Holiday Road Trip 2018-2019 Day 3

When I started this trip, I thought I'd write a post here each time we stopped to charge the car. I figured that would give me something to do while I waited. As such, I was labeling each "leg" of the trip as the time between charging stops.

I've quickly discovered that I rarely have enough time to create any sort of blog post while charging. The car just charges too fast, and we are usually taking a restroom break and/or getting something to eat. Therefore, unless I have a long stretch mid-day with nothing else to do, I'll probably just write one post per day.

We got up this morning with a completely full battery and lots of plans for today. Thanks to my father for sending us a link for this very useful website:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/united-states

Unfortunately, very little worked out as intended. To start with we realized as we were getting ready that the wild life sanctuary we were hoping to visit at the end of the day was in the Eastern Time Zone, and we were leaving from the Central Time Zone. Therefore, we had already lost an extra hour as soon as we woke up. It closes at 5:30pm, and was at least a 6 hour drive away, so we were going to have to hurry

By the time we got out on the road it was already 8am (central time). This meant that if we were going to get to the wild life sanctuary with a reasonable amount of time to visit, we had about 7 hours to fit in all the driving and site-seeing that we had found the night before.

First up on the list was the Minnie Pearl Chicken Wire Sculpture in front of the Centerville, TN courthouse.  The courthouse yard was decorated for the holidays so we posed for some pictures with the lawn decorations as well.

Next on our list was the Tennessee TARDIS. Unfortunately, when I entered the addresses of the attractions we planned to see today into the navigation, I accidentally skipped this one and didn't realize it until it was nearly an hour behind us. It wouldn't be possible to backtrack for an hour and still make it to the wild life sanctuary before they closed.  We had to choose between the TARDIS and the sanctuary. We decided to continue on towards the sanctuary.

Since we spent more time than intended getting the photos in Centerville, then got caught in some slow traffic, and also spent time trying to figure out where the Tennessee TARDIS was and what we'd do about missing it... we decided to skip the Ave Maria Grotto in Cullman, AL, and the Museum of Fond Memories in Birmingham, AL. However, we thought we'd have enough time to stop off at the Vulcan Statue and take a few quick pictures. Since there was a Tesla supercharger in Birmingham only 4 miles from the Vulcan Statue, we decided to take a bathroom break and add some charge to the battery. Before leaving the supercharger we booked a hotel in Phenix, AL (across the river from Columbus, GA). We discovered that there weren't going to be any good charging options in the Columbus, GA area, so we'd have to stop off at the supercharger in Auburn, AL for a bit more than 15 minutes to make sure we could get through the night and on to the next supercharger tomorrow morning.

When we got to the Vulcan statue we found that there was an entire Vulcan park, and that we'd have to climb a LOT of stairs and walk around a bit to get any pictures. Instead of spending the 30 seconds we hoped to hop out of the car at what we thought would be an obscure roadside statue, we spent 13 minutes from when we entered Vulcan Park until we left.

We then got stuck in traffic at nearly a standstill for another 11 minutes. With all these delays, we decided to skip the Monument to the Lady-Whacking Meteorite in Sylacauga, AL. There was still going to be enough time to visit the wild life sanctuary.

We arrived at the superchargers in Auburn at 2:45pm central time. For the first time on this trip, the superchargers seemed "busy".  Six of the eight chargers were all being used.  While there were still 2 chargers available, we typically found we were either the only vehicle at the superchargers, or that we were one of just 2 or 3 vehicles where there were 8 or 10 chargers total. Superchargers split the available wattage between two chargers. They are numbered, so you can tell which chargers are "paired".  If you plug in to a charger such that its pair is not being used, then you get the full wattage available for charging.  If you plug in to a charger such that its pair is being used, then your vehicle charges half as fast (as does the vehicle at the paired charger) until one of you leave.

Since the Auburn superchargers were so crowded, there initially weren't any chargers available with an unused pair. Therefore, what I thought was going to be 15 minutes of charging was looking to be more like half an hour.  I took advantage of the time to make another bathroom stop, and then I called the wild life sanctuary to make sure that all the information on the website was accurate and that the recent rain wouldn't be a problem.

It was then that I discovered that 5:30pm was when people had to leave.  They don't let anyone into the park after 4:30pm.  We wouldn't be leaving the supercharger until approximately 3:15pm CENTRAL TIME (4:15pm Eastern).  We had at least a half hour drive ahead of us if everything went well.  We made the decision to just head straight to the hotel for the night.  Perhaps we can stop by the sanctuary tomorrow morning when we head out.

Weather conditions: 65 degrees, 5 mph crosswind, overcast.

Starting location: Dickson, TN, Comfort Inn
Ending location: Phenix, AL, Holiday Inn and Suites
Total miles travelled: 363.44

Departure time: 8:01
Arrival time: 16:10
Drive duration: 6:22 (+ 0:33 siteseeing and 1:14 charging)
Overall average speed: 57.1 mph

Total kilowatt hours used: 103.11
Average miles per kilowatt hour: 3.52

Estimated range available at departure: 310 miles
Estimated range added at superchargers: 370 miles
Estimated range remaining at arrival: 215 miles

Range lost due to driving conditions (weather, altitude, etc): 102 miles (28%)

Kilowatt hours added: 87.19 kWh
Charging cost: $6.70
Effective cost per kilowatt hour: $0.077
Cost per 100 miles: $2.18

Local gasoline price: $1.81
Estimated cost per 100 miles for a vehicle that gets 30 mpg: $6.03

Electric vehicle savings over today's 363.44 miles compared to a 30 mpg vehicle: $15.23