simple | sustainable | lifestyle
We stopped for a night in Baker City to charge and stay at the Geiser Grand Hotel. Beautiful historic hotel. Close to a really good dinner spot (Barley Brown’s Brew Pub) and breakfast stop (Sweet Wife Baking).
On our way to Burns, we stopped in Sumpter and toured the Sumpter Valley Dredge. This was an old, gold mining dredge that was all-electric.
With a 19 mile extension cord.
Really.
Our next leg of the trip took us to Joseph. We had never seen the Wallowas and wanted to give it a shot. Leaving fully charged from Hood River, we stopped at the Supercharger at Pendleton (listening to an audio book in the car while we charged, since we aren’t really casino people). That gave us plenty of range to get to Joseph.
In Joseph, I had booked the Bronze Antler Bed and Breakfast, partly because they are about the only ones in the area with EV charging. They have both a J-1772 and Tesla Level 2 charger. Free to guests. You can use them for a fee if you aren’t staying there. But, we like B&Bs, so we stayed.
Oh. My. Word. This has got to be the best B&B we have ever stayed at. Comfortable bed, great architectural character, walking distance to downtown Joseph and one of the best hosts we have ever encountered. Just stay there.
In Joseph, we had pizza at Embers Brew House and it was excellent. And, on recommendation of our B&B host, our lunch at The Dog Spot was awesome. It’s a funky little restaurant and dog supply store just a couple of blocks from the Inn. It’s great food!
As to the Wallowas, we saw the lower parts of them, but not the tops. The weather was a bit cloudy. So we’ll have to go back! Do take the tram to the top. If it’s clear, it would have been an amazing view. And, you never know, you might run into a friend of yours from Eugene who was also road-tripping through Oregon (we did). Small world!
We took the Hells Canyon Scenic Byway (Hwy 39) to the overlook (mostly cloudy, still, so we’ll have to go back someday) and through Halfway.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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.
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.