Hilton Garden Inn Springfield OR – My ActiveE Made Me Accidentally Environmental

The Long Way Round – Day 10

With a hat-tip to the 2004 TV mini-series from Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. This is the tenth 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 9 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 we continue to head South toward Reno for the Gigafactory Party on the 29th. We’ve also registered to do some of the events for TMC Connect 2016. Our first event is the Dinner Reception on Thursday evening for TMC Connect 2016. Rather than take a different route back to Reno, we’ve decided to stay on the same Interstate 5 route.

We had hoped to meet up with some EV friends in our drive through Washington and Oregon and we were lucky enough to catch one of four. We had no planned meetups heading back to California before making the swing up to Reno. It’s just drive, drive, drive again, and figure out where to stop.

Day 10 – Springfield, OR Southbound to as far as we can.. July 27, 2016

We start the day at the Hilton Garden Inn, Springfield, OR. We selected this hotel because we’re loyal to Hiltons and Tesla Destination Charging.

We had full intention of charging Level 2 overnight and continue our trip as soon as we woke up. However, as you can see from the picture below, the hotel’s destination HPWC when it is being used, the second charger, the J1772 is inconveniently located to charge a second Tesla.

Basically, if I drove in forward to the second charging location, the charging cable will cross the other Model S and have the cable be in its way. Furthermore, if I drove in backward, the cable will be precariously twisted with the J1772 to Model S adapter, if that charger cable will even reach the car.

Since our hotel was less than a mile away from the nearest Supercharger, we just opted to skip the Level 2 entirely and supercharge there before heading to Grants Pass, OR and beyond.

So we finished up at the hotel, had our breakfast, checked out and went less than a mile away to get some electrons for our car.

Was I glad that we did. It turned out to be a Supercharger powered TMC Meetup. The two other Model S that was supercharging at the time were also headed to TMC Connect in Reno.

The Signature Red Model S was already charging in his car when we pulled up to take our spot and start to charge. Soon after, the twin to our Model S pulls up beside us. I notice the license plate on the blue one (an Oregon one with the plate Nikola) and stepped out of the car to compliment him on his plate.

When DBullard introduces himself to me, I recognize his handle and it all clicked. At that point, the driver to the Sig Red S steps out to join in the conversation and it turns out to be ChadS. First thing that Chad does is stare at me in disbelief and said something to the effect of, “aren’t you out of your way”. Apparently he recognized me and was confused as to why I’m charging in OR for a trip to Reno… We had a good laugh at that and explained our Long Way Round trip and plans.

The Sig Red on the left is ChadS and the Blue Model S (twin to our S) in the middle is DBullard.

Chad was there a lot longer than we were and he headed out first. With three of us heading South for TMC Connect, and several locations with only four stalls means that we can probably expect to have some locations have a short wait.

Chad and Doug both have hotel plans for the night. We’re just winging it, so it really depends on how it works out.

We left next, but being a more “moderate”-footed Model S driver meant that before we even make it to the next supercharger location, Doug overtakes us on the road and we were able to get him a few great shots of Nikola.

We continue on and my better half spots another “logging industry” life-cycle truck hauling Stage 2 prepared lumber products…

I suppose that these “bald spots” on the mountain is probably “logging industry” life-cycle stage 0. Either that, or someone needs tree rogaine to cover these spots.

The drive back to Grants Pass has some interesting undulations.

We were craving coffee in the middle of this drive and thought to seek out the nearest Dutch Bros. coffee. After all, we’re not going to be in Oregon much longer and we can always grab Starbucks elsewhere.

So, we did a search on Google and found a listing for one at Sutherlin, OR.

Near the Dutch Bros. location, we see one big flag above us… We also spot a donut.

It is a donut… but when you put the words Smoke Shop on a Donut and put mushrooms above the building, it makes us think twice before we stop in, and we passed on that “donut” shop. Additionally, the Dutch Bros. at this location had a LONG line and we’re only 80 miles to Grants Pass. We decided to skip this location and continued on our drive.

Success… At least on my wife’s goal of seeing the “logging industry” life-cycle in action on this trip (we’re still waiting on that Pasta truck from Day one of the drive.) That’s half a wood building we see being carried on a truck.

And a short while later, the OTHER half of that structure was being hauled as well.

And then for bonus points, we get to see a completed structure being hauled on our side of the drive.

Not just a completed structure, but a modern “out house.” I would normally make a joke about the “Oversize Load” sign on an “out house”, but decide against it.

Now this former mountain “bald spot” looks like it got some tree Rogaine applied to its slope.

And with that we find ourselves at our last supercharger stop in Oregon. Back in Grants Pass, OR.

At the Grants Pass Supercharger, I took the last remaining spot and it looks like Doug and Chad were already there with one other Model S. Since the two guys that were traveling ahead of me were sharing the same circuit, I can only guess that the other Model S must have arrived in between the two of them.

We decided to fill up the car with electrons before we filled up the travelers with some “Dutch Love”…

We ordered a Caramelizer and a hot coffee as well.

Before we left the area, we thought to stop by and take pictures of the nearly adjacent West Coast Electric Highway DCFC station at Grants Pass. The states of Oregon and Washington deployed their stations along the WCEH a lot faster than California or British Columbia. The standard at the time was strictly CHAdeMO and the planners also instituted a J1772 alongside the single CHAdeMO station that they installed.

It’s a great start to allow CHAdeMO enabled travel throughout both states. Unfortunately, very few US cars are able to use the CHAdeMO stations, but I know of several who have made full use of this network and I am sure they are thankful for it.

Ooh… a painted bear. Not sure what the bear was adorned with, but can only guess that it had something to do with the history of the area.

And we headed out of Grants Pass and back to California.

On this leg of our drive, I spot a Nissan Leaf that was on a truck that was headed in the same direction as us. It looks like it has no plates and I suspect that its a car that was being sold or has been sold in California that used to be in Oregon. But I digress.

Spot a lone windmill in the distance. Don’t know what it’s powering, but good for them.

And as we near the California border, our friendly neighbors from the South send us on our way with a thankful goodbye.

We spot no California sign outside of the “Click it or Ticket” sign. That was disappointing.

And the terrain becomes less green and more gold in the Golden State.

Looks like the cows around these parts are hanging out on the ranch as well.

My better half captures a nice shot of Mt. Shasta.

And I needed to make a quick stop and thought it would be funny to take a picture of the Weed, CA sign. Yes… I can be a little immature at times, (remember the Outhouse insinuation?)

Nearing the Mount Shasta supercharger, we spot some really colorful trucks on the side of the road. One has to definitely be distracted not to notice any of those trucks. I spotted them from the OTHER SIDE of the road.

And we get to Mt. Shasta in no time. Doug was spending the night here, so we were not going to be seeing Nikola on the road today. However, I believe that Chad was still going forward. We arrived to be the last vehicle to take the fourth stall again and proceeded to charge for our next stop in Corning.

It was still early enough in the day that we decided to keep driving. We currently selected the Supercharger in Roseville, CA as our next destination, though I don’t think that we’ll be driving there tonight. The GPS wants us to take CA-99 after Corning.

I ran into Doug at the hotel and we chatted a little and I told him about the great pictures that my better half caught of Nikola and got his business card so that I can email him the JPGs.

Another four stall supercharger where we ended up being the last one here.

Going downhill at passes always seems to create the most interesting energy graphs.

So, we filled up and continued on.

Lots of great tree lined drive. The curves make it feel like we’re the only one on the road.

Until you look behind, or past the next corner.

We spot another lone windmill.

Then some more cows grazing.

Before we make it to Corning Supercharger, we wanted to see if we can stay in the Roseville area. We couldn’t find a hotel to stay at and decided to change locations and target the Hyatt Regency Sacramento for our hotel for the night. It looked to have a charger or two available for use according to Tesla Destination Charging program and confirmed by our friends at Teslarati.

Our original goal was Roseville, and that would have been better to take CA-99 over I-5. Since we’re now considering Sacramento, we decided to just stick with I-5 to our hotel.

With sunlight and no “strange people” around, the Corning, CA feels reasonably safe. Besides, there’s an open Starbucks nearly adjacent to the charging location, and that always puts me at ease.

Looks like most of the cars and people were also attracted to the Starbucks.

We continue on I-5 to the Hyatt Regency Sacramento.

One of the concerns in driving through these fields at night is the amount of insect activity and how many will find themselves stuck on the car during the drive.

And just past 10:00 PM at night we finally check in to our hotel for the night.

The parking garage at the Hyatt had a ton of EVSEs installed. Unfortunately, at the time, only one seemed to be operational.

I ended up finding the one that was working and plugged in.

I walked throughout the parking structure and noticed a ton of EVSEs and HPWCs that were installed with no power to them.

The “Not in Service” signs irritated me, but I guess they’ll be “on” in the future.

I took a picture of the “EV Rules” for the parking garage attached to the Hyatt Regency. This location is configured that the EVSEs are MEANT TO BE SHARED. There is an EVSE to share for every three stalls.

It will be great to see this location in action in the future. However, when one arrives at a destination charger expecting to be able to charge, it’s been one disappointment after another with two hotels in a row that were supposed to be available for destination charging that was less than ideal. (At least I was able to plug in.) Besides, we’re almost at TMC Connect (tomorrow) and the Gigafactory Party in two days. With that, we turned in.

[In all fairness to the Hyatt Regency Sacramento, there have been articles and press releases recently published (September 2016 – Clipper Creek article. Link on Hyatt site. Sacramento Bee article) that announced the “Grand Opening” of these chargers that were inoperative when we visited it in July 2016. Perhaps the approval process took forever.]

The next day of this series, Day 11, is published and 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 09

With a hat-tip to the 2004 TV mini-series from Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. This is the ninth 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 8 of this trip. You’re just joining us on this trip? Click here for Day 1 and start from the beginning!

The main reason for staying on this route is we are trying to meetup with many fellow EV folks who reached out but were unable to get together during the Northbound journey.

Day 9 – Vancouver, BC Southbound to as far as we can.. July 26, 2016

We got a good night’s sleep and fully charged at our hotel before we rolled out.

Had $30 CAD left in my pocket, and since we’re not planning on being in Canada anytime in the near future, decided to go ahead and apply this cash to our hotel balance.

As I was settling up, it looks like another Model S was just moving in. Perhaps a single HPWC is all this location needs for now. I do believe that they just need a little more parking spots dedicated to the hotel. I’m quite aware that many EV travelers will need to be more cognizant of fellow EV travelers and make accommodations for folks to share a single HPWC. This means that they should be ready to move their vehicles when done charging (a good plan) or to at least provide their contact information if unable to do so easily (or both, an even better plan.)

Our range charge at start of today is at 252 miles, nearly the maximum that the car displays when fully charged.

And with that starting charge, we’re headed back to the United States… Same route, but hope to catch up with friends (and perhaps some Pokemon) along the way.

We make the border in rather quick time.

We opted to cross the border at the “touristy” crossing again. We got there around 10:00 AM.

There were lines again, but it felt like it was moving faster.

After all, we’re traveling in miles again! 😉

Somehow it feels like we’re traveling 1.6x faster on miles than we are in Kilometers!

This interesting sculpture was installed just behind the border crossing.

In all seriousness, the crossing back to the United States took about 35 minutes. That is quicker than the crossing into Canada. Additionally, our rear windows did roll back up unimpeded.

We headed back to Washington State and were accompanied by a famous VW Bug. It’s an ICE, but with Herbie, the Love Bug striping, I can forgive it a little.

Not that we needed a charge, but I did need to make a pit stop and were surprised to be greeted by a couple of friends.

Some free to use Aerovironment EVSEs at the first rest stop from Canada to Washington on I-5.

And it was sponsored by our good friends at Adopt-A-Charger! I already feel at home.

Earlier on our trip, I wrote about my better half’s quest to document the “logging industry life-cycle.” She took some photographs of cut trees on trucks as step one. We figure that these pictures of nicely cut lumber is step two of this cycle.

And we continue our Southbound journey through Washington.

And quickly make it to our first supercharger stop of the day at Burlington, WA.

We had several potential meetups on the drive South, some of whom unfortunately were busy on a Tuesday to meet up, so we ended up missing them on this trip. One that was able to meet up was Tony Giannini and his wife Vanessa. Tony and Vanessa both drive Model X and were gracious enough to offer their HPWC for a charge and chat on the way down. Since we’re pretty well stocked on electrons around their part of Washington state, we just figured to stop off for a snack and chat instead.

Tony and I have exchanged twitter conversations on many things Tesla and T-Mobile (my preferred mobile provider since Voicestream did the bandwidth swap with Cingular and enterred the California market as T-Mobile) and were delighted to take them up on their offer. Besides… They said DONUTS. And who am I to turn THAT down!

They directed us to Top Pot Doughnuts and coffee and we met up with them and their kids.

The donut choices were excellent and the conversation was even better.

As is customary on these EV meetups, we checked out their car. (They brought one of their Model X)

Here’s a great shot of us with the cars.

We could have spent more time with them, but had to cut it short because we had the goal to be past Portland tonight and had tentatively scheduled some time to possibly meet some of the other contributors to Transport Evolved, Kate Walton-Elliott, in Olympia, WA, as well as TE’s editor-in-chief Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield, around Portland, OR, in real life. Both these meets were in flux for one reason or the other, and we hoped to be able to time it at a mutually convenient time and meet IRL.

Nikki was supposed to be on a panel the previous week at EV Roadmap, but had to cancel for personal reasons, and we have a chance to meet later today.

Southbound journey to Portland seemed to be faster to ditch Seattle altogether and we pass our Hilton in Bellevue, WA.

Yup, lots more traffic in the West.

This Eastern route has given us a better view of snow and glacier capped mountains, so that’s a plus.

And the traffic was so bad, we decided to follow the interesting alternate routes that was offered to us.

The beauty of GPS and a sense of adventure on these long roadtrips is the ability to get off the Interstate and see the countryside.

We got a text from our first potential meet with Kate Walton-Elliott, and unfortunately the timing wasn’t going to work. So, here’s to hoping for another chance to meet IRL.

In the meantime, we had hoped to catch some well recommended, Chef Jenn Louis stop around Olympia of Tacos La Fuente. Unfortunately, they’re a daytime only place and we arrived 15 minutes after they close the whole restaurant/bus down.

Needless to say, I was NOT HAPPY.

This is an unhappy selfie…

And we’re back in Centralia, WA for a supercharge.

We make a route to somewhere near Nikki’s part of Portland, as we were still “touch and go” on the meetup plans and wanted to make it as easy on her to come on out and chat.

We have a little bit of time around here… Unfortunately there’s a glare, but if you look to the right of the charger on the left, there is a bucket with a squeegee there that has been provided by a generous local for those of us traveling through Centralia, WA.

We didn’t avail ourselves of the squeegee as the car was relatively clean, and we headed onward…

…apparently toward where Lord Vader resides.

The better half has been obsessed with the logging/lumber industry on this trip and points out the tall trees.

It’s amazing to see all this green on the drive.

Even this bridge is green. It’s painted like the color of army tanks in old World War 2 movies.

We’re nearing Battle Ground, WA. Just an interesting name for a town, wonder what battles were fought there.

We’re nearing Oregon again.

Looks like we’re going to miss meeting Nikki IRL today. We’ll eventually meet-up, but not on this trip. Will have to continue corresponding over the ‘Net.

Since we are not meeting up with Nikki, we made plans to supercharge at Woodbury, OR. This was the supercharger that “surprised us” on Day Two of our Northbound journey when we were headed to EV Roadmap 9.

So, we stopped off and charged, had dinner next door at the Red Robin. We got to the location close to the closing time for the site sponsors and we felt like going to a chain that would be open longer.

While at the restaurant, we made plans for our next stop, and found the Hilton Garden Inn, Springfield, OR as a viable stop for us. The hotel is just around the corner from the Supercharger at Springfield/Eugene, OR that we charged in on our Northbound journey, but we felt like we can have the car charged while we sleep.

We made our lodging plans for the evening and did the drive from Woodbury to Springfield/Eugene, OR.

It was one of our shorter legs for today. We arrive at the hotel around 11:00 PM and were tired. One of the two chargers at the location was available, but the way the parking was configured meant that we would have to cross vehicles to charge and didn’t want to run “the risk.”

I was too tired to deal with it, we made a mental note to write an entry into Teslarati for this destination charger location and went to bed. We’re less than a mile away from the supercharger in town that we can easily drive over there in the morning.

The next day of this series, Day 10, is published here.