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 13, the segment from Perry, Oklahoma, to Santa Rosa, New Mexico.
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!
With 51 miles of charge remaining on the battery we figured we should be able to drive the 25 miles to the Tesla Supercharger in Perry, Oklahoma, without a problem. The route provided by the GPS was different than the route it gave us to come from Perry to Stillwater, Oklahoma. Since we first went to a wine bar in Stillwater before going to our hotel when we arrived on Wednesday, the other route was probably shorter or faster to the wine bar. But, we were glad it gave us that other route to get to Stillwater as it sent us right through the middle of town and we got to see a lot more of Stillwater. As I mentioned in my report yesterday, Stillwater has a huge number of major national chain restaurants and other national chain stores. The route we took to drive back to Perry was mostly highway and interstate, so there wasn't much to see driving on that route.
As you can see from the above photos, charging while towing a trailer without unhitching would be no problem at this Tesla Supercharger location. You can either pull forward into any one of the charging bays, or you could just pull alongside the first charging bay and block just one other Supercharger beside the one you would be using.
There isn't much around the Perry Tesla Supercharger location, but there is a Subway sandwich shop and a convenience store. We just sat in the car and waited until there was enough charge to reach our next charging location, along with some safety margin of charge. This time we made sure not to park at either of the end charging locations. As mentioned previously, we had called Tesla Support and let them know the problems that we had at each of the end chargers in Perry. They were already aware of the problems with the end chargers and told us that all the other charger parking spots should be working fine. As you can see from the rate of charge above, that was certainly true for the charging spot that we selected.
The Oklahoma City Tesla Supercharger is in the parking lot of a large shopping center with many restaurants and stores within easy walking distance.
If towing a trailer there is only one space where you can pull in and charge without unhitching and without blocking any other charging spots, and that is the end charger where you see our Model X parked in the above photos. The parking lot is very open so you can drive forward into the spot and not block cars from driving around your trailer. If you park without unhitching a trailer at any other spot you would have to block a lot of other Tesla charging spaces.
We had a bit of a chat with the owner of the white Tesla Model S shown above. He has a Tesla Model 3 on order for his wife and is giving some consideration to the Model X. I think he said this was the first Model X he has seen. Being tall, he liked the additional headroom of the Model X.
You could charge while towing a trailer without unhitching and with blocking just one spot in addition to the one you are charging at, but only if there are no cars parked in the spots next to the end charging spot. As you can see in the photo above, there was a pickup truck parked in that spot when I charged there. The only other alternative is to block many charging spots. If you choose to do that, be sure to stay with your vehicle while charging in case another Tesla comes along that needs a charging spot.
We ate lunch at Lucille's Roadhouse which had vintage non-operational gas pumps in front. The restaurant itself had two sections. The section on the right was a 50's style diner. The section on the left was called the steakhouse and was a bit fancier than the diner section. The booths had fabric that displayed Route 66 symbols and images.
This is another location where all the Tesla charging spots are the type where you can just "drive-in". These are great for when you are towing a trailer and don't want to unhitch to charge. There is plenty of space behind the charging spots so a trailer would not be blocking anything.
As you can see above, The U-Drop Inn Cafe also has a number of historcal non-operational gas pumps outside. Obviously this was once a gas station when Route 66 was an active highway.
The U-Drop Inn Cafe is no longer an eating place but just a historic display of what cafes along Route 66 used to look like. But, they do offer free coffee and have some snacks and sodas for sale. They have a few Route 66 maps that they give out for free that show where to find the historic Route 66 attractions. They also have a huge selection of Route 66 souvenirs for sale. There are two maps on the wall where people can place a pin to show where in the world, or where in the nation, they live. There were pins in the maps from all over the nation and all over the world! I stuck a pin in my home city of Vancouver, Washington, in the USA Map, but there appeared to already be a couple of pins there in Vancouver and a lot of pins right next to that in Portland, Oregon.
I got a real kick out of the above photo they had on display at The U-Drop Inn Cafe. It is a photo of an electric car at a charging station in 1915. The Tesla Chargers are right behind The U-Drop Inn Cafe. The electric cars are back!
Electric Car chargers somewhere are probably one of the things receiving electricity being generated by these clean energy wind turbines. Huge wind generating farms would appear from time to time along our entire road trip both when we were heading east on I-70 on our way to Missouri, and again on our trip south and west along the I-35 and I-40.
This has to be the strangest and least friendly configuration of Tesla Superchargers. Every Tesla Supercharger I have ever seen was either at the rear of the parking space so you had to back in, or at the front of the parking space which allows you to just drive forward in. These are the worst of both worlds! Not only can you not just drive forward in, but you have to back in exactly between two of them and make sure you don't hit them. If they were going to install them in this orientation, I wonder why they couldn't have put them at the front of each parking space to allow cars to just drive forward in?
The only place you could park to charge while towing a trailer without unhitching would be to park at the very end charger, but again only if no cars are parked in the regular spaces next to that end charging space. As you can see in the photos above, again there was a pickup truck parked in a space blocking the use of the end charging space in this manner. Thus again, it would only be possible to charge without unhitching a trailer by blocking many Tesla charging spaces.
Above is a Tesla charging space configured for Disabled Access. I've never noticed one of those before. Any Tesla may use it, but they request you only use that one if all othre Tesla charging spaces are in use.
There is a full Holiday Inn at this location and not just a Holiday Inn Express. A short walk down the road there is also a Holiday Inn Express. This one had a full bar next to the lobby. There were several people sitting at the bar and a few at the table area in the bar. I didn't check to see if they had a full restaurant in the hotel.
Shortly after we plugged in to charge, the Tesla started giving all sorts of error messages saying that it could not charge and that the car needed service. I tried unplugging and re-plugging in, but that didn't help. The charging port would flash red and just not go to green. I tried re-plugging in a few times making sure the plug was properly seated but nothing helped.
Having worked with computers for many years, and knowing the Tesla is basically a computer on wheels, the first thing to try is a full reboot. There are two types of reboot on the Tesla. One is a "soft reboot" which just involves holding down the two thumb wheels on the steering wheel simultanously until the Tesla logo reappears on the display screen. This can even be done while driving as it does not affect the ability to drive the car. There is also a "hard reboot". This is done the same way as a "soft reboot", but with holding down the brake pedal at the same time. Obviously this can not be done while the car is moving.
After doing a hard reboot, the charging worked perfectly.
Another Tesla Supercharger location where you can just drive-in forward. There would be no problem charging without unhitching if you were towing a trailer.
When driving the I-40 through New Mexico you can see a lot of mesas, but most were too far away to photograph without a telephoto lens.
Again I had the same problem after I plugged the car in. The Tesla displayed that the car needs service and that it can not charge. Again I made sure the plug was seated properly and tried re-plugging in a few times. And again, none of that solved the problem. So, once again, I did a hard reboot on the car and then the charging worked just fine. Since when I get to California it will be time to rotate the tires anyway, I'll take it in for service and let them know about this charging problem.
Another Tesla Supercharger where you can just drive-in forward to charge making them trailer friendly.
There are a lot of hotels within easy walking distance of the Santa Rosa Tesla Supercharger. The Tesla Superchargers themselves are located at the front of a Holiday Inn Express. The street is very wide with 2 lanes each way and a center turning lane, but there was almost no traffic on the street when we were there. A lot of big rigs with their trailers were parked in the lots of the hotels and restaurants. This is evidently a big truck stop area. Most of the hotels and restaurants had parking areas with large spots set aside just for trucks. For eating locations there is the DQ Chill & Grill and the Silver Moon Cafe, but not much else within walking distance.
We decided to eat at the Silver Moon Cafe. Surprisingly it was quite crowded. We had to put our name on a waiting list as there were 2 other parties ahead of us waiting for tables. They had a pretty extensive souveneir shop featuring hand made Indian goods as well as Route 66 memorabilia. The short time we had to wait for a table was spent looking around this shop.
Both my wife and I like spicy food. Strongly spiced Indian Food is our favorite cuisine (Asian Indian, not American Indian). But, both these tortilla chips and the salsa was hotter than any I've had at any other Mexican restaurant. That kept us from eating too many of them, which wasn't a bad thing as we usually eat more of them than we should. We ordered sizzling chicken fajitas which were very good.
We stayed at the Hampton Inn hotel in Santa Rosa which was just up the street from the Tesla Supercharger. It wasn't a far walk from the Supercharger, but it would have been a bit much to wheel our luggage that far, so we drove to the hotel. There were quite a few other hotels all within walking distance of the Supercharger.
Tomorrow, Friday, we'll be staying all day at the Hampton Inn. We plan to visit the Route 66 Car Museum sometime on Friday and will be posting photos from that visit.
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!
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.
