Seattle – My ActiveE Made Me Accidentally Environmental

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!

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.

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.

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.