Heading to the border crossing, I saw this man in a yellow safety vest telling me to go to the passenger lane. I shook my head and pointed to the Nexus lane. He didn’t seem to understand, shook his head, and continued to point me towards the passenger lane. I figured, I’ll just go there now, and then pull back over to the Nexus when I got past him.
And then I saw it... a car marked “POLICE”.
Yup, Sparky was pulled over for speeding at a blazing 90 kms in a 60 km zone.
It’s good to note that somehow, the change in speed zone didn’t seem to slow my Tesla down the same way it always does at the university where I work. I guess these are manually set in the map, and not necessarily the car truly reading speed limits.
Remember when I said I would probably get a couple of speeding tickets on this road trip? I hadn’t even left the country on my first day, and there I was on the side of the road awaiting my fate. I haven’t been pulled over for at least a couple of decades. Then again, I’ve never had a car like this!
The kind and very smiley officer let me off with a warning. I guess it was clear this is a rare moment for me to be in trouble with the law. Whew!
Believe me, I behaved myself from that point on! Going only about 10 above the speed limit is... okay. It’s not thrilling, but it’s safer.
******
I headed to Taco Tecalitlan for some authentic Mexican food. This time it would be tortas for the road!
See all those little pieces of cabbage in the sandwich? Well, it was a good thing I had autopilot, because they were dropping all over the place and peppering my driver’s seat and floor mats with food! Shook it all off and wiped it up at the next supercharger station. But man, if you have never tried their food, TOTALLY WORTH IT. The price is unbeatable too! Like cheaper than Taco Bell, and the real stuff, not that fake fast food junk! There’s a few locations around Bellingham, I’m told. This one I went to is just off of the I-5 past Bellingham. The selection was bigger than the last place I went to.
*****
The furthest I’ve ever gone east in Washington is Snoqualmie. When I past that point, I felt like a true adventure was taking place. I-90 going East is a very well-maintained road heading towards Ellensburg, WA and the scenery afterwards was spectacular! I wish I could have taken pictures while I was driving! The incredible blue-coloured waters from the dam, the scenery of the green hills, the sighting of wind turbines as far as the eye could see, peppering the desert hills. I’m just so grateful to witness everything I see.
*****
The Ellensburg, WA supercharger is attached to a Express Holiday Inn. I love it when the superchargers have inns that welcome Tesla owners and allow them to use their facilities. But when I arrived, there were cones on the empty spots. I thought perhaps those were not working, and I decided to wait. It turns out, those were cones to block gas cars from parking there.
While it is a bit of a hassle to have to park your car elsewhere, and then move the cone so you can access the parking spot, it would be infinitely more of a hassle to bother a paying guest to come move their car because they didn’t realize it was reserved for Teslas. I’d imagine it happened so often, that they decided they had to change the rules. After all, these parking spots are incredible convenient to the front door!
*****
And then off I went to Ritzville, WA for my next charging session.
Honestly, I didn’t need to stop 3 times to charge on this trip. Sparky said Ellensburg would be sufficient. But I wasn’t really prepared to have only 8% charge by the time I got to the hotel. Hello! Phantom drain! Besides, it seems easier to charge more often so I can go to the bathroom, and just stretch my legs every couple of hours. Everyone has their preference.
But when I arrived at the Ritzville supercharger, I saw this:
There are only 4 chargers here (just like at Ellensburg), so I moved over to the only other spot available, next to a super noisy Model X (and even after 40 minutes, the fan was still going strong).
Another Tesla owner pulled up with his 5-member family. He was at almost zero charge. I really wanted to give him my spot, but I knew I needed the charge to make sure I had enough insurance to last me at the hotel that night. Well, first come-first serve. This is the life of Tesla roadies... we appreciate the free supercharging, but can’t always get what we want.
By the way, the Best Western at the Ritzville Supercharger is gorgeous! Very homey and inviting too!
On my way to the hotel, it started raining... BUGS! Yes, they were hitting my windshield like it was sprinkling rain. Sparky is definitely a bug-gut glory, and tomorrow morning I’ll take some time to wipe off his face before we head out towards Montana. I brought my waterless wash with me, and bought a squeegee. After all those road trips, I’m noticing that Tesla windshields do not wipe very effectively. It’s annoying. So I’ll be wiping down the windshield on each stop.
So I’m now at my hotel ready to get a good night’s sleep. I won’t be posting my ending destinations for safety reasons, but I am looking forward to a FULL day of driving tomorrow, and hoping I can see some sites as well. Stay tuned!
*****
Today’s Odometre Reading: 13,362 kms
KMs traveled on this road trip so far: 724 kms
My referral code: somi22310
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