8230 Mile Furlough Inspired Road Trip

4000 miles, and I made it to California!!!

Leaving the glider flight, I was looking forward to seeing Matt, Hilary, and baby Bob! The drive through Tahoe was beautiful, excellent twisty roads, and the trees and views were incredibly pretty. Many fire trucks and emergency response vehicles were racing towards the fires nearby Carson City. The flames were getting out of control again.

I arrived a few hours later than planned due to the flight delay but was welcomed with a great dinner and time to catch up.

Bob is hilarious! He is so talkative and curious. We had a great time this morning practicing our drum rhythms and working on some puzzles. Because what parent doesn’t want to hear drumming at 7 AM?

I had a nice lunch with Matt and started planning for the next few days. I am looking forward to enjoying the weekend before heading to LA.

Meanwhile, I decided to head over to the Tesla Factory and talk through my little adventure and car set up. These guys are passionate about Tesla; I think they just enjoy hearing what people do with their vehicles. I will have to admit I got a little nervous when they asked me to report back my experience on the return home – apparently, parts of it are no-mans-land when it comes to superchargers. (Ugh… we can do this…)

It was 1999; the dot.com boom was booming; it was our generation’s ’Great Gatsby.’ A remake of the ’Thomas Crown Affair’ was one of my favorite movies – for me, the glider flight scene was something I needed to experience. I suppose hanging on to that memory of the ”good old years” was locked on to something I never got a chance to do – go glider flying.

Waking up in the construction site sounds as glamorous as it was, but it made the day’s drive relatively short (6 hours), I’ll be in Carson City just in time for lunch.

After yesterday’s adventure, a hotel was very much part of the plan. I pull into the hotel on schedule, and since the rooms have microwaves, I figured hitting the grocery store would be better than take-away. Throughout this trip, I’ve made a conscious decision to avoid fast food and gas station delicacies (ok, the DQ Blizzard was an exception, but it did arrive with a ”you betcha” – so it was worth it).

It’s now Thursday morning, and I am pretty excited to go glider flying. Minden airport is 30 minutes away, and my flight is at 10 AM, this is an easy day, the trip is about 45 minutes in the air, and then I hit the road to San Francisco (4-hour drive). I should be at Matt and Hilary’s at 4 o’clock.

The airport reminds me of the George Strait concert (mentioned earlier) – except without an arrival charged with alcohol-infused pandemonium. The thing about private or regional area airports is that you don’t have all the security and processes that make flying a pain. It’s almost like flying pre-9/11.

Ok. The adventure is about to begin. I am early, really early, I suppose the anticipation met with a desire to fly early before the day gets too hot, is fueling my sense of timing. I walk out to see what we will be flying today.

The Duo Discus is a two-seater, high-performance glider with a 65 foot wingspan. These are beautiful machines are sleek, and simple.

The pilot sits behind the passenger; the cockpit is tight – leaving barely enough room for the control stick between your legs. The seat cushion doubles as a parachute, the safety procedure sounds exciting (detach window, unbuckle the harness, lift and out you go – pull cord with both hands and yell expletives until you land).

A tow-plane takes you to a starting altitude, in this case starting at the top of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This plane is an old crop-duster.

In a perfect world, we would have been wheels-up precisely on time. But today, the starter on the tow-plane decided this was the ideal day to require replacement. So… we wait… watching mechanics operate on a plane is like watching paint dry. From a distance, it appears they are elbow deep in the mechanical patient, periodically sitting down and staring into the engine. As the waiting passenger, you just hope they don’t find anything else wrong in there.

Long story short, the 10 AM flight turns into a 12.30 trip. Sitting and waiting, we watch the Skycrane helicopter come into refuel from firefighting the blaze that has been erupting the last few days. Along with the pilot and I are two student pilots and their instructor. They are practicing flight exam with questions about flight altitudes and visibility rules. To pilot a glider, you need only be 14 years old.

I am impressed with the notion of someone who is 14 being responsible enough to fly. At 14, I was barely competent enough to manage a skateboard.

Finally, the mechanics start putting the cowlings back on the plane. A full two hours delayed, thank goodness for not needing to be somewhere precisely on time. We drive out to the glider, hook up to the tow-plane, and taxi down the runway.

My pilot is Stefan from Austria. He’s been flying since the ’80s and is retired from working as an accountant for Hilton and IHG hotels.

The glider is 900 pounds; it doesn’t take too much speed before we are off the ground. We fly in large circles up to the mountain, gaining altitude with each pass. The turbulence approaching the mountain peak causes the planes to jump – at first, you see the tow-plane bounce, then there is a bunch of slack in the line, then the glider drops with a big bounce. A little unnerving, but after decades of flying for work, you just learn to think of it like waves on a boat ride. The boat doesn’t sink with each bounce, so I believe the plane won’t crash – the water analogy helped get me over the fear.

The flight over Lake Tahoe is beautiful. Looking down at the blue water and the ski trails now cut for mountain bikers. I have a go-pro fixed to the wing of the plane (I will post the video when I get it). Taking pictures from inside doesn’t do the experience justice. All you hear is the wind as you sail through the sky, the pilot has this uncanny sense for finding columns of rising air (where the turbulence hit on the tow up). Riding the air currents, the plane climbs another 1000 feet or so. Flight speed tops out at 80-85 knots (around 100 mph). Exhilarating!

The landing ends with a graceful thud, coasting to a stop right where we started, concluding something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time at one of the premier gliding locations in the world.

That was amazing, now to drive out to San Francisco!

I forgot to post a video I took of the Tesla kitted out for camping. I will have to do another one now that I have lived in this thing for a week. I talked to the Tesla folks in Fremont, and they are curious about the setup, asking me to stop by when I get to San Francisco.

Here’s the video

You see all sorts of things driving, natural and man-made, many times you are driving so fast you either don’t want to risk pulling over or don’t want to lose time by turning around. Sure, I will remember these things, but photographing makes the stories.

Missed shots such as: a property entrance from the road- you’ve seen these things, they are tall frame-like-things with the name of the farm or ranch on the top of it. They have all sorts of names “Bar 4 – Ranch” or “Moosehead – Ranch” – sometimes the names just beg for a photo and a “funny to me” caption. Example: near Manville, WY is a sign for “Hidden Valley – Ranch” the obvious caption is “thanks, I prefer Blue Cheese” (….crickets … I’ll keep my day job).

Another missed shot was a derelict home/farm. In the middle of now where, no cell signal, the last town is 30 minutes back, turning around and photographing this place felt risky. From the looks of things, also in southern Wyoming, appearing untouched for decades. A quintessential farmstead straight out of a John Wayne flick (think the movie “The Searchers,”) complete with log cabin, a couple of outbuildings, and livestock pens. It just seemed like a property caught in a lost moment in time. You can just envision life there.

Then there was Thunder Mountain.

Blazing down I-80, an odd structure on the left off the highway catches my eye. Tempted just to pull over and shoot it from across the road, but I am making good progress since last night and decide to take the off-ramp and go back.

You drive down a gravel road and find a makeshift fence of rusted things (old gas pumps, car parts, lamps, washing machine – things…). There is a sign saying “Thunder Mountain Monument” donations $2 into a small tube placed high on the fence door. There are no other cars and seemingly no one around for miles.

I must have walked around, photographing and exploring this place for nearly an hour. Full of curiosities and “junk” all cemented and configured into structures and art pieces, posted warning signs for wearing shoes because of broken glass and sharp objects on the ground. What the hell is this place‽

In the middle is a small covered picnic area, a guestbook is on the table alongside a wall with weathered and faded pictures posted and falling behind plexiglass.

Walking around this folk art property offers details from different angles, distant and close up perspectives. I am having a blast photographing this place.

On the edge of the property is a caravan with a barking dog. I don’t see anyone at first, and I can’t tell if it is part of the place or a random campsite.

After getting all the shots I think I wanted, I pass by the campsite and notice someone moving inside the RV. I wave a few times, not sure if the person sees me, I start to leave. Turn around one more time after hearing the barking a little louder – the person in the RV came out.

Walking over is Fred Lewis, the curator, and his ferocious guard beast, named Lucy.

We talked for a while. Fred explained what happened with this property, how it came to be, all of which is detailed, along with other pictures (inside the structure and what the place was like before the fire in 1983) on the monument’s website.

Fred is a childhood friend Dan, the son of Chief Thunder Mountain (the artist’s name). Dan hired Fred to live on the property and could not have been a more helpful guy. He explained that the place used to be green and beautiful, there was a large pond next to the Spanish villa structure and that the family lived in the three-storied memorial. There isn’t much left to photograph inside the home today; the website has pictures of what it was before the fire. Amazing!!

After a great few days of relaxing and not driving at Mom’s house – I decided to start plotting out the next leg of the trip: getting to Reno before Thursday morning.

There are two critical components to this adventure: route, and accommodations. You would think the route part is pretty easy, plug in the destination into Google Maps, and off you go. In an EV, you need to factor charging. Tesla makes it easy; it’s all in the car. However, the route may not be intuitive; it will seemingly place you on what seems an out of the way road, but the computer is factoring speed to destination with places to charge. What may be a 10-hour drive time could be an 11 and a half hours with the stops.

While it may seem odd for Tesla to take me North to go West, the routing was actually serendipitous as it would provide another opportunity to have breakfast at the Luxury Dinner (they were closed on July 4th on my way down from South Dakota). It’s important to note that I really don’t know much about the place other than it being around since 1926, and it just looked cool with the Wyoming Motel attached to it. You can only imagine what that place has seen over the decades.

I get to the diner, they are open and I am just soaking in the place. With its bright red neon ’Luxury Dinner’ sign on the inside with red booths, this place a throwback in time. Coffee and breakfast awaits.

Short Review: the Santa Fe breakfast burrito with ”Luxury home fries” were excellent- the burrito was huge, more than enough to keep me fed until dinner. I would safely call this place “good eats.”

I’ve come to appreciate I-80 for its incredible ability to test your sanity through long straight runs that seem to take forever; you can see the end of the horizon most of the time, which makes everything look so much further away. Wyoming has more variety in topography and color than South Dakota. They are both amazing drives that force your imagination back to the the pioneering days. You stare out at the buttes and mesas with wide spans of desert in between.

It’s beginning to look like a long night ahead of me, so I found a place for dinner in Salt Lake City, Hires Big H. A classic drive-in from 1959, complete with carhops. Hires root beer is what this place is all about, so a hamburger and root beer float seemed to be the most fitting seeing how my day started with a timeless classic.

The sun is beginning to set as I leave Salt Lake, it’s cooler out and the rolling down the window, you are treated with a smell that must be the salt lakes. Kind of smells like the ocean, but not – can’t say I’ve smelled it before. The sky has this pinkish/red haze, which I have to imagine is the ”Godzilla” Saharan dust cloud that was making it’s way over the U.S. the last few weeks. (update: the smoke is from the ”Numbers Fire” – nearly 20,000 acres on fire, south of Carson City, NV)

The sun has set, and it’s getting dark fast, at least I am in Nevada now (day’s objective achieved). An excellent rule to drive by is, don’t drive at night. I have a couple more charging stations ahead of me, and it’s getting late. My gambling for a night stay at Angel Lake is looking to be more than I am willing to risk. If they turn me away, I will have just enough juice to get me back to the West Wendover’s charging station.

Not sure if I am willing to take the risk, I pull into West Wendover. Never heard of this place before – it’s a small Vegas, smaller than Reno. I start looking for alternative places to stay. I pull up the PlugShare app, thinking I would pull another TownPlace Suites in Wisconsin. This time it was a Quality Inn.

The place was on the humble side next to all the glitz of the casino hotels down the street. I look for the 220 plug the app said would be available. Found it, but I would have needed to park in an area clearly marked no parking, yeah, this won’t do. It’s getting close to midnight, and driving any further is out of the question. So I charge up the car at the Supercharger and start looking for a place to camp.

At this point, I am willing to gamble on 5 hours of sleep vs. the local police knocking on my window. I scout out the West Wendover Welcome Center, and it says open 24/7. I drive by to see a guy frantically pacing and punching at phantom apparitions, my guess he would not be a quiet neighbor for the evening… Moving on now…

I go a little further and notice a group of vehicles parked in a lot behind one of the casinos. Maybe they are all doing the same thing I am – safety in numbers and all. So I pull in and configure the car into camp mode – I’ve got this down pretty fast now and can get everything together in under 10 minutes.

The wind outside was blustery, and every once in a while, it sounded like my Welcome Center friend may have found himself at this makeshift caravan site. The temperature dropped significantly too, what was 92 in the afternoon was 42 at night.

Another advantage of a non-gas powered car is no carbon monoxide exhaust – so the AC/heat can run when it needs to with no fear of poisoning fumes.

My alarm clock goes off; I was still pretty beat from yesterday’s push, so I hit the snooze button for another 30 minutes. When I finally got up and looked around in the daylight, I realized that I had parked in a construction site, and the vehicles were all part of the crew and equipment. Thank goodness it was either their day off or I just got up earlier than they arrive.

Blurry eyed and rested; it’s time to complete the run to Reno!

July 4, I decided to head for Colorado – apparently, four days in the car is somewhat close to my breaking point. A proper bed awaits!!

A couple of questions from folks on charging the Tesla. I didn’t know what to expect; I didn’t have ”range anxiety,” and I was just hoping the car was smart enough to know not to get in power trouble.

First, the range: I have what they call the LEMR (Limited Edition Mid Range) model, for a trip like this, I charge it up to around 200-215 miles. Unlike a gas car where you fill the tank, go as far as you need to get to the next gas station, in an electric vehicle requires some extra planning.

Tesla’s onboard computer makes the planning easy. You put in the destination, and it tells you where to stop along the way. If you want to maximize time, it will ask you to stay at station X for 15 minutes the station Y for 10, etc. etc. But if you are like me and anticipate wandering off to see something exciting or better yet break up the monotony by gunning it to 120+ (cough cough), I mean gently accelerate to 10% above the posted speed limits. But I digress…

Accelerating quickly and driving it in sport mode will take some miles off the charge. Not to worry, the car factors that in and calculates your next stop. If you are at the tail end of your range, the car will suggest reducing to a recommended speed to reach your next destination. The vehicle does protect itself.

So far, what I am talking about is all using the Teslas Supercharger network. Tesla has done an excellent job of setting up these stations, typically next to points of interests (hotels, restaurants, tourist traps that make wonder if you are the one crazy for not thinking these are the best places to shop and absorb the ”local flavor” (ref: Wall Drug rant – I mean seriously… Plastic statues for posing a classic ”I was here picture for the Gram” – I watched, no one was wiping these things down, people weren’t wearing masks, these nasty germ-laden monuments of artificial experiences would have been covered in fecal matter pre-COVID (ah, remember the good ol’ days when all we needed to worry about was pink eye from poop on the hotel remote control) but nowadays, the concerns lead me to think these should be added to the current statue relocation program underway in many places in the South). But I digress, Wall Drug has a Tesla charging station, 2 points in the plus column.

What was I talking about?? Oh yes, charging cross country.

The Tesla Superchargers are amazing. The latest V3 chargers will charge you from 10% to 80% in about 20-30 minutes. Long enough to stretch your legs or take a bio-break. Even the original V1s fast enough to get you back on the road without feeling you are wasting time.

In addition to Tesla’s, there are other companies like ChargePoint that offer a comparatively smaller network that provides charging for a fee. Another service that aggregates any system and is updated by crowdsourcing maps out both free and for-fee charging. Mostly, you can go anywhere and not be far from something that will get you charged up and back on the road. But if an unfortunate situation does happen, Tesla Roadside Assistance will send a flatbed truck out to bring you to safety. I hear that they are working on vehicles with battery packs to give you sufficient enough charge to get you to the next station.

Then you have the 110 (standard wall outlet) and 220 (dryer type connection) that come with the car, they are suitable for overnight charges at a house or RV hookup. Some older RV Camps (like KOA Deadwood) use a different plug style. You don’t know what places will have, so it’s better to prepare for the unknown – I bought a 30 Amp to 50 Amp adapter from Home Depot (NEMA TT-30P to NEMA 14-50R) for $55, not knowing if I would need it. Happy I did, and the KOA may have had one I could borrow for a fee, but at least I had what I needed and never know when and where I will need it again.

Now, for the essential details, how much do the chargings cost. Well, it varies from place to place. The KOA in Ohio, $5 overnight, and fully charged. $10 for a full charge at one Supercharger and maybe $6 at another. Keep in mind when fully charged, the car is currently getting about 220 miles at ~85% charge. At this time, it kind of feels like I am getting a gas car equivalent of $15 for a tank of gas.

At the end of this adventure, I will tally up the costs for electricity and lodging to compare to gas-powered touring.

Before leaving South Dakota, I decided to put the Black Hills National Park into the car and see where it would take me. (yeah… Don’t do that)

Answer: nearly an hour on a gravel road through some fantastic forest views. Nothing that 5-hour drive reaching some undisclosed speeds can’t clean off.

I broke camp (ref. previous blog entry if you need help with the terminology) at 0500 – I decided that Mt Rushmore would be my one and done for the day. I had attempted to visit the Jewel Caves after the Needles Highway run, but the geode cave was shut down due to COVID. Plus, after four nights in the Tesla, I figured a nice comfy bed had my name all over it. Next stop: Mom’s House

Mt Rushmore in the aftermath of the July 3rd fireworks, was relatively empty, parking was a breeze (they even had Tesla charging stations), with the stage works still up; it was great to see this place first hand finally. For me, it did not disappoint.

Planning for this trip started in May. I knew there were things I wanted to see and do but didn’t know exactly how it was going to all come together. Top of the list was Mt Rushmore – there is just something cool about Hitchcock’s movie that stuck with me enough to add it to my bucket list.

In researching the timing for everything, I was trying to figure out where I could be for the 4th. Then South Dakota announced it would be having the first fireworks display since 2009 when they stopped for fear of forest fires. I entered the lottery to be one of the 7500 to win access to the park. In the beginning, it wasn’t clear that the President was going to be there but soon learned that this was going to be a part of his ever-lasting campaign for reelection.

I didn’t receive lottery tickets but decided it would be interesting to attempt to see the fireworks someplace near it all. Well, as you can imagine with something like this all sorts of chaos is created, you have protesters against Trump as a president, you have Native American tribes protesting the event on sacred land, you have pro-Trump zealots, all mixed in with a dash of a global pandemic for good measure.

I will say this obvious point about Trump; he has activated a blindly loyal support base willing to overlook whatever opposing perspectives there are. You get this feeling in South Dakota (and I am sure other places) that the people are comparatively economically challenged, and they look to this administration as their found voice after years of being overlooked.

Well, enough of that… I found a group of people hanging out on the roadside, putting together their tailgates. So, I join them. Not sure that I fit in, as I was the only non-SUV/pick up truck around. But I waited, I talked to a couple of people, one guy with his family from Williamsburg who saw my VA tags and wanted to say hello. ”Hey, did you drive all the way here just for this?” was his opening line – call me paranoid, but I’m standing out like a sore thumb, and you can never tell what people are looking to do. Turns out to be a nice enough guy with two boys and his wife going on a similar 6500-mile tour.

Well, I waited for about three hours, the sun went down, and the flyovers started, you could faintly hear his speech, and then the show began. My vantage point turned out to have the fireworks explode just above the treeline. Not good enough to stay only to get snared in the traffic, at night, with inebriated locals, an hour from Deadwood – so I hit the road and watch the fireworks from my rearview mirror.

Another thing about starting out early is you get a lot packed into the day. Having finished Devils Tower, next on my to-do list is to drive Needles Highway. A 14-mile run of twisting narrow roads the tight tunnels, with amazing views. Put the windows down and the fresh smell of pine trees fills the air.

Now clearly, I enjoy driving. Otherwise, this trip would be a visit to Dante’s 8th Circle of Hell. I could see two trips to Needles, one to drive it the other to hike it. You are driving through the tight tunnels, praying that you are centered enough to save your wing mirrors.