Part II
On our way to see the eclipse in Oregon in our Chevy Bolt, our second charging stop was in Redding, CA. It was another Chargepoint station, located again next to Carl’s Jr., and surrounded by every kind of bad health food chain you can imagine. For this stretch of road, we were charging an hour for every hour we drove. Upside: more time out of the car, stretching our legs, checking out the surroundings, hanging out together.
Back on the road, with next stop Dunsmuir, CA. It was getting late, and I wanted to charge overnight. So I pulled into Yaks on the 5, a hip local joint, which had a fast charging station out back. It was our first locally owned place, although we got there too late to sample the faire. All the Dunsmuir motels were full with eclipse-goers, so we decided to make the Bolt our home for the night, we slept through the point the fast charger stopped charging (at the 80% capacity level), which meant we paid for a couple of hours of being connected to the charger with no charging happening. Lesson learned: charge only at Level 2 stations overnight.
I got back on the road early, with Rosie still sleeping. She woke up in Ashland, OR, in time to see the charming downtown and Shakespeare venues. We would have loved to stay for a show, but we had places to go, with a couple of charges still to go along the way.
We traded up in OR -- charging at Fred Meyer rather than Carl's Jr.
We traveled up the road to Medford for our first charge of the morning. In Oregon, we traded up from Carl’s Jr. for Fred Meyer, supermarkets that carry everything you can imagine. So while the electrons flowed into our hungry battery from yet another Chargepoint quick charger, Rosie discovered the back to school section and loaded up on supplies for 6th grade – with extra helpings of glue to sate her slime obsession. We grabbed a snack from the “Freddy” bakery, and made it back to the car just as it was hitting the 80% charge level (about 200 miles of battery capacity), at which point the charging slows way down.
Filling the battery up at the Chevron station in Cottage Grove, OR.
We tooled up the road, until we got down to about 50 miles of range, and it was time for lunch. We found an open Chargepoint station in Cottage Grove, this time at a Chevron station in the midst of another fast food island. Our good charging karma continued, as we pulled in just ahead of another couple in a plug-in hybrid bmw i8. There was another station just down the road, but it had only a Chademo plug, not the combo charger plug we needed for our vehicles. Like with cell phones, having one universal charger would make life easier!
Fellow eclipse-seeking Bolt drivers powering up at the Chevron station in Cottage Grove, OR.
We scouted out the scene on that scorching hot afternoon, and settled on a patch of grass in the shade across the street, adjacent to the Burger King drive through lane. We made sandwiches, then played another round of spades and backgammon, before running into a couple of guys from the Bay Area who were also traveling north to the eclipse in their Bolt (theirs red, ours blue, a slice of Nuevo Americana). We traded notes on how much we love to drive our EVs, how good it felt to bypass gas pumps.
We headed north again, and make a quick stop at the Sequential Biofuels station in Eugene -- kombucha on tap, espresso, deli, a green roof, EV charging, biodiesel. The kind of place you don’t mind hanging out for a while. Throw in a theater for short films, neck and shoulder massage, and you’ve got yourself the refueling station of the future. You heard it here first: somebody is going to make a lot of money creating a chain of places along these lines!
Rosie at the charging station in Salem, OR.
We set out north again, with our final charging stop in Salem at the highest capacity charger we found on our trip – a 50kW Chargepoint. Rosie and I toured the neighborhood, including a stop in an old time diner for the “best french fries ever.” Rosie was drawn in by the advertised jukebox, since she hadn’t heard of one, but sadly it had shorted out and been removed. An hour later, we came back with a battery topped off with 104 miles in an hour, plenty to get us out to Silverton and back.
We drove out through an idyllic country setting dotted with Hazelnut trees. We arrived just in time to get a choice campsite outside of Silverton Elementary school, camped beside the guys from Jelly Bread Funk Bank out of Reno and my buddy Keith, his daughter and friend.
This is part two in a four part series. Read part one here. Check back daily for parts three and four.
This was blog was posted during National Drive Electric Week (NDEW). From September 9-17, 2017, come take part in a nationwide celebration to heighten awareness of today's widespread availability of plug-in vehicles and highlight the benefits of all-electric and plug-in hybrid-electric cars, trucks, motorcycles, and more. Are you considering going electric like John? Come talk to owners who have successfully done so at an NDEW event near you.