EV Road Trip - Some more lessons learned

I took a little trip.  From Atlanta to Albany NY and back.  1999 miles total.  

Some rules and observations:

1.  I tried to hit Electrify America chargers whenever possible.  My two year "free" charging with them ends mid-June.

2. I tried to make sure I always had plenty of cushion to get to another charger at each planned stop. 

3. There are almost always Tesla Supercharger with lots of availability around

4.  Charging generally tapers off from peak once you get to 50 or 60% down to 120-150 KW range.  I don't know if this was a battery temperature issue - ambient was high 70s to low 80s - or if this just the battery management system in general.  So, the lower you can go on SOC before charging, the faster the average charging speed.

5. Figuring 2 miles per percent as an estimate is pretty good on 70 mph highways. 

6. Nav system was good at displaying charging locations on the route.  I would toggle Tesla on to see if one was near my planned stop.  Otherwise, I kept it off.  Tesla speed is only 97 KW.

7. I tried to be ABC (Always Be Charging).  I planned rest stops at charging locations.  My "range" is only 90-140 miles!

8.  Nearly every stop was only a mile or less from highway exits.  

9.  New PFJ (Pilot - Flying J) chargers are very good.

10.  NY Thruway has chargers at nearly every rest stop.  I didn't need to use any, but would not hesitate in the future (when my EA plan runs out)

11.  Tesla chargers handshake and start charging faster than any others.  EA is slow. 

12.  Most EA locations now have new style charge stands and all are rated 350KW.

13.  Of all the locations I was at, there were only one or two with a charger out of service.

14.  Compared to the last time I used most of this route, 20 months ago, there are quite a few new charging locations.

15.  One cool morning, battery conditioning came on to heat battery before I arrived at charger.  Several times, battery cooling was active after charging - about a half KW of battery draw for 5 minutes or so.

16.  I never had any trouble using apps or credit card to start charging.  I never had any interrupted charging sessions.

17.  To get above 80-81%, you have to wait through 2 or 3 minutes of 6 KW charging before it ramps back up to over 100 KW.  This is a feature of Hyundai's battery management system, I think.

18.  I never had to wait more than 5 minutes after restroom visit/coffee and snack buy for charger to get level I needed.  That was almost always 80% at EA stops - because it was free.  I had to avoid some EA chargers because they were full or close to full.  Not worth the risk of getting there and being shut out.  Many other options, most places.

19.  Comparisons to similar ICE trips, driving an EV costs about 5 mph on average speed.  I was in low 50s for most legs. ICE trips were in high 50s, generally.

20.  Tesla's 97 KW limit means less at higher SOC.  Would not hesitate to use for quick rest stop or top up, or at a planned meal stop.

21.  Next trip will involve having to pay at every stop.  I'll have to start paying attention to rates.

22.  Smooth, quiet environment driving EV greatly reduced driver fatigue.  

Conclusion:  EV trips keep getting easier, but are still more work and take more planning.  Cost for fuel is roughly the same as similar sized ICE car.  Charger availability is getting better.  Charger reliability is excellent. Having Tesla network available is very helpful.  

ICCU worry?  No.  Discretionary trip and just me.  If I had to get towed and make other plans, so be it.  Risk is pretty low, just not as low as it should be.

Here are the gory details:

 I found that on back-in Tesla chargers, if you really hug the line and back allll the way in, you can just reach.

Franklin NC.  Quasi-pull thru means you can actually use the "right" charger. 

EA in Chambersburg PA in evening on trip up.  There is Sheetz across the street.  No crosswalk at light.  Frogger, anyone?

Chambersburg on the way back, with a "friend".  Maybe BMW i3 electric?

Everglades - What it is...and what it isn't

I used AI to help plan this trip.  I asked an AI agent to plan a three day trip to the Everglades.  From that, planned a trip.  Here's how it went.

There are two roads through the Everglades.  One starts around Homestead and goes southwest to Flamingo, about 60 miles.  The other is/was a main east/west highway across Florida, the Tamiami Trail, US 41.  It starts on the west side of Miami, about 25 miles north of Homestead and goes all the way across to Naples on the Gulf Coast.

We decided to stay in Homestead and journey out from there. We spent one day on the road to Flamingo and two days on the Tamiami Trail.  So, I think if I had to do it again, we'd have stayed closer to the Tamiami Trail.

The NPS recommends that you visit in the "dry" season, which ends in April.  We went in mid-May, but it has been extraordinarily dry and the rains don't really get going until summer, so it turned out well.

Day One:  The road to Flamingo.  First stop.  The sign at the Coe Visitor's Center.

Obligatory Sign Stop

,,,then on to a couple trails at the Royal Palm Visitor's Center.  This area is one of the first to be targeted for preservation, first by private individuals, then the state, and finally the NPS.

The Anhinga trail was the first.  About a mile of boardwalk.  This was excellent.  Lot of wildlife to see.

A Great Blue Heron - just before he score a fish

Heron targets

Egret

One of several alligators, including some bellowing at each other!

Lilly pad flower

General view from Anhinga trail

The Gumbo Limbo Trail was not so pleasant.  It was basically a half mile sprint to get out and away from mosquitos.  Deep Woods Off made them laugh.  

The only picture I took from Gumbo Limbo Trail

Back to the car...

Along the road, we encountered this white tail deer.  You don't see many mammals in the park.  The pythons have seen to that.  More later...

Another stop was at Mahogany Trail through an old growth Mahogany Island.  After the mosquito-fest at Royal Palm's Gumbo Limbo Trail, I went solo on this one.  No mosquitoes here, so more pictures.

Very old Mahogany

Old man and mahogany

Boardwalk through the island

This is periphyton - the swampy looking stuff

The Everglades isn't feet and feet of muddy goo, like swamp.  It actually atop a limestone base.  On top of this is periphyton in many places.  It's an algae mat that also has fungi and bacteria.  It filters the water and provides habitat for Everglades organisms.

Flamingo is right at the edge of the Florida Bay.  There is a small lodge and restaurant plus a couple marinas - one NPS, the other private.  We took a boat tour that went away from the bay up through a canal into the mangrove forest.  

There are actually two crocodiles about to fight here. One is just visible just in front of the one most visible.

This guy is known as "half jaw".  Apparently a regular here - he's missing a bit of his lower jaw.

American Crocodile

Osprey

Anhinga drying out

...and another one.  Can see "piano-like" plumage

Bromeliads are air plants that grow on the trees

Mangrove islands - some without any dry land

Brown Pelican - what a wonderful bird...

Great Egret

Tricolor Heron

Our boat tour only had five passengers.  A great tour!

We ate the restaurant in Flamingo - recommended by our guide - and since the next nearest one was 60 miles back in Homestead!  The food was good!

The next day, we headed north to get on the Tamiami Trail.  The easterly part of the road is lined with vendors who will take you on an airboat ride.  We had picked one out from the NPS park concessionaire list and some Google reviews.  Everglades Safari Park.  

They have large airboats with two engines and a half dozen or so benches that can seat eight or ten people.  We only had rows with six people.  I don't know if it's because the water is so shallow from the drought or that's how many people showed up.

So, many people think of Miami Vice when thay think of airboats.  Never watched it.  I have a memory of Dennis Weaver on a TV show with an airboat.  Turns out, that show was "Gentle Ben".  An interesting twist is that show is partly why we now have a house in St. Augustine.  My step-grandfather was the writer's agent for Walt Morey, the author of that book.  They show made money that eventually wound up paying for some the house.

After the airboat ride, you get to see an alligator show where they educate you on some rescued alligators they keep.  ...Plus a snake.

Off to the Shark Valley for a tram tour and tower view - that I booked for 1:00 PM.  Um...err...oops. ...that I booked it for 11 AM.  We missed it!  (maybe)

Oh, well.  On to Big Cypress Preserve adjacent to the park.  There's a loop road that you can drive through the cypress forest.

Cypress grove.  The swampy parts were really dried out.

Typical part of Loop Road.  The car got pretty dusty.

Red Shouldered(?) Hawk in a cypress tree

Look what Patti found!

...a whole mess o'gators!

This was just about the only wet spot on the whole road.  The alligators will tend to gather in the few spots that are left at the end of dry season.

Nice of them to pose.

One. Big. Gator.

On our way back, we had to pass by Shark Valley.  We saw that the last tram tour was at 4:00 PM, which we could easily make.  We stopped in and they had no problem rebooking us for the tour!  

On the tram

A tree island.  Formed when a alligator wallows in a low spot .  Tannins from trees that take root tend to dissolve the underlying limestone and increase the size of the area.

There are hardwood, cypress and pine islands in this area.

Another hawk

A red something something scoter?

Once again, the alligators find the remaining wet spots

Chomp.

Baby gators

Alligator as seen from the tower

On the tower ramp

Some thunderstorms to the west.

Penultimate alligator

Great Blue Heron

Limpkin

Last alligator!

The third day, after triple checking, we left for the drive across the Tamiami Trail to a boat tour of the Ten Thousand Islands, on the western part of the Everglades.

Display at visitor's center on the way to Everglades City

Our boat tour left the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Visitor's center at 1:30, so we had over an hour for lunch.  We headed across the street to virtually the only restaurant in town that was open.  Funky decor.  Really a bar and grill.  Some fried gator tails nuggets and shrimp and it was time to head to the boat...

Lunch spot

...except it had started to pour down rain.  After scooting back to Visitor's Center from the lunch spot, we checked to see if tour was still going out.  Yep.  Rain or shine.  Here we go.  Fortunately, the rain let up a good bit, but it did rain on and off the whole 90 minutes.  After joking that I forgot my seat squeegee to clean off the benches, on of the crew started dong exactly that!  We survived quite nicely.

Ranger - he quoted Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Impressive!

We learned quite a bit about the ecosystem.  It's all mangrove islands, some that have no solid land with them at all.  The predominant type here is red mangroves that feature finger-like prop roots that grow down and support the tree.

Lots of dolphin action.  The ranger referred to this area as the "Kingdom of the Dolphin" as opposed to the "Kingdom of the Alligator" which is true for the rest of the park.

Roseate Spoonbills

Park Boundary

The crew

There really are over 10,000 islands in the area.  The size and amount help to blunt violent storms. They propagate without seeds, but by launching small, live plants. 

We weren't too pruney from all the wet.

What we didn't see much of in the park was mammals.  We saw exactly two.  The deer pictured above and a squirrel on Loop Road. The reason?  Burmese Pythons!  But, we did meet and hear tales of python hunters!  Out Flamingo Boat tour guide, the diminutive driver of the Shark Valley Tram and a former real estate agent turned professional hunter.  You don't just do it.  You have to get a license and learn how.  You must catch them alive and haul them out.  Sometimes they are harvested after being cataloged and the skins sold to fund more hunting.  Still, with an estimated 500,000 of them out there in the wild, it's hard for the hunter to make more than a dent in the problem.

Our time in the Everglades concluded with a stop in Ft Myers to visit family and then a scoot across Florida's cattle country and Orlando to get back to St. Augustine.

The Everglades is the third largest park in the NPS system  Only Death Valley and Yellowstone are bigger.  All those big parks have out-sized beauty or geology.  The Everglades does not.  It just looks like a big grass, marsh with clumps of trees.  But, what is has is a collection of a variety of unique ecosystems well worthy of protecting and visiting. It's a worthy of National Park status and well worth a visit!