of presumably Hispanic origin.

The good thing about traffic is we get to enjoy the sights around us without blowing right past them, like this cool helicopter overhead

And this beautiful church on the other side of the freeway.

We pass the Tacoma Dome, the now departed Seattle Supersonics (now the Oklahoma City Thunder), had played there for a season while the Key Arena was renovated or built, I don’t remember my Sonics’ history.

Looks like there’s a cool museum that we’re skipping.

Another lumber truck for the “logging industry” life-cycle project.

We were lucky because it looked like a lot of the traffic was headed South and not North.

We did hit some traffic, but luckily Washington also use HOV lanes with a 2+ person count like California, so I used those lanes.

We made it to Bellevue. Seems like a nice looking city. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been here before, but now I can say that I have.

We arrived at our hotel in Bellevue with enough time to check in and get our room assigned. But we were nearing the time we needed to depart to pick up our niece from her dorm. We headed to her camp which was using a dorm from Seattle Pacific University.

First we had to traverse Bellevue and it’s interesting to see so many trees interspersed with the city. Considering all the building off the freeway, I didn’t expect this much foliage.

Original estimates had the drive at a leisurely 30 minutes or so, but the estimates changed drastically when we were getting on the bridge connecting Everett with Seattle, we ended up taking about an hour longer to traverse the distance because of an accident on the bridge.

Additionally, this was a toll bridge, now there was a way to sign up as a visitor in the area to at least pay for the tolls like a resident before getting a fine. So I made a mental note to fill that out. The system was called GoodToGo and one should consider signing up for a visitor account before heading in, that minimizes your toll costs.

Seattle traffic was pretty bad.

Spotted traditional electric trolley buses with the constant power connected overhead rather than full EV buses with its own battery pack like the BYD ones at the conference the other day.

We pass through some interesting parts of Seattle to get to our niece’s dorms.

Looks like some boats are parked above ground.

Another bridge…

It made me think of “Many Rivers to Cross”… (though I’m sure it was just one)

And some Portland area coffee has made in-roads into the Seattle Coffee scene. (quick alert Starbucks!)

And after the traffic filled journey, we make it to her dorm.

Our plans for the Seattle area for this evening is to catch a musical, Billy Elliot at Everett Washington. Still a little bit of a drive from her dorm, but we can make it.

We’re not proud of it, but we fed her (and ourselves) burgers and fries. I’m a big fan of the spicy fries that Five Guys Burgers produces and am glad to see the quality is the same all over the country.

At the parking structure for the play, we found our WA state twin for our Model S and parked beside it.

Crossed the street in Downtown Everett to the Village Theater and found our seats with ten minutes to spare.

We figured to take our niece out for a nice musical on her night of freedom from her summer camp.

I was impressed with the production in Everett. It wasn’t Broadway, but it was a high quality traveling production. The acting and direction was entertaining and the singing and dancing were superb.

We were going to take our niece for Ice Cream after the show, but she was tired and it was time to take her back to the hotel.

After all the driving for the day, we parked at the hotel with 78 miles of range. Had to do a little driving around the hotel parking lot, but figured a 200V/30A feed would be fine for an overnight charge.