Road tripping the $15K Tesla: Pt.7 Finale

Yes, yes may we kiss the ground, the long long trip is done.

If you missed it 'from the beginning it's HERE

Day 20: The Big Plan unfolds! or folds up.

Exiting the excellent (even had good coffee!) Jackalope Motor Lodge in Pinedale WY at a ridiculously early hour, we began the single day assault on both Grand Teton and Yellowstone.
First up was the 70 mile drive to Jackson WY and a very thorough charging. A little time at Whole Foods (it was their parking lot) got munchies for the day and we're off in 30 (35?) min.

Heading for the south entrance to Teton, we're searching for the right place to buy a Senior Annual Parks/Monuments Pass. They're supposedly $20 and will get you into almost anything Federal, 'inter-agency' they call it.
We stop at a Parks station called 'Elk' and they say to go to 'Moose', we go to Moose, which turns out to be a really neat visitor center, and they don't sell passes. "Go to the entrance gate."
"Is it called 'Squirrel?'," they give out that look reserved for especially crazy tourists. Hey, just following the trend. Oh well, no loss there.
The park entrance gate has lines of ten-12 cars in each lane, and after 10 min. we pull up to the nice gate-person and request the Senior Pass. There's a looking at ID and a little form or two and we're owners of a new pass "Good for a Year" and by that time the line is more like 20 cars, but hey, not our process, not our monkeys.
You might reasonably wonder why we went through all that. Park entrance fees for both parks is like $50.ea. without a pass. You might also wonder why we didn't just get the $80 lifetime one. Turns out we can turn in a yearly pass, even an expired one and get the lifetime one for $60. Simple math.

Grand Teton (the tallest one) and it's brethren.

Most likely Birch saplings, just budding.

Above was taken from just past the entrance gate. Already worth the price of admission. It's an absolutely beautiful day. ~50 deg.F light wind. Couldn't ask for better. 

And since we're 'early season' where all the roads are -just- open there's very little crowd. Can hardly imagine how it must be at the peak. The many many trees that appeared dead from far away turned out to be -just- budding. Did we mention 'early?'

We decide to bypass Teton Village and Jackson Hole. Who needs upscale mountain folk wannabees. Besides, we got T-Shirts at the Visitor center ;-)

Yep, same mountains, ho hum...

As you get closer things start looking really big. No surprise, to be expected, but it still hits you when you're there.
We finally found the access to the little single lane road that leads you above and past Jewel Lake.

The Notch, from Jewel Lake.

It was worth the effort to find the road. Sounds like native tribes used this as the path to the lake and through the area.
It's not even 11:AM and we're already on 'mountain overdose.' Fortunately that area was the last close up in-your-face viewpoint. Man, the things we do for you readers...

From a last look at Moran Peak you soon exit the park and begin a jaunty little road called John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway. 20 Miles to Yellowstone and it climbs about a thousand feet. We get a nice map and a wave-through at the entrance. The pass was worthwhile.. 

You can quickly see that the roads have been cleared just recently. We get to the Visitor center and it's not yet opened up  for the season. By now it's noon, and we decide to start with the hot-springs 5 min. from the center.

Lewis Lake (as in Lewis and Clark)

You pass Lewis Lake, except it's not quite ready for visitors. It's about 44 deg.F and somewhat breezy.

So here we are at the hot springs, Yellowstone lake in the background, but what has happened to the sky?
During the 20 min. from two pictures ago the temperature has dropped ten degrees, the wind has doubled, and you can just see above the last of the blue sky disappearing. By the time we're a little further out on the walkways it's beginning to snow. Yes, snow at the end of May. It's 12:30.  Never seen weather change that quickly.

Up altitude. With snow. 2nd highest elevation on the trip.

20 min. later we're actually in the clouds and it's snowing HARD.

This results in a slight change of intent. Pretty much everything that requires a bit of a hike or good weather for the view is right out of the plan. 

What does that leave?

Yup, the Old Faithful Visitor's Center is nice and enclosed and toasty warm and every single person in the entire park had the same idea. The parking lot is jammed. Not everyone is in the best mood possible.

Old Faithful may be old, but not very faithful these days. This was the best it did while we were there. It supposedly might do better in an hour and a half, but other park bits beckoned. Well, plus it was looking like exiting the area might be the smart move.

Middle Geyser Basin.

Yes those little white flecks visible between here and the grass is snow still coming down hard. The 'living inside a cloud' effect has diminished somewhat.

It was decision time. "Stay or go?"  The 'go's have it.

On the way out in the Firehole River valley we saw the only wildlife visible in the parks. The fairly large bison herd was mostly having a mid-afternoon snooze. Saw one of them actually move, but, well, that was it.

As we headed toward West Yellowstone and the west exit, the clouds began to lift and by the time we got out of the park it had stopped snowing. There's a Tesla Supercharger station in West Yellowstone, which is what made this part of the trip possible. Say what you want about that company, but they have really put the effort (and several billion dollars) into getting EV charging out there in useful places and at reasonable prices. This station was $0.34/KWh.

Since we exited earlier than expected a slight change in destination might be in order. Out with the Bozeman, in with the Butte MT. This also changed the highway exiting the area to 297, which routes past the 'other' side of the Tetons and up a big valley dotted with over-sized $Million+ 'ranch house' mansions. Looks like big money is still moving into the area. 

The highway heads NW and meets up with I-90 just before Butte. Completing our shift from the I-80 corridor to the I-90 corridor. Is that even allowed?
We liked the last one so much that Super 8 became the night's choice. Seems nice enough. ~$80 including gluten free breakfast options, the second we've ever seen at a budget motel. Way to go Wyndham! (they did the first one too). 

Note to budget motel breakfast nook providers: GF is not rocket science. Basic Cheerios is GF. So are bananas. Even 'instant' eggs can be had without wheat flour as an extender/thickener for the same price. Likewise sausage links/patties. You do have to pay at least some attention as (for example) not all cheap Cheerios substitutes are GF.

Day 20 Totals: 353 Miles 249Wh/mi. 88KWh.

Day 21: These are not the sights you're looking for. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Travel day! The valleys you drive through on I-90 out of Butte and through Missoula and on to Coeur d'Alene are all beautiful and tree'd and have great looking streams and rivers ...and no pictures. Hardly even saw most of it. They put the speed limits at 80 and the Semi drivers are insane. And ... short story long, you have to actually pay attention to driving, quite unlike much of the (drone...) trip.

When you get out of that insanity there's Coeur d'Alene, a great looking town and all the lakefront, and, well we had some lunch and maybe a car charging. Both Butte and Missoula looked pretty darn good too. Missoula was bigger than expected and the area was quite attractive, at least until winter sets in.

Once you get out of the Spokane traffic, going strong both ways at 2:30 on a weekday afternoon, the countryside opens up. It looks just like large sections of Iowa and Nebraska and some parts of Arizona and New Mexico, except slightly greener than those last two.
Parts of it looked almost exactly like 'Bliss' the standard background wallpaper image that launched with Windows XP [the actual 'Bliss' image was taken in Napa/Sonoma CA. Many people had speculated it was taken is SW Washington before the original photographer came forward. Bliss is regarded as the most viewed photograph ever]. Highway 395 was a surprise as we'd never been on it and it's almost freeway and much better maintained than one would have thought. 70 MPH there and much less traffic than the I-90 mountains insanity.

Late in the day we reach the 'Tri-Cities' and find our way to where we thought the old bridge, that originally connected the communities over the Columbia, is, or make that 'was'. 

Been a long time since we went through here. Turns out they put up a new 'Cable Bridge' and park areas at the ends. All fancy like. Kennewick we hardly knew thee.

One thing they do have in the area is cheap charging. Something like 25 cents/KWh, so we stock up to the max.
100% charge shows 256 miles available, when we got the car it was 258. Have we really lost 0.7% of our range over a measly 6000 miles and a couple dozen fast charging sessions? More testing required. Heck at that rate we'll be down to 230 miles range at 200,000 on the odo.
The rate of decline is supposed to continue to flatten out.  We'll see.

Night finds us in yet another Super 8. So far we like those pretty well. It's $8 more than last night and no GF Breakfast options. Boo hoo. Good thing we made plenty of GF bread before leaving home. Stashed in the bottom of the fridge it's lasted three weeks no problem, each thick slice individually ziplocked. Good fill-in for all the non-GF breakfasts across America. This was the last of it though. Good thing it's the last night. That mini-fridge has been a real asset on the trip.

Day 21 Totals: 455 miles, 248 Wh/mi. 113 KWh.

Day 22: The not so Grand Finale!

The last day, homecoming and all that, but first the plan had us touring Historic Route 30 and all the waterfalls along the Columbia Gorge. With recent rains those waterfalls should be in full thunderous form.  It was a nice morning in Kennewick and things were looking good. An idea which continued up until the charge stop in The Dalles. During that stop the few clouds in the west turned into a dark and lowering mass and a few raindrops fell. By the time we reached Hood River it was raining steadily and the wind was really picking up.

By the time we reached the turn to Highway 30 it was pretty much downpour and the wipers were really ramping up. "Wanna still do it?" Nah, hiking in the windy rain is overrated ;-)  But at least we'd get home earlier. Yay, more time for laundry!

Next stop was Troutdale, not because Troutdale is so awesome, but because they have the cheapest charging rate we'd seen on the trip. Nineteen cents per KWh. But in an odd twist the icon for that stop went from it's usual red lightening-bolt to a grey no-go icon. First time we'd ever seen that. Message popped up too, telling us that charging station was offline. "Temporarily Closed" A good fit for how the rest of the day was going. The backup plan was Clackamas at 0.20/KWh, not a big let down but hitting the cheapest station on the west coast would have been note-able.

Just as we're a block away from home, we're congratulating ourselves for having made it through 6500 miles of travel with no significant incidents, the obvious happens. Gotta learn not to count those chickens.

The really tight entrance to the street has a curb that sticks out, annnnnd... we now have a seriously scraped up wheel.

Not anything that's a structural/functional problem, just a cosmetic booboo. After all that time...

Edit two days later: We just scraped up the front wheel on that side. Car still looks nice from the driver's side ;-) With just minimal effort Tesla could have made the wheel covers so they protected the whole rim, so curb-rash would only trash a $50 cover instead of the whole $250 assy.

Day 22 Totals: 331 miles, 239 Wh/mi. 80 KWh.

Trip totals, and maybe a thought or two:

So yeah, 6554 miles over 21 actual travel days.
312 miles average per day. Not an enormous amount but some of those days were short and slow due to how Route 66 goes. Skews the average.

At an average of 30 cents (29 point something) per kilowatt hour the 1544 KWh cost $463 or $22/day.

Lodging was by far the greatest expense, at $2257,   but if you remove the outliers, Chicago and Vegas it was only $82/night as an average of the other days. So that would have totaled ~$1730. Not great but not horrible. Food ran an average of $43/day, recalling that some meals were included and some came from the fridge we brought with us, so the ~$950 there is not unreasonable. There were a couple hundred (~$280) in other expenses, museum fees, parking, T-Shirts anyone?

Total then was a bit over $4000 all told, not including tire wear or other accrued maintenance items.

Would we do it again?
No, we've already done it.
...But an assault on Canada's Highway 1 is already in the planning stages. Too bad there's not enough charging stations to make Alaska. ...or maybe there are, with RV parks as charging locations? Hmmmm,  more research required...
Anchorage and back is actually a shorter trip (5400 miles) than this one was.
Reasonably certain the next trip will not involve touring 408 small towns ;-)

High point of the roadtrip? 8600 ft.
No seriously, the high point, was the trip as a whole. It went really well. Last time that happened it was 2005. We do not have a great history of successful long vacations, like, 40% at best.

Best museum was the one in Kingman AZ. Honorable mention to the Pueblo Center in NM and the Arch Park in St. Louis.

Biggest disappointments were getting snowed out of Yellowstone and rained out of the falls on the Gorge. Honorable mention goes to all the stuff that was closed in Chicago, though we still had a good time there. Huh, only three bad patches of weather in 22 days. Pretty good for spring.

Best hotel/motel goes to the Jackalope Lodge, Pinedale WY. Worst goes to KASA Hotel in Chicago. A solid two stars. Next worst was a Motel 6 where the shower wasn't all that clean (non-removable stains) and a mattress that wasn't comfy. Even that got 2.5 stars and the KASA was $$ almost Six Times as much.

The car ran great, we never came close to running out of charge. Although there were two sections where we went 60-65 instead of 70-75 just to make sure we had enough, that was pretty much it.
The automatic wipers are a little weird. Road noise is still higher than we'd like, especially on some of the bad roads that remain on Route 66. Full Self Driving (FSD) is still not 100% there, but it did about 95% of the driving on the trip and made some of the long days MUCH more bearable. Well worth the $99 we blew on it for the months' subscription. There should be a follow-on post about that soon.

Thanks for reading!

Road tripping the $15K Tesla: Pt.6

 If you missed the beginnings of this series it's HERE.

Day 17: Home again, home again, jiggety electrons.

Escape from New York!  er, Chicago, whatever.

In the original plan, we would exit the whacky hotel early, stash stuff in the car, spend the day knocking around Chicago and then exit the city before we had to pay another day's ransom in the car-park. Stay outside somewhere that's not $270/night.
It kinda worked. The elevator repairmen were there bright and early, moving stuff around about 6:30 and really going at it hammer and tongs by 7: or a little after, so plan Exodus got going early. We walked out north toward the 'Old Town Triangle.'

We almost immediately came across a small local park. Look closely, one of the dog walkers isn't doing it right. There were more dogs in the park on this nice weekday morning than people.

<-This was a nice set of row-houses along the way. It reminds one; the houses, tree'd neighborhoods, small parks, of street scenes just off the main thoroughfares in Paris. Almost eerie how similar it feels. Some of the people out walking were even speaking French.

We saw our first 'EL' (Chicago elevated trains) up close and even a station somewhat farther in the distance. You can deaf-ly hear why you wouldn't want to live next door.

We didn't see any spectacularly awesome old houses in Old Town, of course we didn't do any actual research to determine what might be there. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be.

Coming back we walked out to Shore line Drive and then South to it's intersection with Michigan Ave, the really Ritzy end of Miracle Mile. Being well over 10,000 steps already at 10:AM we stopped to rest in a tiny park. What we originally assumed to be yet another church turned out to be the city's water tower from the mid-1800's. The original water works building is just behind it and exhibits the same crazy period style. 
Having been built (overbuilt?) of stone these were the only public works in the area to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

That may be the Sears Tower in the background. Didn't care enough to look. At that point defeets was tired enough to call it a day, despite, after some breakfast it's not even 11:AM.
So we went to extract the car, pay the extortion and exit the city.

It still seems almost offensive to pay more for parking than we did for entire hotel stays elsewhere, including parking. "Hey Fella, we're Chicago and we're big and important, also f**k you."

Since the exodus occurred much earlier than anticipated (more walking was just NOT going to happen) we decided that the original plan "Stay somewhere close." wasn't necessary and we set the sights further out. Like 355 miles.

If you choose the right route out of town, you drive 4 miles further, but pay no tolls at all. Since we still have the dealer cardboard 'plates' and temporary tagging, toll road organizations would not like us very much. Seemed worth the four miles...
As we drove a long the I-55 route out we saw many Historical Route 66 signs. We laughed. The cheap way to exit is also one of the oldest. A quick charging stop in Peru IA and off on I-80 we go.

Davenport/Moline/RockCity IA was rather closer than we expected, but we didn't see much of it.
They do have a surprisingly large river there. Turns out it's pretty big even before the Missouri confluence. We saw Iowa City a bit more but that was mainly due to a charging stop. 

West of the Mississippi we noticed the tree coverage getting back to what we'd seen in West Oklahoma and Eastern Missouri.  Stands to reason as we're directly North of there. The tree coverage is about as thick but the trees are a little taller and not quite as densely branched/leafed. Still not sure what most of them are.

We ended up in Clive, just West of Des Moines IA. We chose a Super8 Motel (first time) due to it's having 8 on a scale of 10 in the reviews column. Everything else in the area was $50 more, or had low-mid 6's in the reviews (that low is often yucky.)
We hadn't been to a Chili's Restaurant in many years. Not sure why, it was probably the best food on the trip so far. Not expensive either ($35 for two) we'll definitely do that again, after the couple weeks, required to digest what happens when it's really good -and- you get a lot...

Day 17 Totals: 355 Miles, 248 Wh/mi. (75-80 MPH freeways!) 88 KWh.

Day 18: Whole lotta nuttin'

Queue the excitement!  Yep, just line up, and...

Yep, that's it. There was a tree, and clouds and lots of bugs on the windshield.

Pretty much the high point of the day.

We did get off to an odd start, with the car in a cellular dead zone overnight, it didn't quite know where to head for charging, so we headed off and ... it pointed to a charging station right next to where we spent the night. However we didn't figure that out until about 10 miles down the road.
"Can't we reach the next one?" No.

So we came back and charged.  Added 22 miles to a day which didn't need any additions.

We passed Omaha, and Lincoln NE. It was probably a big day for rivers: The Des Moines, Racoon, Missouri, Two branches of the Platte ... if anyone was paying attention instead of droning along slack jawed. Mainly just a whole lotta driving.

Our good buddies at Nebraska roads are doing some serious work on I-80 and have temporarily turned about 50 miles of it into a two lane, which oddly enough didn't slow us down much. 68 MPH instead of 78 MPH. Land was mostly flat, occasionally rolling. It seemed to get a little dryer looking as the day went westward. Some increase in evergreen percentage in the trees.

NE has many many ponds near the interstates where they have dug out gravel, sometimes for a mile, and when they're done 'mining' the gravel out to a 20-or-so foot depth, they make a pond of it and (we assume) route a stream to it, or maybe ground-water levels? There's massive stacks of gravel showing near the uncompleted ones. Some of these ponds look like they've been there 50 years or more. Some seem to be stocked with fish. Never seen the like.

Seriously though that was probably the most exciting finding of the day.

Another gratuitous cloud shot. We spent quite a bit of time looking at the clouds.

And yes all the shots are from inside the car. It doesn't look like it but it was 90 deg.F and 90% Humidity and venturing outside was for fools who needed to plug in the charging cord. It was also blowing, gusting 30-40 from the front and side. Pushing the cars around. Semi-truck boogaloo anyone?

The plan, such as it was, included driving through to Denver today. Didn't make it. Ran out of interest, or daylight or something in Big Springs NE. Motel 6 to the rescue.

Day 18 Totals:  502 miles, 278 Wh/mi. 140 KWh.   Monster headwinds and 80 MPH does not make for efficient cruising. Most power used in a day, by far!

Day 19: The Setup

Heck with Denver, press on regardless!

A mighty plan was hatched some few days back, but it seemed impossible. Darkness was on the face of the implementers.  And then, like clarion call, a thought shouted out: "Why not just drive through this way dummy?"     
And so a revised revision to the re-visited plan was wrought, and it was good.

The original problem was finding interesting things we might do on the way back from Chicago.
The other requirements were that it not take too much time, be possible with the vehicle's range and charging opportunities, not cause 10-12 hour driving days, and of course not cost a whole lot 'cause we pretty much nuked the budget already. Various ideas were floated, none more appealing than trying to route through Yellowstone or Grand Teton on the way back.

Problem 1 is that they're not well aligned for east-west travelers, being ensconced in a freakn'gynormous mountain range (you may have heard of it), and so the major freeways don't exactly route through there. They are not far from each other and on the same highway-ish road (191), so it's not unreasonable to visit both on a single swing-through.

Problem 2 was charging. Spending a bunch of time on the screen in the car while awaiting charge completion showed that there was a charging location on I-80, Rock Springs that is on one end of 191, another charger in Jackson WY, just south or the parks, one at West Yellowstone just to the north and then Bozeman MT on I-90 (and 191) so it looks like the charging situation is at least possible. Great care would need be taken to not over-speed from Rock Springs to Jackson.

Problem 3 was that any lodging anywhere near the parks is basically $300 and up, which kinda blows the budget. Things tend to be rather nice in that bracket, but that's well outside the economic reality, especially after Chicago. We did consider camping, but doing the first real 'trial-by-fire' on that setup in an alpine setting with 22 deg.F lows and limited vehicle charge (which provides heat in 'Camping Mode,"  see post) seemed unwise. The trick then was to find something 'reasonable' that was close enough to make a full-ish day in the parks feasible.
Basically just trying out each little town on potential routes until something popped up.

With a name like Jackalope Motor Lodge it's gotta be good. $80

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Once that "Close enough" endpoint for the day was established, the rest was just basic EV travel. Two hours stints between 25 min. charging stops like usual.
Today's menu was Big Springs, Sidney, Cheyenne WY, Laramie, Rawlins, and Rock Springs.
The day was helped by having an extra hour added in by our good friends at Mountain Time.

Though we have to make it almost 200 mi. from Rock Springs WY to Jackson WY on a single charge (very up hill and into the prevailing winds), there's nothing to say we can't spend the night along the way, which is where Pinedale WY comes in. Nice town. Home to the Jackalope Motor Lodge. 

The motel is a really nice place. A young family bought it a couple years ago and put major effort into upgrading it. They also learned things from AirBnb and similar to make it so they don't have to 'man the desk' all the time like most other little mom'n'pop motels. It's very clever,   and humorous.

There's mountains in them thar distance. And more bugs on the windshield.

Along the way we cast off the last vestiges of trees and green and embraced the grasslands of the plains, just like we thought it would be starting out. then as we climbed toward the continental divide (8600 ft?) and as we climbed it got colder and dryer and browner. Much like Arizona.

The last leg from Rock Springs to Pinedale had to be done at 60 MPH to preserve as much charge as possible.

This concludes setting up the big day and photos of big things wild natural and otherwise. Tomorrow.
That's for the next post, where we leave these three days of boring travel behind.

Day 19 Totals 518 miles (whew!) 288 Wh/mi. 150 KWh. 

On to the last post: Grand Finale!

Road tripping the $15K Tesla: Pt.5

 If you missed the beginning, it's HERE!!

Day 14: Rain? What rain? We're Oregonians.

So that makes it mildly ironic that the day was shortened from just being tired rather than rained out.
Which, to be fair, was the impression from the previous day's forecast. Yes there were occasional mild showers but nothing serious or long lasting, and it never actually rained on us while we were outside.

Sense-of-scale is kind of lacking here. It's a long walk to that arch from here.

The original plan had us spending our 'rest day in St Louis' going through the St Louis Zoo followed by the Museum and displays (all redone since 2018) at the Gateway Arch Park. A small glimpse of the Mississippi might follow. Projected rainfall around 9:AM switched the batting order.

One of the walks in.

We backtracked a bit and rejoined Route 66 now in progress. Same commercial strip feel as the R66 section of any larger town. 300,000 in this case. As we got through nearer the downtown area (quite nice to all appearances) there were lots of brick row-houses from -way- back that were almost all in amazingly good shape.

We turned in to the designated parking structure for the park. A two block walk and we're at the scene above. Nary a raindrop. 

Behind the seated fellow (above) is the underground entrance to the ticketing office the gift shop, restaurant and down a couple levels, an enormous Museum and Interpretive Center.

Being on a weekday morning the place was swarming with school kids, and teachers practicing catch-and-release....Field Trip Central. And you can see from how many of the displays are arranged and presented, and some of the questions asked there-in that those kids are one of the more important targets of the entire center.
They seemed to do a pretty evenhanded juggling of the Spanish, French, Native, U.S. and many races involved. Not a 'single narrative' style. Lots of history of the area and Mississippi River traffic and the coming of the steamboats, then railroads. And of course 'Manifest Destiny.'  Was President Polk in the right? It's presented as an open question. A far cry from some H.S.Textbooks.  Many of the displays and almost-walk-in dioramas were exceedingly well done. Captivating enough that no photography ensued. At least as far as you know.

When we finally made it through all of it and decided that a $50 (including tax) tram ride to the top was unnecessary, the underground disgorges us -several- hours later right at the base of the arch.

That lighter area at the base is the trench where the underground section exits.

Looking back toward city center from between the arch bases. Telephoto.

That is the courthouse in the center, closed for renovation. 

Oh yeah, a river runs through it. Bigg'un too.

At that point it was Zoo decision time. Tired and Time wait for no Zoo, so we decided to head North. 

Chatham won the best downtown on the (dreary rainy) day, er, late afternoon. The town square was referred to as 'really cute' with all the business /storefronts in good shape and a wide brick oval driving/parking surface around the square. Nilwood was in second for having lots of nice period houses.

Found a nice family owned Motel 6 in Springfield IL with badly needed laundry facilities. Fairly cheap too at $66 for the deluxe king room. The evening was McDonalds and laundry or Taco Bell and laundry.
Tough choice.

Day 14 Totals: 129 Miles, 199 Wh/mi. 27 KWh.

Day 15: We're Here!!

Technically beginning, not end. 

Normally we would have totalled up the miles for the second week above. but since we were only a day from completing the Route 66 part of the trip...

Completion has occurred. 

We went through the intersection of Jackson St. and Michigan Ave. about 7:03 PM Central Time. May 14th.

Begun: 11:50 AM PDT, May 3rd,  Santa Monica CA (Day 3). 

Route 66 leg: 12 days, 3004 Miles, 223 Wh/mi. 670 KWh

Yes we know it's 'supposed to be 2500 miles' but the backtracks, Vegas, and off-route for eating, sleeping and charging  -  it all adds up.

Trip Totals: 3996 Miles, 224 Wh/m.i 895 KWh used.  so far. 

The day began damply, as rainy days often do. Drive out of Springfield IL was grey and dreary but our intrepid explorers pressed on across the American midlands.

One feature that cropped up again and again in towns across Illinois were these 'archived' gas stations. This is the Texaco one in Chenoa IL and we saw Phillips, Standard Oil and others along the way. Probably something to do with the IL Route 66 Historical Society or whatever.

The next town we graced with our presence was Atlanta IL, pop.1000, which (hopefully) had a bathroom.  They did have the most interesting little Octagonal Library and a town clock that they still wind by hand. 

The Museum and two gift shops were all closed, but the library was open and the unique interior was actually quite welcoming once you were in.

The Atlanta Library, as you've never seen it before

Most of the R66 roads through this area were re-done in concrete slabs many years back so you almost become immune to the constant ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk as you drive, It's almost like railroad tracks.

Next town of note was Pontiac IL.  A few years back there was a sign painter's convention in town. Many buildings (a dozen total?) had murals painted on them.

This is actually in an alley in the middle of town. That spire you see is the Courthouse:

They also had the official Illinois Route 66 Museum, and it had a LOT of stuff crammed into it's three floors. Very impressive, and free!
In terms of actual amount of memorabilia it's probably the winner for the trip.
Kingman AZ still holds the crown for explanatory displays and historical timelines

Here's one example from the displays.

Just in case you ever wondered where State Farm came from. 
Bloomington IL actually.

There was a long stretch where it rained quite a bit, rather hard at times, and we didn't pay all that much attention to the several towns we traveled through. Sorry!

As we got closer to Chicago, the R66 roads went mostly straight but with everything grownup since twisting all around, it was somewhat difficult to navigate. A two person job for sure, as it frequently has been for the whole trip.

There was also a 7:30 deadline on this weird hotel check-in. More on that later.

Once in Chicago we came across this street scene that was apparently part Loyola University Graduation and street protest in front of the cathedral. Never did figure what was going on.

From the Kasa Hotel looking West

OK so the hotel thing is just weird. What looks like a normal hotel entry on Expedia, with really really good reviews and pretty good price for Near North Chicago, $150/night. Turns out it's a little like AirBnB but the company owns the building, so sort of property manager mixed in and some of the units, which are quite nicely appointed are rented out, 2-21 days depending. The rate seems to be a last-minute 'we aren't full enough' thing, normally $300 and up. There's this kinda strange 'Virtual Front Desk' that you need to check in, sort of like AirBnB uses, but there's also a guy on site and he's only there until 7:30.  ...except he's not there and the security guy helps us. The guy finally arrives and shows us how to get into the building, and we get the first surprise. Three elevators for the top half of the building (long term rentals and condos) and three for us lower down folks. Except one is broken and they're using another to ferry parts and people to fix it and so, biggest elevator traffic jam you ever saw. 25-30 min. to get up or down.

During that discussion we find out it's 54 deg.F outside and the heat in the entire building is off. They recommend turning off all the air 'conditioning' in the room and bundle up to keep warm.
As if that wasn't enough the app they recommended for parking next door doesn't work and the guy says we can park somewhere else, except we already parked where they said (to get the lower rate) and they have no control... of charges to exceed $51/night.

But that isn't all. The taxes and fees are $52 ($26/night) and there's a $86 cleaning and incidentals that gets tacked on, same number regardless of how many nights you stay. And to be fair, that's probably not much if you're here for a week or longer. Anyway, total is $540 for two nights. Most other places in the area (Near-North - Magic Mile boundary) would be $600 total for two nights. OTOH stayed 4 nights in a 3 Star Hotel in Grenoble France (with full breakfast in a 3 star restaurant) for less.

...and this would be fine, if there was heat, if there was a drain in the shower (swimming time) if the louver-drapes would open or more importantly, close without showering you with louver panels.

Oh, and if the elevators weren't right next door and the workmen were banging and scraping and moving big parts around until 2:30AM. The virtual front desk offers tea and sympathy.
Edit days later: Hmmm, our '2 star' review never got posted on their site. Wonder how that happened.

Now we have to decide how to get home. Main contenders are: Interstates: I-70, I-80, I-90, I-94, or maybe something else. We have a couple days in Chicago to figure it out. Maybe try to slip in a Teton or perhaps some yellowed stone?

Day 16:  Chicago Chicago!

It's a nice room, if they ever get everything fixed, Kitchen (which we're not using) is awesome.

Since we were up early, like there was any choice given the drapes that won't close, we're out on the town early, More coffee anyone?

Look what we found walking toward breakfast. Yep, that's the genuine article.

Couple blocks over and a couple south and we're on the Michigan Avenue bridge over the Chicago River.

Starbucks? We're eating at Starbucks? Hmmm. Don't like their coffee, don't like their corporation, but the food isn't bad.

Well, bad start. The Art Institute/Museum is closed. The Gardens next to it are closed. Parts of Millennium Park are open, except all the sculpture stuff (including the cool reflecting what's-it):

 

Yes, we're not off to a great start.

They seem to be doing work all around it. ->

The Pritzker/Grand Lawn is, and the HP Bridge is just as advertised.

We didn't go over. Things to see...

Lake Michigan! From Queen's Landing. Another 'pano' shot 180+ deg. (the concrete is actually straight)

So if the photographer of the above lake turned exactly behind and walked up some steps you'd get this:

Cheerio! It's Buckingham Fountain

It's been a few miles so we're heading back.

Not all Chicago gardens are gigantic (or closed)

Getting back to the Michigan Ave/Magic Mile bridge we decide to have a look at the Riverwalk.

The South bank looks more interesting so we wander there.

Under the Columbia (draw) Bridge, you can see all the way to the lake.

One clever idea had by the Cruise Boats is that they have themes. Some are History, some are Architecture, some Musical. We have River walked and our feets is defeeted. Time to head back.

Left to right that's

One Superior   and

One Chicago

We're in Superior.

And that's it for Part 5. Part 6 ahead!

Day 16 Totals: 15,248 steps 0.2 burritos/mile.