Zen and the Art of Traveling in an EV

FE. Yesterday we learned that the US 50 between Gunnison and Montrose was closed, due to a structural problem at the Blue Mesa Bridge.

Our destination today is a cabin 50 miles north of Montrose, close to the spectacular North Rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (one of the least visited National Park areas). It is pretty much a straight shot down US50 from Colorado Springs (290 miles, about 5 hours). There really is no reasonable local detour around the closure, so we are left with backtracking to Denver and reaching Montrose by largely driving on US70 (415 miles, about 7 hours, driving times are without stops). One advantage of this northern route is that there are many more super-chargers available, so as usual, there are no worries of getting stuck. Well, it takes us almost 10 hours, with stops to charge, eat and buy provisions for the next three days, to reach Kelly’s wonderful cabin in the high country. Last twist, in Kelly’s words: “GPS likes to take folks through a beautiful, but steep road, through a canyon. I recommend that if that sounds scary, to GPS to the town of Crawford, and then GPS to my address from there. If that sounds fun, then please take the lower Grandview route, through the canyon and then up to the mesa on Fruitland Mesa Road.” Being tired we choose the easy way, but without us noticing our navigation system reroutes us through the cayon. Rae almost freaked out, I drove, so, sadly no photos. I really love driving on dirt, the all wheel drive Model Y is ok for that..so here is a link to another blog where there are pics of me on dirt roads traveloat.wordpress.com. check the pages on “Grand Staircase and a Reef” and “Early Light, a Trail and a Move”

RN: Felix makes it sound so easy! If you plan ahead, it is, but it is more complicated getting from A to B in an EV because there are many fewer charging stations than gas stations. I know our friends and daughters have been worried about us running “out of charge.” We had to go the long way around to get to our cabin instead of a more direct, but remote route, because of the need to charge. And even when we have plenty of charging stations, we have to plan ahead by looking at the distance to the next supercharger versus the distance to our ultimate goal. Thankfully, the Tesla makes it easy for us because the computer on board will navigate us to the next charger and tell us how much charge we will have left when we arrive. It tends to be overly optimistic (especially in high country or if it’s windy outside), so we assume we will need 10% more than it is telling us. If we know that our goal is further than what we can do even with the current charge, we will pick an intermediate charge stop to “top up.” This was especially important for us this trip because the cabin is in such a remote location, there are no convenient super chargers really close. For example, we stopped to top us in Montrose, which is 70 miles away from the cabin. That way, we arrived with 50% charge on our battery. It turns out we lucked out with this Airbnb because there is a 110V outlet on the outside of the cabin so we could plug our car in after we arrived. So now we can “top up” at our cabin. That’s something you can’t do if your car needs gas!

Bugs were smashed, but no vertebrate was hurt…