These reports and photos are of a road trip from Anaheim, California, to the 2nd Annual Midwest Tesla Gathering in St. Louis, Missouri. My wife and I are doing this trip in our new red 2016 Tesla Model X P90DL. This particular report is of Day 4, the segment from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, to Salina, Kansas.
Note: This report is a rough draft. I have not yet done a spell check or final edits. Since we are driving this road trip right now, devoting time to driving takes priority. As I get time at our stays along the way I'll make final edits and spelling corrections. But for now, please pardon any errors.
There are many more photos for this day of Tesla travel than could be included in the body of this report. To see ALL of the photos that were taken on this day, click here for the slide show!
We got off to an early start from Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Our plan was to leave at 9 AM, but since we woke up early, we headed out about 2 hours early at around 7 AM.
The above was a pretty long tunnel through the mountains. The first photo on the left was taken just as we entered the tunnel. The photo on the right was taken just as we emerged from the tunnel about 4 minutes later, and we were going about 55 or 60 MPH through the entire tunnel.
We had enough battery charge left to skip this stop, but I wanted to take photos of the Tesla Supercharger location and check for trailer friendliness anyway. The view from this charging location was mountains all around including some snow covered peaks. There is a Starbucks with WiFi in the same parking lot as the chargers. Next door and across the street are many shops.
If towing a trailer you can charge without unhitching. If the non-Tesla charging parking spots at the left end of the row of Superchargers is empty, you could pull in and charge with only blocking one charging spot in addition to the one that you would be using. As an experiment, I pulled my Tesla Model X up to the Supercharger the way you'd have to do if pulling a trailer and even plugged in the charging cable. As you can see in the photos above, I only had to block one charing spot beyond the one I was plugged into.
Above you can see the layout of the Tesla Superchargers at Denver, Colorado, which is located next to the Hampton Inn & Suites. They have restrooms, coffee and WiFi in the hotel. There are also some other restaurants located nearby that are not too far to walk to.
Again, if you are hauling a trailer, you could charge here without unhitching. As long as the non-Tesla charging spaces at the end are vacant, you could charge with only blocking one charging space in addition to the one you are using. But if those end spaces are taken, you would have to block several Tesla charging spaces to avoid unhitching to charge.
The main place to eat, use the restrooms and the WiFi is the Arby's that is right behind the chargers. A lot of other vehilces pulling motor homes and trailers use the parking lot where the Tesla Superchargers are located. Two other people came up to my car and asked about Tesla and our Model X while we were charging. One took photos of it.
If you are towing a trailer you can charge here without unhitching. If the non-Tesla charging spaces are vacant at the end of the row of chargers, then you could charge while blocking only one charging space other than the one you are using. Otherwise you'd end up blocking most if not all of the other Tesla charging spaces.
You can use the restrooms and the WiFi at the Holiday Inn Express here. The only convenient place to eat here is the Steak & Shake. Everything else is almost a half mile walk away. When we made this same trip in our Tesla Model S last year, the Steak & Shake building was there but that had not opened it yet. There were employees in the building, but they were being trained. So last year there was no place to go for a sit down meal without a long walk.
The comments I made about the prior two Superchargers regarding charging without unhitching a trailer apply here also. I don't know why, but the clock in the Tesla did not change from Mountain to the Central Time Zone yet. The time zone of our smart phones already changed automatically. I figured the Tesla time settings would automatically adjust from the built in WiFi signal. Maybe it won't change until the car is turned off and back on again to avoid messing up various display calculations based on the time.
Same comments here about charging without unhitching a trailer. There is an Applebee's and a Wendy's here. We made this our one food break for the day since we had to put a lot of charge on the Tesla to reach the next Supercharger anyway.
There were many more wind generation farms along I-70 in Kansas but the above were a few of the ones close enough to the highway to get a good photograph.
Because of the curb at the end of row the Tesla Superchargers, if you were towing a trailer you'd have to block most if not all of the Supercharger spots in order to charge without unhitching.
There isn't anything within walking distance of this Tesla Supercharger other than the Holiday Inn Express. This is where we'd spend the next few nights which would give me a change to write the reports and process the photos from the last two days of our travels.
There are many more photos for this day of Tesla travel than could be included in the body of this report. To see ALL of the photos that were taken on this day, click here for the slide show!
A bit more than a year ago we traveled almost this exact same route but in our 2015 Tesla Model S P85D. For the report and photos from this segment of the route from last year click here
CLICK HERE to see photos from the reverse trip that we took a year ago going from Lone Tree to Glenwood Springs, Colorado. This even includes driving the Tesla Model S on a detour over Loveland Pass (11,98 feet) at the Continental Divide.
Note: This report is a rough draft. I have not yet done a spell check or final edits. Since we are driving this road trip right now, devoting time to driving takes priority. As I get time at our stays along the way I'll make final edits and spelling corrections. But for now, please pardon any errors.
