Today we leave the Kalaloch Lodge area and are heading to Forks Washington. From this point on, we have zero access to SuperChargers. No more hand holding with Tesla. From here, we go old school EV driving. We need to find a plug at some point today!
Not all that worried really. What we have learned so far is that ‘range anxiety‘ is all in our head. We can go a really long way on a charge and alternatives are not hard to find.
Splash and Dash at Kalaloch Lodge
We go back to the free Kalaloch Lodge free chargers after camping on the beach last night. I really enjoyed the beach camp site. We rock up and get about 30 minutes of charge. Not much really, maybe 10% more on the ole battery. But because it was right there, free, why not? We have used this charger twice now. Again, J1172 connector failed to release when we finished charging and I had to manually release it with the ‘oh shit’ cable provided by Tesla for just such emergencies. The J1772 connection is the standard EV connector for the USA, and is quite possibly the worst EV connector every made. USA! USA!, anyway, the dongle comes with the Tesla so that’s nice.
Ruby Beach
This is something Kathy really wanted to see, so we stop to check it out. Apparently, this beach is named this because you can occasionally find a ruby or two in the sand. We were not alone as this is a very, very, crowded spot. This beach is just up the 101 from Kalaloch. We are going to stay on the 101 all day today! Fun. It is a short walk down to the beach
You then must crawl over some rather impressive drift wood to get to the beach. Every beach in Washington seems to be covered with massive trees that are now driftwood.
The beach is great and really big. Nice place to visit.
After playing around a while, and not finding any rubies, we head off. We are going to go very slow the next couple of days as our intended next long stay is out of town at the moment. When they get back, we can head to Sekui. Till then, we just need a spot for the night. We decide on just staying at an RV park for the night as we know that will get us back to a full charge. Off to Forks.
Forks 101 RV Park
We stop in Forks for some supplies. The store has everything from food to hardware and sporting goods. We need some more propane for the stove and some other edibles. Right next door is a Pizza place that turned out to be pretty good! Next door to that was the car wash and across the street was the Forks 101 RV Park, our home for the night!
A very nice spot. We get a great shower, a laundromat, free WiFi, and high speed charging! All for one low price since we qualify as a ‘Tent’.
Really nice pedestals for charging. We get a full charge overnight. We did not go that far today, maybe 50 miles or so, but we did charge twice in what are basically free stations. We did have to wait 30 minutes at the destination charger, but that was our choice and it turns out we did not need to.
We had some great conversations about Tesla with our neighbors and even gave them some test rides! Their 13 yr old granddaughter absolutely loved it. We passed out some cards for our Turo business!
Jennifer the owner of the park was very nice and helpful. She wanted to talk to us about EV’s and electric charging in general. Earlier in the year, a Model X driver had come by and wanted to charge up, but not stay. Being confused, she sent them next door to the motel which let them. She had another Tesla’s come by after that and asked for the same thing, this time she let them charge, but was confused as to what is happening! We explained some charging fundamentals to her and now she is very excited to make her RV Park as EV friendly as she can. We also told her about how we found her park using the PlugShare web app and that she had a good rating there. She was mystified as to how she got onto this site and we explained that users add and post ratings for charge sites that they find. Free advertising for her.
This was a great stop. We took care of business, our car (really needed a wash), ourselves with a shower and clean up, our clothes, and provisions. Nice. RV Parks are turning into some cool places to stay on the road! Tomorrow, we go back into Olympia National Park.
You may have noticed that we are not going very far each day lately. We are sightseeing as we wait to get to Sekiu. You may also notice that we have not used a supercharger in a few days!