On our way to Hood River from Redmond, we were looking for some places we had never been and Lake Billy Chinook is one. Not too far off the main road north, it’s a nice diversion.
The day use area also has two free Level 2 chargers, courtesy of Rivian. So we plugged in for our short walk at the lake and gained a few more miles. And some mosquito bites.
Lake Billy ChinookFree Level 2 charging (J-1772) at Lake Billy Chinook courtesy of Rivian
Once in Hood River, we stayed at a bed and breakfast and utilized the Tesla Supercharger down by the river. It’s supposed to be a fast charger (250 kW), but the best we ever got was about 300 mph of range. But it gave us the opportunity to walk along the river. Nice.
Mt Hood and Scarlett
We used this as a home base for driving the scenic highway and seeing some of the waterfalls along the gorge. We started at Vista House and worked our way back. It was a beautiful, sunny day! We bought the timed pass for the road trip and the parking pass for Multnomah Falls. But I think because we were there on a Tuesday in early June, neither were needed.
Multnomah Falls at the LodgeColumbia Gorge
For a good dinner in Hood River, check out The Mesquitery, if you like steak fare. We split the Beef Cheeks and added a side salad. It was amazing. For pizza, our B&B host recommended Double Mountain Brewery and specifically the Jersey Pie pizza. Also amazing.
Beef Cheeks and an extra side salad at The Mesquitery in Hood RiverThe Jersey Pie pizza at Double Mountain Brewery
Our first two nights were in Redmond, Oregon. We wanted to be close to Smith Rock and our new-favorite restaurant in Redmond, Carnaval Mexican Grill. After an online search, I found SCP Redmond, two blocks from Carnaval and one block from free Level 2 charging (thank you, City of Redmond!).
SCP stands for Soul, Community, Planet. This small, boutique chain of hotels practices sustainability and giving back. Visit their website for more; it’s pretty cool. A medium-size hotel at 49 rooms, the service and rooms were over the top good. Highly recommend you stay there if overnighting in Redmond. They have a roof top bar, exercise room and very comfortable beds.
SCP Redmond Hotel. Stay there
And Carnaval is probably the best Mexican restaurant we’ve ever eaten at. Great menu and great service. This trip marked our third time there and we will be going back on our return loop home. For breakfast and coffee, don’t miss Junction Roastery just a block from the hotel by the park. Fresh pastries and good coffee.
Sunset from the rooftop bar at SCP
Smith Rock is a place we hike almost every year. It is probably one of our favorite hikes. We pack a lunch, hike along the river to Monkey Face, eat lunch, then hike back out. This year, the weather was perfect. Mid-70s and sunny. We had a great hike.
The quintessential Smith Rock picture. This hike never gets old
The Level 2 chargers are in the City parking lot behind the hotel. Redmond recently built a new City Hall with a new park and parking lot. There are two J-1772 chargers free to the public. And the park is really nice as well.
Free Level 2 charging (J-1772) right behind the hotel
We bought a Red Tesla Long Range Model 3 in February 2018 (310 rated miles, we named her Scarlett because you have to name your Tesla).
It was our first electric vehicle, and, a year later, it became our ONLY vehicle.
We’ve encountered several people along the way asking the universal two questions: How do you like your car? (Love it. Wouldn’t trade it for anything. Will never go back to an ICE) and the second question: Yeah, you love it, but would you take it on a long road trip? (usually they’re thinking 700 miles or so).
The answer to that last question is a resounding “yes!” In fact, we’ve taken our Model 3 on numerous road trips ranging from 1,200 to over 3,000 miles.
No issues. No problems. Easy.
So I wanted to share this latest trip with those of you that may be on the fence about road tripping in an EV.
Here we go!
High Camp Taphouse with Scarlett charging across the road at the Sisters Library
Passing from Eugene, our home, through Sisters on the first leg of our trip, we stopped at High Camp Taphouse. We always stop at High Camp. They have Himalayan and Nepalese food that is incredible. It now has joined Sisters Coffee as one of our “must stop” places when we travel this direction.
Also, High Camp is right across the street from the Sisters Library, which has free Level 2 charging (thank you, City of Sisters!). So we plug in, eat, walk down to coffee and get some extra miles added for free.
Momos (top) are Nepalese dumplings and they are to die for!
PLUS, we ran into one of my business partners whose family rode their bikes along the Old McKenzie Highway! Tomorrow: Redmond and Smith Rock.
Above is what our system looks like from my phone app. I have the battery set to self-consumption so we can use anything over 50% charge to run our house rather than send it back to EWEB. My reasoning is this: we pay $0.095 per KWh to have electricity delivered and when we have a surplus and send it back to EWEB, they only credit us $0.036. I’m going to monitor and adjust this to get the best value.
But that isn’t today’s story. Today is about Twende Solar.
Twende is Swahili for “let’s go”. It was Brandon Little and John Grieser, from Elemental Energy and “bridges the gap between renewable energy experts and economically marginalized communities with a need for a reliable, affordable source of clean energy to power their work.”
We donated our old inverter that I mentioned earlier in this series. When Elemental Energy removes and updates equipment such as what we did, if the homeowner so chooses, we can donate that old equipment to help add solar to marginalized communities in developing countries and even here in the US. Here is a great example of a local project at the Portland Rescue Mission.
This vision makes our choice of Elemental Energy even more satisfying.
Monday: Sent one of their electricians down on Monday to finalize the WiFi router issue. Got it resolved by tagging on to our electrical wiring for the signal boost. Apparently, even though we have a pretty straight shot from our router to the unit, because we have very thick walls and lots of insulation, it had troubles connecting.
Friday: We’ve been up and running all week. working well. City inspection was today and we passed with flying colors. But no surprise there. The Elemental Energy team was top notch, professional and friendly. Highly recommend!
After day one, Brenda and I got home late in the evening after they had left. The garage was clean, their tools were neatly stacked to the side and I was a happy camper.
I stopped by at lunch on day two and the panels were back up on the roof, they were finalizing pulling the wire and connecting/moving our critical load to the new sub-panel, and they were making good progress.
Everything was completed by the end of the day. Except… the system was not connecting to our WiFi router. They tried a booster, but it didn’t cut it. So on to Plan B.
I cleared out the garage around the area where the new system would go. Zach, from Elemental Energy in Portland and his crew showed up at 9:00 and started to work.
To those of you who know we have a Tesla, you may be wondering why we didn’t go with a Tesla PowerWall. Easy answer: Tesla wouldn’t sell one to us.
Tesla will only sell their PowerWalls to those who also buy Tesla solar. And we already have 6kW of solar panels that are working just fine. In my research, I came across the Enphase battery, which seems to be slightly more efficient than the PowerWalls.
The first order of business was removing each solar panel so that the old inverter could be replaced with new, more efficient, micro-inverters. Then they started cutting holes, running wires and generally revamping our system.
Tomorrow: cutting holes, running wires, and putting it all back together.
After 2,435 days, our SunnyBoy solar inverter is going away. During its time perched silently on our garage wall, it effortlessly logged every watt of electricity our solar array produced.
And in that time period, we generated 50,370,000 watt-hours of electricity. Yes, 50 MWh. That’s an average of almost 21 kWh per day, every day. Not too shabby.
But as with all things, technology advances. And with climate change becoming even more prominent, we felt we wanted to add a measure of comfort and security in case our electricity went out. We’ve had ice storms in recent years and smoke from fires to the extent that sometimes the electric grid in our area goes down.
Our solar system was originally installed with a 110v outlet in case the power went out, we could switch over to solar and run at least a few items off that plug. But it was manual. And cumbersome.
So on February 23, we are having our SunnyBoy removed (and donated to a non-profit that installs off-grid solar in developing countries, more on that later) and a new Enphase system installed. It will have battery backup and be controlled via an app on our phone.
February 10, 2018 we took delivery of our RWD LR Tesla Model 3. We were fortunate enough to have a friend who was a first day reservation holder from April 2016 and who didn’t want to wait two years. He instead bought a Model S and just recently upgraded to a new Model S.
So he gave us his spot in line. And after almost two years, we were able to order our car, which we named Scarlett. We found if you buy a Tesla, you have to name your car. And since we went red, Scarlett was a natural choice.
Our move to completely electric was probably as big a shift as our move to have just one car. When we moved downtown in 2015, we committed to use just one car. It actually was pretty easy. When we committed to go all-electric, the shift was equally easy. Things like range anxiety, etc. simply didn’t materialize. We’ve never “run out of electricity.” And that’s because of a) charging at home (just like your cell phone) and b) Tesla’s robust supercharging network for our road trips and travels.
As I’ve done in previous years, I look back on our experiences going 100% electric and abandoning gas stations completely (except for ice tea and bathroom breaks). So here’s my four year update.
We’ve driven just under 42,000 miles. Most has been around town, but we’ve taken several road trips of 1,000 to 3,000 miles. We’ve used just over 10,000 kWh of electricity and probably spent just a little over $1,000 on “fuel.” About $20/month on average. The equivalent of 138 miles per gallon. At $0.61 per gallon.
Our original 100% charge range was 310 miles. It has dropped to about 308-309. That’s about 0.6% battery degradation over four years. Our battery has an 8 year warranty. I think we’ll be fine.
We’ve spent $176 in regular maintenance (cabin air filter, tire rotation, wiper fluid and wiper blades). Total. And we’ve replaced the tires at a cost of just under $1,200.
Really, nothing to add. We still love driving her.
We recently returned from a 3,300 mile road trip through southern Utah and the five National Parks there. We also did a short side trip to Mesa Verde in southern Colorado.
And we did it all in an electric vehicle.
We’ve done road trips before, but this time, we seemed to have more people asking questions about our experience with our trip. Specifically, those questions centered around charging. So I thought a short recap might be in order.
Big picture: our trip would start in Eugene, head east through central and eastern Oregon, down through Idaho to Salt Lake City, east to Moab and Mesa Verde then back and south through Canyonlands, Bryce and Zion National Parks. We would then head north back home pretty much along the same route as we came in. In the middle of the trip, from Moab to Zion, we decided to take the scenic Route 12, which was a nice winding road, beautiful scenery and limited EV chargers.
About charging: it wasn’t a problem at all. It actually never has been. I’ve heard that the best cure for range anxiety is to actually own an EV. And that is really true. We’ve never been nervous that we might run out of charge on a road trip.
There are a couple of reasons for that. First, we drive a Tesla. And the Tesla Supercharging network is very robust. On this last trip, with just two exceptions, there were fast chargers about every 100 to 150 miles. And with a range of just over 300 miles, that makes it easy. We could stop at a Supercharger, have an iced tea, stretch our legs, get lunch, use the restroom and be on our way in 15 to 30 minutes on average.
Second, we plan our trips. Driving an EV cross-country does require some planning ahead of time. I use the PlugShare app, which lists virtually every charger location across the US. I also favor lodging that has overnight, or destination chargers. Many hotels and bed and breakfasts have complimentary chargers that we can plug in when we go to bed and be fully charged by morning.
Just like a cell phone.
And that’s what we did along that scenic Route 12. From the Green River Supercharger through Bryce and Zion then on to the Cedar City Supercharger, it’s a little over 350 miles. And that’s without any side trips. But we stayed at a very nice hotel in Escalante (Canyon Country Lodge) that had four Tesla chargers and one universal charger. Then we stayed at some of the cutest cabins in Tropic (Bryce Canyon Inn) that had two Tesla chargers. In Zion, our hotel had six universal EV chargers. At all of those locations, when we checked out to head on our way, we had 100% charge.
So overall, while it does take some additional planning, it isn’t difficult or nerve-wracking. Will we do a long road trip again?
