RN: We thought we were pretty smart by securing an affordable Airbnb in Kalispell only 30 miles from the western entrance of Glacier National Park until we discovered several complications. The last set of Tesla Superchargers before Kalispell is 100 miles away in St Regis; the communities on the border of Glacier only have a handful of public Level 2 chargers; and Glacier itself has only 2 public chargers (1 Level 2 and 1 Level 3). On top of that, Glacier is a huge national park, encompassing over a million square miles, and its famous scenic, Going-to-the-Sun-Road is 50 miles long one way. For those of you not in the know about chargers, Tesla Superchargers take 35-40 minutes to charge a car from 20% to 80%, while Level 2 chargers take at least 4 hrs to do so. Take into account the large proliferation of EVs on the road, it is completely inadequate for the National Park Service to think 2 chargers will be adequate for the many thousands of visitors a day Glacier gets. On top of that, we have found that the only reliable chargers are Tesla Superchargers, which are clustered in groups of 8-14 or even more. The “other” chargers we have tried to use are in groups of 2-4 and, often one or more of the chargers are out of service, whereas all Tesla Superchargers we have found to date have worked.

As a result of these developments, we threw in the towel and rented (shudder) a gas combustion engine car (Toyota Camry) for the next three days so we don’t strand ourselves in Glacier. Thankfully, our Airbnb hosts are allowing us to use their outdoor 110V outlet to charge our Tesla, but it will take at least two days to get it up to 80%.

This Tesla Supercharger site in Coeur d’Alene had 14 chargers and was located in a mall with several restaurants. Won’t see one of these for awhile!

The road from St Regis (our last Tesla charging stop) to Kalispell was gorgeous and followed the Clark River…

FE. Believe it or not, today is the first day that we drive into significant rain since Kentucky.

RN. Below is Flathead Lake.

We arrive at our lovely green Airbnb cottage. It’s decorated with lots of nice art and Felix fits in perfectly!

FE: After much driving, we have a glass of wine and appetizers on the deck overlooking the wonderful flower gardens around us and Rae has enough energy to prepare a lovely steak dinner….much appreciated!