Everett Powered Electric Vehicles: Road tripping the $15K Tesla Pt2

If you missed it Part One is right here.

Part 2 begins with Day 5:

Day five in which we prove that Wingin'it, the motto of this trip, does not always go perfectly.

It started in the same nothing (er, Needles CA) as the last ended. With minimal breakfast we headed out of town on Rt66 going north through ~50 miles of semi-maintained unlined 1 1/2 lane road that had some severe up and down heaves. It's good there was no breakfast or other heaves might have.

It's not like there was -nothing- along the way, in fact some of the plant life was quite interesting.

Sorta like Joshua Trees except different.

It started to climb into the hills and past many current or abandoned mines to the little town of tourist trap, er, no, 'The Town of Oatman' whose old style plank sidewalks and shops had attracted the mother lode of bikers. We made it through alive and untrinketed. No breakfast either.

Past many more mines and mine tailings and mobile homes and rusted junk
...and a couple of the more interesting mountain passes since Wednesday. Ups and downs and tight turns and sharp cliffs. It was fun.

We made it down off the passes to Kingman, AZ about lunchtime. Yay.
The idea for a side trip to see Lake Havasu and London Bridge was floated and accepted.

"Do we need to charge?"
Nah, it's only 60 miles.

Yes it's a bridge, and a pretty silly one at that, out in a desert.

Turns out 'That' 60 miles is 60 miles down, from like 3000 ft. to 536 ft. and what with the EV battery fending off 103.drg.F heat all along there's not enough charge to make it back up. The screen finds up the nearest charger, in Needles. Remember Needles? Yeah me neither, It's hard to recall nothing.

But they do have the cheapest charger in hundreds of miles. Good thing the second time too. We drove in at 6% both times and filling up to 100% was $11 each time.

The very same Day's Inn took us back for another night, same amazing rate too.

Day 5 totals: 229 miles, 236 Wh/mi. 54 KWh.

Day 6:

Enough Rt66ing for a bit. Having messed up yesterday, we were supposed to stay in Kingman last night, so waking up in Needles was not part of the plan, we decided a break was in order.
Las Vegas is two hours away, and there's lodging deals to be had.
One of us had been promised a trip to New York New York.
Turns out this was the wrong one. But, what do you expect for for $59 plus fees and parking.

We'd been to Vegas, not quite 20 years back but had never set foot in NY:NY:Vegas before. It's one of the big mess of MGM properties.

But first a side trip to Fremont street. We hadn't seen that before either. The winds that day were gusting to 60 MPH and it wasn't a comfortable time. The scene was interesting though, you don't see people like that every day. Then the automated parking garage charged us $25 for one hour parking. Not the high point of the trip.

NY:NY: It smelled much less awful than Vegas Strip resorts in the past. The lobby and eating areas are good and we stay away from the casino areas anyway. Not being into drinking, gambling or nude showgirls, Vegas isn't exactly our thing, but the attractions and spectacle are very interesting.

Being Cinco de Mayo, there was of course a Mariachi band. Even if only one was playing, all you could hear was the trumpets. Fortunately they took turns with the fiddlers. Dinner was good, You'd expect Mexican, but we're not that predictable, if somewhat expensive, so Steak. Mmmm, first one in months and months.

Day 6 totals: 127 miles, 236 Wh/mi. 30 KWh.

Day 7: Look before you drive mmmmmmiles...

Exiting Vegas was even easier than getting in, a bit of breakfast on the way and a trip to the White Hills Supercharger wherein the battery was topped up for $11.50. Sounds like a great rate but that's for only 50% of capacity. We might need it as we're going to the Grand Canyon West end! Some of us have never been Grand before.

Yep, this is as close as we got. That's the Western end out there in the distance.

Or not. This is a somewhat telephoto shot of exactly how close we got. The advertising looked good, of course. But this one time we got distracted and failed to look at reviews. BIG mistake.

It seems this end of the canyon is on tribal lands and as a method of making money for the tribe they've fenced off the road and put up a big parking lot and then sell you bus tickets to see that end of the canyon. If you want tickets and a chance to actually see anything it was $71 plus tax. Yes that's $150 for two people. No freakn'way.

We agree that the tribe should be able to do what they want with their land. We just should have checked this out more before spending most of the day driving there. They have also put 25 or 35 MPH signs up over miles and miles of the road there. And several tribal police vehicles...

To add insult to injury the slow travel made us too late to get into the Route66 Museum in Kingman AZ. Supposedly the best of the bunch. That turns into tomorrow's thing. Jersey Mike's in Kingman had about the best chipotle chicken sandwich ever. Didn't exactly compensate for the rest of the day though.
Expedia comes through again. Remarkably nice completely refurbed Motel6 for $62. There's another Motel6 on the other end of town, $6 cheaper but Ew, stay away.

Day 7 totals: 217 miles, 221Wh/mi. 48 KWh

And, Day 7 ends our first week of the adventure.