The direct route to Minnesota would, of course, be via the turnpike’s all the way to Chicago but this journey is not about direct routes. I began by driving north to Falls Creek, Pennsylvania for the first new-to-me supercharger visit of this trip. I expect to visit 100 to 120 new locations on this trip.
In a sign of the remarkable growth in supercharger locations, I passed by two locations before stopping for a few minutes at the still-new superchargers at the Sheetz in Breezewood, Pennsylvania. When I bought Lenny in 2016, passing by an available Supercharger was largely unthinkable.
The sun was still rising so I had that beautiful golden hour light, which continued as I headed north on I-99 with clouds and mountains intermixing.
I had also gotten myself largely situated in the car with my gear setup for recording events on the road.
At Altoona, Pennsylvania, I turned off I-99 and headed towards Falls Creek via State Road 36. Getting off the interstate will be a relatively common theme of this journey.
Serendipity
While traveling along 36, I encountered my first wind farm of the journey. The Sun was shining from just the right angle, the road curved just right at the top of a little knoll, and the wind turbines were turning, so I had to stop and take a picture. All of a sudden, I hear a voice asking me if I stopped because of the wind turbines. I turned around hoping she wasn’t upset that I was standing in her front yard. She just wanted to tell the story of how these wind turbines came to be. We chatted for a a few minutes. She told me how the entire Community had come to support the wind turbines; the the key issue was that trees and landscape. The Company gained their trust and the community voted unanimously for its installation. I love when serendipity happens on the road. I hope it won’t be the last of this journey.
Power Loss
In Hermitage, PA, I found myself charging beside a Model X from DC. He had his whole family with him, including two little kids. I was taking pictures and he’d taken his children to the bathroom. I only needed a few minutes of charging and was getting ready to go when he returned asking “Are you still charging?” I said yes, but then realized the vehicle was not charging. He said everything lost power. Sure enough, a police officer showed up to direct traffic. I just barely had enough electricity to make the next stop supercharger in Ohio but he didn’t have anywhere near enough and he didn’t have a Tesla CHAdeMO adapter. There was a CHAdeMO charger 20 miles away at Nissan dealership in Youngstown, PA and I offered to go with him so he could use my adapter. He thanked me but decided to chill and wait for the power to return. I wished him well and left. To be clear, nothing was working without power. Sheetz was completely offline, including the gas pumps as they all require power.
A second bit of serendipity happened in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A lady was having trouble supercharging her new 75D. I was in the right place at the right time to offer her some help but the overall story is a sad one, which I’ll tell in a separate post.
Day 1 Summary Video
My Supercharging Hobby
The Falls Creek, PA supercharger began a string of new supercharger visits that drove the route for this leg of the trip. Over previous visits to Minnesota, I’ve explored a wide variety of routes to visit existing superchargers. New ones keep popping up as large organizations like Sheetz, Wawa, Hee Vee, and Meijer jump in to the supercharging game. This leg of the trip is dominated by supercharger locations at Sheetz and Meijers. Both offer 24 hour services to refuel the body. On day 1 alone, I added eleven new supercharger locations to my personal list. A reminder: had I wanted speed and efficiency, the number of supercharger stops would have been a fraction of this total.
Leg 1, Day 2 begins with a Ferry Ride
I awoke on Day 2 to a beautiful crisp morning. The first order of business: take the Lake Express Ferry across lake Michigan to Milwaukee. I packed up my things and made the five mile trip to the Ferry from my hotel but things took an “oh !@#$” moment quickly. I arrived at the terminal only to find out I’d booked the ticket for the previous day. Stupid me. The gentleman recognized my name as the guy who didn’t show up yesterday; he said they had plenty of room and proceeded to revise my ticket to today. WHEW! He then asked me some questions about Lenny and directed me to a special row for people with mobility challenges. It turns out the ship has an elevator and I was able to park right beside it.
From Milwaukee, I made a bee-line to Madison, WI for another new-to-me supercharger. I’d supercharged in Madison before but Tesla added a new location a few blocks away, so it was time to once again make a stop and add it to my list.
Leg Summary
Day 1: 884 miles, 276 kWhs of energy used at 312 Wh/mile (About 117.5 MPGe).
Note: to get MPGe, divide 36,650 (the amount of Wh’s in a gallon of gas) by Wh/mile.
Day 2 Recap Video
Supercharger stats
The new-to-me superchargers visited on this leg: Falls Creek, PA (Sheetz), Hermitage, PA (Sheetz), Strongsville, OH (Sheetz), Sheffield, OH (Sheetz), Toledo, OH (Meijer), Ann Arbor, MI (Meijer), Livonia, MI (Meijer), Roseville, MI (Meijer), Auburn Hills, MI (Meijer), Grand Rapids, MI (Meijer), Muskegan, MI (Meijer). Madison, WI (Hy-Vee), La Crosse, Wi, and Rochester, MN (Hy-Vee). Many of these are very, very new.
https://supercharge.info/# is a great resource for finding details on superchargers and what the crowd knows about them.
How to follow along
Twitter: http://twitter.com/doyendon
My medium posts: medium.com/@donb
Shared folder with all of my Recap Videos
