Category Archives: National Parks

From April to October 2022, we journeyed nearly 27,000 miles on an electric road trip to all 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 states.  We believe we are the first ones to do that circuit in an electric vehicle—perhaps the only ones. 

The trip was an experience of a lifetime.  The parks were magnificent.

And the trek proved that electric cars are ready for prime time, and that charging on road trips is easier than most people think.

Why did we make this trip?  And where did the idea originate?

We have two electric cars—a 2014 Nissan Leaf and a 2020 Tesla Model Y, named Elliot.  We promote the virtues of EVs every chance we get with family, friends, and colleagues from work—or pretty much anyone who asks us about EVs.  In those discussions, we are continually amazed by the questions we get asked, especially about the purported difficulties of charging. 

The trip was a chance to show that EVs are ready for prime time—not just to assert it.

We have loved National Parks our entire lives.  Prior to our 2022 journey, we had visited about 20 of the parks—always loving the experience.  Every year, we added another one or two parks to our list.

In 2016, the 100^th anniversary of the National Park Service, we noted newspaper stories about people who road-tripped to all the parks in the Lower 48 states.  We filed the idea away: that trip would be fun to do sometime. 

In 2019, we visited Zion and Bryce Canyon in Utah, with a side trip to the Grand Staircase of the Escalante, a National Monument.  At the end of our excursion to Escalante, we stopped for lunch in Boulder, Utah.  That’s Boulder, Utah—not Colorado–population 236.  We were in one of the most remote locations in the country, and there before us in the parking lot stood four EV chargers.  The idea for the electric road trip to all the National Parks was born in that moment.  If there are chargers in Boulder, Utah, you can go anything in an EV. 

Later, in 2022 as we began the electric road trip, our mantra—printed on the cards we handed out to people we met along the way—became:

If we can go to all the National Parks in an electric vehicle, you can go anywhere in an EV.

And indeed, we proved that was true.  We didn’t just assert that you can go anywhere in an EV—we did it.

What did we learn from our electric road trip?

Electric vehicles are ready for prime time.

Advocates for transitioning to electric vehicles, electrifying our buildings and machines, and generating power from renewable energy sources face constant skepticism about feasibility.  The best answer to those endless arguments is existence.  Or to paraphrase Nike’s business slogan: Just Do It.

That became the animating principle of our electric road trip to the National Parks—many of which are in the most remote locations of the country.

To make a six-month story short, we did it.  And without much difficulty.

So next time you hear claims that electric vehicles aren’t ready for prime time—that they’re unproven technology, that chargers are too hard to find and take too much time—tell them you know two electrekers who drove an EV to all the National Parks in the Lower 48 states to some of the most remote places in America.

The car was a joy to drive—with smooth, quiet acceleration and one-pedal driving enabled by regenerative braking.  It had no mechanical issues or maintenance in almost 27,000 miles of driving.

There are fast chargers and hotel overnight chargers all over America.  Electricity is ubiquitous and charging spots can be found even in the most remote locations.  Most of our charging was done while we slept or ate lunch, with little time spent waiting for the car to charge.

In 2022, when we embarked on our trek, Tesla’s Superchargers provided the leading fast charging network, and we could only have completed our electric road trip in a Tesla.  But the other fast charging networks are being expanded rapidly, and adaptors to allow any EV to use any fast charger are becoming available, making a trip like ours feasible for any long-range electric vehicle in the coming years. 

In many places during the journey, the car was charged with clean renewable electricity from solar, wind, and water power—sources that will become a larger and larger share of the electric grid with each passing year.

And the cost to “fuel” our 27,000-mile road trip?  About half what we would have paid for gasoline.

The car was a joy to drive, providing an outstanding driving experience.

The inherent advantages of vehicles powered by electric motors—quick, quiet, smooth acceleration—made the car a joy to drive during 27,000 miles of travel over six months.  One-pedal driving enabled by regenerative braking proved its value during many miles of traveling on mountain roads.  And the car’s responsive handling made for an outstanding driving experience along roads like the Pacific Coast Highway.

Our Tesla Model Y was comfortable during many hours on the road, and it offered plenty of space for six-months of equipment and supplies.  The extra compartments under the rear cargo area allowed us to bring camping equipment in case we ever needed it. 

And the frunk—a front trunk made possible in most EVs because electric motors take less space than an internal combustion engine—provided a convenient space for storing backpacks and hiking poles, as well as the snorkeling gear needed at two of the parks.

We even had a week of traveling with four people and all our gear in the car when one of our sons and his friend joined us at one of the parks.

The car was totally reliable, with no maintenance or mechanical issues in nearly 27,000 miles of driving.

In conversations with friends who have recently purchased new gasoline-powered cars, we have asked them why they didn’t get an electric car. 

The answer?  Electric cars are unproven technology—too new, different from the cars they’re used to.

Never mind that electric motors have been around for more than a century.  And never mind that we are surrounded in our homes by machines powered by electric motors—machines that run year after year with no need for maintenance or repair.

The same was true of our electric car.  Not a single mechanical issue in nearly 27,000 miles of driving—some of it over roads of gravel, dirt, and even gypsum sand.  No need for oil changes or tune-ups in almost 27,000 miles.  How many oil changes would a gasoline-powered car have needed during a trip that long?  Probably three or four.

Range of 300 miles was enough, but more would have been nice to have.

Our first EV, a 2014 Nissan Leaf, has a range of about 80-85 miles.  Today, there are a number of EVs that offer range of 300 miles, including our Tesla Model Y.

Is 300 miles of range enough for long-distance road tripping?

Our experience traveling to some of the most remote places in America proved 300 miles is enough.  We completed the trip, and we never were lower than 40-50 miles of remaining range in the battery.  And our trip was the most challenging case, with some long distances to remote places.

The car’s range supported not only the travel from one park to the next, but also driving within the parks.  Some of the National Parks are vast in size, making travel within them to see the sights a long-distance undertaking.  Yellowstone, Olympic, and Big Bend are prime examples.  We often spent two to four hours driving in the car to see attractions in far-flung sectors of those parks.

As we traveled around the country, the car’s range enabled us to go where we wanted to go, to see what we wanted to see.  For example, we traveled back roads from Winthrop, Washington, just west of North Cascades National Park, to Spokane to see the Grand Coulee Dam along the way. 

Almost never did we divert from our desired route due to range constraints.  The one exception was a result of temporary limitations on the availability of fast chargers.   

Leaving Baker, Nevada, home base for Great Basin National Park, we had planned to travel to our next park, Death Valley, through central Nevada, with a stop at the Supercharger in Tonopah.  But we decided to take the safer southern route through Utah’s Interstate 15 and Las Vegas after contemplating a 230-mile drive on Route 6 across mountains and deserts in one of the most desolate areas of the country. 

We probably could have made it, but we decided it was a risk not worth taking after having seen miles on the car’s range indicator drop faster than miles on the navigation map during high-speed highway travel during the trip.  We regretted not seeing that part of Nevada, and we could have made it with confidence if the planned Supercharger in Ely along the way had been completed by the time of our trip.

Although 300 miles of range is enough, range is like money and hard disk space—more is better.  The Nevada case shows why a little more range would be nice to have.  With another 50 miles of range, we could have made even the most challenging leg of the trip without a second thought.

The constraints on fully charging an EV’s battery are the other reason a little more range would be nice to have.  The longevity of lithium-ion batteries is best preserved by keeping the charge between 20 and 80 percent, while avoiding repeated full charges to 100 percent.  Due to the demands of our travel to remote locations, we were frequently charging the car to 100 percent, especially after we started noticing that 300 miles on the range indicator did not equate to 300 miles of actual range at highway speeds.  That practice came at some cost to the battery’s capacity. 

With a little more range, it would have been much easier to charge to only 80-90 percent in most cases. 

Completing a charging session before it reaches 100 percent also saves time because charging slows as the battery nears full capacity.

Charging was mostly a non-issue.

Now to the issue that everyone wants to ask about—charging the car during our trip.

The short version is that charging was mostly a non-issue—with respect to both the availability of chargers and the time to charge.

The availability of chargers was a non-issue for three reasons.  First, the Supercharger fast-charger network can get you anywhere you want to go in America.  Second, we also got an overnight charge at most of the hotels where we stayed.  And, third, electricity is ubiquitous even in remote areas, so there’s always a spot to charge. 

And we spent very little time charging because it usually took place while we were sleeping or eating lunch.

The Supercharger network is the gold standard for fast charging on road trips.

Tesla’s Supercharger network is superb in every way.  It sets the gold standard that other fast charging companies should seek to emulate.  But the others aren’t there yet. 

In 2022, we could only have completed our electric road trip to 51 National Parks in a Tesla using the Supercharger network.  We could not have done it in an EV that uses the alternate fast charging system, the Combined Charging Standard (CCS).  In a few years that will probably be feasible.  But not in 2022.

Tesla got it right with the Supercharger network. 

It has outstanding geographic coverage. 

Stations are well located, with good amenities nearby. 

The chargers are fast and reliable and available, with many charging units at each station. 

And the network is easy to use, and integrated into the car’s navigation system.

Tesla made an early commitment to providing a nationwide fast charging network to support the electric cars it makes and sells.  Our electric road trip benefited from Tesla’s commitment to building a Supercharger network that enables travel to every corner of the country.  And travel to every corner of America is exactly what we did.

Superchargers allow Tesla drivers to get anywhere in the country.  We tested that proposition, and the Superchargers met the test. 

We traveled to one of the southern-most places in the country—Big Bend in Texas. 

We traveled to the furthest northwestern part of the country—the tip of the Olympic Peninsula. 

We traveled to the Canadian border in northern Minnesota to visit Voyageurs National Park. 

We traveled to northern Maine to visit Acadia. 

And we traveled to several remote, desert locations in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada.

Superchargers got us everywhere we wanted to go, but there were times when the car warned us that we couldn’t get back.  A good example was our trip to Big Bend.  We filled up at the Fort Stockton Supercharger on Interstate 10, and as we headed south, the car warned us to turn around before we would be out of range for the return trip.  That’s where Destination Chargers and other Level 2 chargers—chargers at hotels for overnight charging—proved their worth.  They are discussed in the next section.

Superchargers set the standard for fast charging—in geographic coverage, as well as other characteristics.  You wouldn’t want cell phone service that works in Virginia but doesn’t work in Texas or Utah.  Similarly, fast charging networks—if they want to be considered real networks—need to provide universal coverage, and not just cherry-pick areas where there are lots of EVs.  Tesla gets this point with its Supercharger network, and other charging companies would be well served to follow that standard.

Superchargers are fast.  The first generation pumped electrons at a rate of 120 kilowatts.  The second generation bumped that to 150 kilowatts, and the latest generation at the time of our trip, Version 3, operates at 250 kilowatts.  We used all three types, but the different speeds didn’t actually matter as much as we expected because the car was always done charging before we had finished eating lunch.

We used Superchargers 112 times during our six-month, 27,000-mile electric journey.  Virtually all of them were located near one or more restaurants.  Our favorites were the ones at rest stops with a choice of fast food restaurants.

Almost all the Supercharger stations have eight or more chargers.  A couple have 40.  In 112 stops, we never encountered a situation where we had to wait for a charger, though it was close a couple of times.

We never encountered a Supercharger station that was down.  There were a couple of units that had damage, usually because someone had backed into them, but there were plenty of other available chargers in those cases.

We encountered one—almost—exception to this record of near-perfect reliability.  And it actually demonstrated the excellence of the network.

While driving up the Oregon coast toward Portland, the car’s navigation system gave us a warning message that our planned Supercharger in Lincoln City was down.  We contacted Tesla’s road service on the phone, and they informed us that they already knew about the problem and had dispatched a repair team.  By the time, we got there, the station was already back up, though we no longer needed it because we had stopped for lunch at a lodge with Destination Chargers. 

A reliable network needs to be closely monitored, and the Supercharger network passed that test with flying colors.

Superchargers are easy to use.  You just back into a space—the hardest part for those of us who are backup challenged—and plug in.  After a few seconds, the green light on the car’s charging port comes on and you’re Supercharging.  The cost is automatically charged to your Tesla account, which you can track online.  No activation codes, no special apps to use, no credit cards needed. 

The stations are open 24/7 and are well lit.

For road trips, overnight chargers at hotels are equally important as fast chargers.

Fast chargers like Tesla’s Superchargers get most of the attention during discussions of the EV charging infrastructure.  And rightly so, because they are obviously essential for road trips.

But overnight chargers at hotels are just as important for road trips, as we found during our six-month journey to the National Parks.

Chargers at hotels come in two flavors. 

Units that charge Tesla vehicles are called Destination Chargers.  Many hotels have them because Tesla offers free hardware to establishments that apply—a smart strategy to build the charging infrastructure in a way that benefits both Tesla and the hotels, which get added business from EV owners who find the chargers, and links to the hotels, on Tesla’s website. 

Units that charge other EVs are called J-1772 chargers, or Level 2 chargers.  Tesla vehicles can use these chargers with a simple plug adaptor provided with the car.

Both Destination Chargers and Level 2 J-1772 chargers operate at 240 volts and can fully charge an EV overnight.

During our electric road trip, we used 30 Destination Chargers, almost all of them free.  We also used 11 Level 2 chargers, taking advantage of the adaptor provided by Tesla that allows a J-1772 charger to plug into the Tesla charging port.

Why are these overnight chargers at hotels so important for electric roads trips?

With an overnight charge at most of our hotels, we started each day with a full “tank.”  The car charged while we slept, saving time that would have otherwise been spent at a Supercharging stop during the day.  With overnight chargers, we usually had to Supercharger only once during lunch, or not at all if our next destination was nearby.  In Utah, for example, most of our hotels had Destination Chargers, so we were able to travel across the state without using Superchargers.

Charging at hotels also helped us get around the parks during our visits.  Many of the parks are vast, so we did a lot of driving within many of them, in addition to travel between them.  For example, in Yellowstone, some parts of the park were as much as two hours away from our lodge.  We were able to do all that driving without going outside the park to use the Supercharger in West Yellowstone because we charged most nights at the Level 2 chargers near our lodge.

Chargers at our hotels also allowed us to return from remote areas to the major highways where Superchargers are located.  For example, the charger at the Lodge at Whitefish Lake near Glacier National Park allowed us to get to the Supercharger in Missoula, Montana, on the way south to Yellowstone.

Even in the most remote places, electricity is ubiquitous and can provide a charge with an EV mobile charger.

There are EV chargers all over the country—many more than most people realize.  But there are still a few remote areas where they are scarce.  We traveled to some of those places during our electric road trip to the National Parks.  But even in places where there are no chargers, there are ways to charge an EV.

What’s the secret?

Electricity is ubiquitous.

And not just standard 120-volt electrical outlets.  If you know where to look, 240-volt outlets suitable for fully charging an EV overnight are widely available.  In fact, they are almost always available in those remote locations.

Why?

Because those remote locations usually have campgrounds for RVs.  And campgrounds have electrical hookups—typically 240-volt NEMA 14-50 outlets.  One of those, combined with a mobile charger like the one that came with our Tesla EV, makes the functional equivalent of a Destination Charger.  In fact, it’s better than a Destination Charger in one way: RV sites can be reserved, so you don’t have to worry about potential competition for a charging spot at the end of the day.

We used the campground solution twice during our electric road trip.

At Lassen Volcanic in northern California, one of our favorite parks, we stayed at the nearby Highlands Ranch Resort.  An affiliated campground is directly across the road, and we rented a RV site there.  It provided a perfect charging solution, with the added bonus that it could be reserved.  It also provided an opportunity to share National Park stories with some of the campers, as well as another Tesla owner doing the same thing we were.

Great Basin in Nevada is one of the most remote National Parks.  Baker, Nevada is what passes for its gateway town, but there’s not much there.  The motel we selected, the Stargazer Inn, didn’t have a charger at the time of our visit.  But they do have a few RV sites along with the motel—in fact, in the same parking lot.  So we plugged our mobile charger into the RV hookup we rented and had a reliable charger every night.

Great Basin also provided one of our favorite stories from our electric road trip.  At the Visitor Center, we ran into another Tesla owner.  Seeing our Virginia license plate, he approached us and asked how in the world we had made it to Baker, Nevada in our EV, and how we were charging in such a remote location during our visit.  He had actually rented a gas-powered SUV for his family’s visit to the park, because he didn’t think charging would be available.  But he could have driven his Tesla—because electricity is ubiquitous.

RV campgrounds aren’t the only charging solution when chargers are not available in remote locations.  Houses also have electricity.  And they usually have 240-volt outlets suitable for overnight charging.

North Cascades, in northern Washington near the Canadian border, is a beautiful park.  Part of its appeal is its relatively undeveloped condition—making it a backpacker’s paradise.  There are very limited lodging accommodations and other infrastructure.  There are a few Level 2 chargers in the nearby town of Newhalem.  But they are located in a parking lot and near the general store—nowhere near any overnight lodging.  Sitting in a parking lot for hours to charge at the end of the day didn’t seem like a good solution, though it was a good backup option.

Our solution?

We rented a wonderful VRBO house in Marblemount, just a few miles down the road from the park.  With the advance permission of the owner, we used a clothes dryer outlet that was no longer in use, located in a room right next to the side door, to charge each night. 

To prepare, we had brought along with us on the trip a heavy-duty NEMA 14-30 30 amp extension cord, along with the appropriate Tesla adaptor plug for the mobile charger.  This arrangement worked perfectly—like the RV hookups, providing the functional equivalent of a Destination Charger.  The only downside was leaving the side door of the house ajar for the extension cord.  We used towels to keep the bugs out, and we unplugged when we went to bed to avoid a nocturnal visit from one of the local bears.

Electricity is ubiquitous.  Even away from grid. 

Big Bend in southern Texas is another remote National Park, with an undeveloped infrastructure.  At the time of our visit in 2022, there were no hotels with chargers in Terlingua, the park’s gateway town.  The nearest one was in Marathon, 80 miles to the north—a long drive for daily travel to and from the park.

After some searching, we found a ranch-style B&B a few miles north of Terlingua that operates totally off the grid.  They have a solar array and a large battery system that powers the entire complex.  Just prior to our visit, they had expanded the solar system and installed an outside 240-volt outlet like the ones used at RV campgrounds.  They promised it would be ready for our visit, and they tested it the day before our arrival.

After first stopping in the park during the afternoon, we pulled into the ranch at the end of the day and found the solar array out back.  The car had 40 miles of range remaining.  As the first guest to use the new system, we experienced our first case of range anxiety.

We plugged our mobile charger into the outlet and waited for the familiar green light on the car’s charge port to appear.  Nothing.  Range anxiety reached a new level.  Not knowing whether the outlet had been left on or off, we pulled the switch.  After a few seconds, the green light appeared.  Relief. 

The system worked perfectly every night.  And we needed it, because Big Bend’s vast size, together with the travel to and from Terlingua, required us to do lots of driving every day.

And, of course, we needed enough range at the end of our visit to get back north to the Supercharger at Fort Stockton.

This was my favorite charging setup of the entire trip.  It not only showed that you can go anywhere in an EV—even off the grid.  It also allowed us to run on 100 percent clean electricity for the entire time we were traveling around Big Bend.  As we say, we were truly runningonsouler during our visit to Big Bend.

If the solar-powered outlet hadn’t worked, our backup would have been a 120-volt outlet in our cabin.  That certainly would have limited our range and activities, but it would have been useful, as discussed in the next section.

Level 1 charging from a standard 120-volt outlet was unexpectedly useful.

Prior to our trip, I had always regarded Level 1 charging using a standard 120-volt electrical outlet as virtually useless, given how long it takes to fully charge a battery.  Level 1 charging adds about 5 miles of range per hour and takes more than 24 hours to fully charge an EV battery.

But you don’t always need a full charge.  Sometimes, all you need is a little extra range to get to your next destination, or the next Supercharger.  With a charging session starting in the late afternoon, a Level 1 charge can add 50-70 miles by the next morning.  And that was all we needed on a few occasions.

Sequoia National Park has no chargers for electric vehicles.  That is somewhat inexplicable given its remote mountainous location in California—the state with the most EVs.  The nearest Supercharger is in Traver, California—86 range-eating miles up the mountains to the Wuksachi Lodge in the park.  That uphill drive left us with limited range for travel within the park and our eventual return to Traver. 

The problem was solved by charging at an external 120-volt outlet near the lodge, which added at least 50 miles each night—plenty for our travel within the park each day.

Level 1 charging also served as a useful backup when we ran into problems with a planned charging location. 

A good example was our trip across Route 160 in southern Colorado from Mesa Verde National Park to Great Sand Dunes.  This has long been a “dead zone” for Superchargers, though Tesla is finally adding one in Alamosa. 

We left Mesa Verde with a full charge, thanks to the Destination Charger at the Far View Lodge there.  That was plenty to get to Alamosa, south of Great Sand Dunes.  But not enough to get to the next Supercharger after our visit to the park.

Our hotel in Alamosa had two Level 2 chargers, which would provide plenty of charge to visit the park and then travel to our next destination.  But the activation system for the chargers wasn’t working during our visit.  There were other options in town, but those chargers were not near the hotel—inconvenient for overnight charging. 

Instead, we asked the manager if we could use the external outlet near the front entrance to the hotel.  That turned out to be just what we needed.  We added 70 miles from the mid-afternoon to the next morning—enough to get us to Great Sand Dunes and then on to the Supercharger at Poncha Springs, Colorado, with 40 miles of range to spare.

This particular route through southern Colorado will no longer be a challenge in the future because Tesla plans to add a Supercharger at Alamosa in late 2023.  In addition, there are a number of CCS fast chargers along Route 160.  Tesla now makes an adaptor for using CCS chargers—something that would have been a helpful backup during our trip.

Regenerative braking came in handy—boosting range when we traveled downhill from remote mountain locations.

The electric motors in EVs can operate as a braking system when traveling downhill.  This feature recaptures energy and sends it back to the battery.  EVs vary in the aggressiveness with which they brake when the driver lets up on the accelerator.  The regenerative braking on our Tesla is strong enough to allow one-pedal driving, which is a real pleasure when traveling on mountain roads.

In addition to enabling one-pedal driving, regenerative braking can also provide useful range augmentation when traveling down from a mountain.  Earlier, we recounted the loss of range when traveling up the mountains to Sequoia National Park.  But the other side of that coin is the significant range that is regained when going back down.  Our return trip from Sequoia gave us a significant range boost, allowing us to make it back to the Supercharge at Traver with range to spare—even though we had limited charging capability while in the park.

Regenerative braking also gave a significant range boost when we traveled back down from Crater Lake National Park in Oregon.  That is another remote location with limited charging options within the park.  At the end of our stay, we left the lodge with 234 miles of range.  Traveling downhill, we used zero range in the first 56 miles of driving.  That extra range allowed us to skip the Supercharger in Myrtle Creek and drive all the way to our next destination in Bandon on the Oregon coast.

PlugShare is an invaluable information resource for finding chargers.

All EV owners know about PlugShare.  It is the wiki for chargers, available on an app or their website.  PlugShare is a wonderful information resource that shows on its map just about every EV charger in the country.  For each station, it shows the number and type of chargers.  It also includes photos and useful notes and reviews from users.

We used PlugShare extensively during the planning of our electric road trip to the National Parks.  To identify hotels and lodges for our stays in the parks, we started with the Destination Chargers shown on the Tesla website.  That covered most of our hotel stays. 

But there were some places where there were no Destination Chargers.  In those cases, we used PlugShare to look for Level 2 chargers at or near hotels at the parks and other stops along the way.  That filled in most of the overnight charging gaps.  We used Level 2 chargers at 11 hotels, including Taharaa Lodge in Estes Park near Rocky Mountain National Park, the Inn at Death Valley, the Ahwahnee in Yosemite, Lake Crescent Lodge in Olympic National Park, Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone, and the Bar Harbor Inn at Acadia.

PlugShare also helped fill in some challenging gaps in our charging plan.  A prime example was the Cabin O’Pines Resort in Orr, Minnesota.  That was one of the few options for lodging with charging near remote Voyageurs National Park adjacent to the Canadian border.

We also used PlugShare to find chargers to top off range a few times during lunch stops along the way.  A good example was the trip from Yosemite to Lake Tahoe.  Leaving Yosemite, we traveled east over the famous Tioga Pass to exit the park and then headed north on Route 395.  When we stopped for lunch in Bridgeport, California, PlugShare showed us a charger at Rhino’s Bar and Grill.  The Tesla wall charger there added 50 miles during lunch while we enjoyed great BLTs and chatted with the owner.  The extra range allowed us to skip our planned Supercharger stop in Gardnerville and head all the way to our lodge at Lake Tahoe.

Another good example of useful topping off made possible by PlugShare was a stop in Ironwood in northern Michigan.  The trip from the Supercharger in Duluth, Minnesota to Marquette, Michigan is more than 250 miles.  Stopping in Ironwood for lunch, we used PlugShare to find a nearby Level 2 charger operated by ChargePoint.  During lunch, we added about 50 miles of range, giving us a margin to make the rest of the trip to our destination in Marquette without experiencing range anxiety.

The cost of charging was about half the cost of gasoline.

During our electric road trip to 51 National Parks, we traveled nearly 27,000 miles.  That would have been a lot of gasoline—and a lot of gas money—if we had been driving an internal combustion engine car.  The cost of going electric was about half what it would have been with gasoline.

If we had been driving an internal combustion engine car with gas mileage of 35 mpg, the trip would have consumed about 765 gallons of gasoline.  At $4 per gallon, that would have cost more than $3,000.  A 25 mpg car would have used more than 1,000 gallons of gasoline at a cost of $4,000.

Our 112 Supercharger sessions cost $1,668.13.  We spent another $100 or so on a few Level 2 charging sessions.

A good part of our cost advantage resulted from the complimentary charging at hotels where we used Destination Chargers and other Level 2 chargers.

Supercharging used to enjoy a bigger cost advantage.  But Tesla has raised rates over the last couple of years.  I can remember when rates were around 25 cents per kilowatt-hour.  During our 2022 trip, rates varied across the country.  Most rates were around 45 cents, plus or minus a couple of cents, with some in the mid-30s. 

Although rates have gone up, we didn’t object because we’re happy to see the revenue plowed back into the continued expansion of the Supercharger network.

We spent almost no time charging, with exceptions only when our lodging didn’t have a charger.

Surprised? 

People read about charging times measured in hours, or 30 minutes or more at a fast charger.  Those who haven’t yet made the EV transition envision long waits in their cars, as though they were at a gas station standing by the pump.

But EV owners know that the paradigm for charging is different than pumping fuel at a gas station.  You don’t stop to charge an EV like you do to fill the car’s tank at a gas station. 

Instead, you charge while you’re parked to do something else. 

Most of the time, the other thing is sleeping or eating.

During our trip, we almost always stayed at hotels with an overnight charger.  In those cases, we would plug in upon arrival and be greeted in the morning with a “full tank.”  Time spent charging?  Zero minutes.  The car was charging, but we spent the time sleeping.

While traveling along the highways, we would typically stop at a Supercharger at lunchtime and charge while eating.  In virtually every case, the car was done charging before we were done eating.  In fact, in locations where Superchargers were in high demand, we would get a buzz from the Tesla app telling us to move the car soon or we would get charged idle fees.  Time spent charging in those cases?  Zero minutes.  The car was charging, but we spent the time eating.

The exceptions were in the few places where our hotel didn’t have a charger.

A prime example was the time we spent in Homestead, Florida, while visiting Everglades and Biscayne National Parks.  At the time of our visit in early 2022, there were no hotels with chargers in Homestead.  So we spent some time sitting at the Supercharger there during our visit.  But even in that case, it didn’t really bother us because we spent the time tending to emails and social media posts, activities we otherwise would have been doing in the hotel. 

And we can expect these situations to decline in number as more and more hotels install chargers.  For example, the Harvey Morris B&B, where we stayed in Fayetteville, West Virginia, to visit New River Gorge, was still waiting to get a Destination Charger at the time of our visit.  But they got one later in the year.

Sadly, the National Park Service was the weak link in the charging story.

We were able to visit all 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 states in an EV not because of the support of the National Park Service—but in spite of their weak support for EVs.  That was a big surprise for a trip in 2022, especially in the second year of an Administration that supports the electric transition.

Some of the lodges within the parks have chargers.  Those included Shenandoah, Mesa Verde, Death Valley, Yosemite, Olympic, Yellowstone, and Glacier.  But many do not.  

In some parks that have chargers at the lodges, the numbers are grossly inadequate.  The best example is Yosemite—in California, the leading edge of the transition to electric cars.  We stayed at the Ahwahnee Hotel.  The two Level 2 chargers there—generously provided by Rivian, a new auto company that makes electric pickup trucks and SUVs—had a continuous competition for availability among the several EVs there at the time of our visit.

Many of the National Parks are in very remote locations.  Recognizing that motorists need support, they typically have gas stations within the boundaries of the park.  But at the time of our visit, none of them had fast chargers for electric cars.  A few of them have a couple of Level 2 chargers at the Visitor Center, but none of them were fast chargers.  With the coming electric transition, every National Park Visitor Center should have a half dozen fast chargers, either Superchargers or CCS chargers—as well as overnight chargers at the lodges in the parks.

And some of the particularly remote parks provide no support of any kind to electric vehicles.  Sequoia, one of our favorite parks, is a good (bad) example.  It is a steep drive up the mountains to the park, and the distances within the park—especially to the adjacent Kings Canyon National Park—are long.  But there is not a single EV charger in the park.

Crater Lake, another remote park, has just two chargers.  But they are Level 2 chargers at a restaurant—a few miles away from the lodge.  There are none at the lodge for overnight charging.  They are desperately needed.

A good example of a park that badly needs chargers is Big Bend.  The park’s lodge, Chisos Mountain Lodge, is centrally located in the premier area of the park.  But it lacks chargers, forcing visitors with EVs to find accommodations in Terlingua, which is 20 miles west of the park, or further north.

Another example is Mount Rainier.  It is a long uphill drive to the premier lodge at Paradise, at the foot of the mountain.  There are no chargers at the lodge, and the one a mile down the road didn’t work.

Other park lodges in need of charger include Sequoia, Bryce Canyon, and Grand Teton.

The trip required lots of planning, far in advance, but most of that planning was unrelated to charging.

We started planning the trip more than a year before we launched.

Most of the planning had little to do with the EV element. 

The first step in the planning process was determining the best route.  In 2016, many people followed the minimum-mileage route to visit all the National Parks during the celebration of the National Park Service’s 100^th birthday.  We modified that route to try to be in key parks at the best time of the year, based on both weather and crowds.  For example, we put a high priority on being in Utah in June and Yellowstone and the Tetons in early September.

We iterated the route a few times, and once we settled on that, the second step in the planning process was deciding on the right amount of time in each park.  We wanted to make sure we spent enough time to appreciate the highlights of each one, but we also had a window of only six months between the start at Shenandoah in early April and the end at Acadia in mid-October.  Determining the numbers of days at each park required us to do a fair amount of reading on the highlights of the parks we were not already familiar with to get a feel for them.

After finalizing the route and the number of days at each park—along with a few stops with friends and relatives along the way—the third step was to start making lodging reservations.  For the lodges inside the parks, this was one of the most challenging and time-consuming parts of the planning process.  Most of the lodges are very popular, with limited seasons and lodging availability, and they typically allow reservations a year ahead of time.  That required a continuous, rolling effort to make reservations as the window for each lodge opened over the course of the prior year. 

In one case—Glacier—reservations are so scarce that we were unable to get our preferred dates, even after calling the reservation line the morning it opened.

Adding the electric component to the trip planning added a little more time and research, aided by the Tesla website and PlugShare to identify hotels and lodges with chargers.  Those two information resources identified charging solutions for about three-quarters of the parks.

We also checked the geographic coverage of the Supercharger network to make sure it could get us everywhere we wanted to go.  There was no doubt about travel down the east coast at the start of the trip, nor travel on the west coast in the middle of the trip.  Superchargers are plentiful along both coasts.  Our checks of less-traveled parts of the country—like Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas—showed that Superchargers would also get us to the more remote parks.

But there were seven or eight more challenging cases that required some additional research and creativity to identify charging solutions. 

Although Superchargers would get us to the parks, we needed local chargers to travel within some of the parks and to return to the main highways.  In the challenging cases, Destination Chargers and Level 2 chargers at hotels within or near the parks were harder to find.

At Big Bend National Park, Terlingua, Texas, serves as the closest gateway town for visiting the park.  But at the time of our visit in May 2022, there were no hotels with chargers in the area.  The closest one was in Marathon, 80 miles to the north.  Our solution, as indicated earlier, was a solar-powered ranch with an outside outlet.

Carlsbad, New Mexico, is another charging dead zone.  It has no fast chargers of any kind and very few Level 2 chargers.  Fortunately, the residents there had provided a trip-saving solution—a couple of crowd-sourced chargers—one Destination Charger and one Level 2 charger—at the parking lot behind the McDonalds restaurant in the center of town.  We found these chargers on PlugShare and contributed to the Go-Fund-Me campaign prior to our trip—and after. 

We used these chargers, a short walk from our B&B, most evenings during our stay.  We didn’t need much range to travel the 25 miles down to Carlsbad Caverns and back.  But the other park in the area—Guadalupe Mountains—required a repeated round trip of more than 100 miles.

Great Sand Dunes is another isolated area, and the route across southern Colorado to get there has no Superchargers, although Tesla now plans one in Alamosa, south of the park.  We had initially planned to stay in the nearby campground and rent an RV site to charge.  But illness caused us to change plans and stay in a hotel in Alamosa.  When we arrived, PlugShare showed two chargers at the hotel—new since we had planned the trip—but they malfunctioned.  That resulted in the use of Level 1 charging described above.

Lassen Volcanic in northern California was another challenging case, solved by the use of an RV campground across the road from our resort.

The lack of chargers at Crater Lake Lodge caused one of the few cases when we spent considerable time sitting in the car while it charged.  The only chargers in the park were two at a restaurant seven miles down the road from the lodge.  We had dinner there and charged while we ate, but the combination of the slow speed of a Level 2 charger and competition among several EV drivers resulted in a couple of evenings in the car doing social media posts and reading.

As described earlier, North Cascades has no lodging with chargers, but the use of a dryer outlet at our rental house gave us a good solution equivalent to a Destination Charger.

Charging options at Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota were also quite limited.  But we eventually found a lake-front resort in the town of Orr that had a couple of chargers.

Even with the success—and pure joy—of our trip to the National Parks, we still have a wish list of things we’d like to see improved for the next electric road trip.

Superchargers got us around the country, but the continued expansion of the network—both to increase its density and to fill gaps—would make future trips easier.

Ultimately, we’d like to see fast chargers in the parking lot of every fast food restaurant and at every highway exit.

And, as described previously, there are a few geographic gaps to fill in the Supercharger network.  For travel to the National Parks, we’d like to see Superchargers added in several remote locations:

• Terlingua, Texas (Big Bend)
• Carlsbad, New Mexico (Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains)
• Baker, Nevada (Great Basin)
• Chester, California (Lassen Volcanic)
• Prospect, Oregon (Crater Lake)
• Marblemount and Winthrop, Washington (North Cascade)
• Columbia Falls and St Mary, Montana (Glacier)
• International Falls, Minnesota (Voyageurs). 

Fortunately, Tesla is finally filling in one Supercharger “dead zone”—in southern Colorado along Route 160.  After a couple of years of delay, it is planning to build a station in Alamosa, Colorado, near Great Sand Dunes National Park later in 2023.

We’d also like to see Superchargers—or fast chargers of some kind—at every Visitor Center in the National Parks.  With the recent availability of adaptors, either Superchargers or CCS fast chargers would serve the needs of all EV drivers.

Our wish list also includes overnight chargers at all the lodges inside National Parks, especially the most remote ones.  With the rapid growth in the number of EVs, a half dozen chargers at each lodge would be a good number to start.  In most lodges we visited in 2022, two chargers were enough.  But in areas with lots of EVs—like Yosemite in California—it was already clear that two were not enough.

For planning road trips, we’d like to see the travel websites like Expedia offer a filter to identify hotels with overnight chargers.  We planned our trip with the aid of the Tesla website and PlugShare, but a filter would make it easier to find hotels with chargers.

As more EVs hit the highways, and as more hotels offer chargers for their guests, we’d also like to see hotels establish reservations systems for overnight chargers.  Just as you can reserve a room, you should be able to reserve a charging space so that EV drivers don’t have to worry about availability when they arrive.  Although most hotel overnight chargers are free now, it would not be unreasonable to start charging a fee as more and more guests use charging facilities, especially to secure a reservation.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, continued increases in EV range would be helpful for road tripping.  We made it work with 300 miles of range, but another 50 miles would have been useful.  And EV ranges should be specified in terms of highway range, which is what matters most—and range at realistic highway speeds.  Greater range comes at a cost in both weight and vehicle expense, but continued improvements in battery chemistries should provide the modest added range.

Along with greater range, another item high on our wish list of improvements for electric road tripping is a more accurate range estimate in the car’s navigation system.  At highway speeds, a 300-mile EV cannot travel 300 miles.  We routinely watched the car’s range estimate drop faster than the number of miles we had traveled.  Starting a 200-mile trip with a full battery and 300 miles of estimated range, the 100-mile margin would continually drop and eventually be as low as 50 miles by the time we reached our destination.  A more accurate estimator would provide more confidence in planning long-distance road trips.

Conclusion

We highly recommend a trip to the National Parks like ours to anyone who has the opportunity.  It is the trip of a lifetime to some of the most beautiful places in America. 

Even if you don’t have enough time to visit all the parks in a single trip, there are several clusters of parks that make wonderful trips of a few weeks duration.  Great options include the five parks in Utah (along with the National Monument in Escalante); the five parks in Oregon, Washington, and Montana; and the nine beautiful and diverse parks in California.  A longer trip could cover the large cluster of 15 parks in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.

Based on our experience, we can also recommend electric road tripping to the National Parks.  Our EV provided an excellent driving experience with no required maintenance and lower costs for fueling.  Charging was mostly a non-issue, both for availability and time.  And with the rapid expansion of the charging infrastructure, electric road trips will get easier every year as more fast chargers are built and more hotels and lodges install overnight chargers.

Interview with Bob and Kathy from RunningOnSouler

And Their Six-Month Electric Road Trip to All 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 States

Tell us something about the two of you:

We are recently retired.   Many of our vacations over the years when our three boys were growing up were spent on trips to the National Parks.  We wanted to instill in them our love of the great outdoors and nature.  We are dedicated environmentalists, and we think it’s important that we leave our children and their children an earth as beautiful as the one we have enjoyed.  

We think that one of the biggest challenges we face today is global warming.  We also think that solutions are available to us, which is basically to electrify all of our machines, especially our vehicles, and to produce all of our electricity from renewable non-carbon sources and improve the efficiency of our energy use.  One of the reasons we are taking this trip is to show, in our role as private citizens, that solutions are available today, and, in particular, that electric vehicles are ready for prime time.  Most people think that charging an EV is a big problem.  We want to show that if we can go to all the National Parks in an electric car, many in extremely remote locations, you can, in fact, go anywhere in an EV.  Along the way, we are having the time of our lives taking this adventure together and seeing our beautiful National Parks, while also trying to raise some money for the National Park Foundation.

Tell us something about this electric project of six months of planning, plodding, plotting, and calculating designed to get you to all 51 National Parks in the lower 48 states:

It took a fair amount of time to plan this trip—roughly a year.  But, even if we weren’t going in an EV, it would have taken almost as long.  We had to plan the best route to be in the parks at the right time of year, as well as how many days we would want to spend in each park.  And then we had to reserve lodging in National Parks, many of which have to be reserved a year ahead of time.  

Adding the EV factor on top of that, we had to find hotels and lodges that had overnight chargers—it would surprise you how many there are.  For charging along the way, the Tesla Supercharger network is now so well developed that you can go almost everywhere in the country on the major roads.  There are, however, a few places that are challenging, particularly the remote areas of the country where some of the National Parks are located.  There are a couple of handfuls of cases where we had to be creative.  But because electricity is ubiquitous, there are always options.  There are almost always RV sites near the National Parks that have 240-volt outlets we can use to charge with our mobile connector.  In one case, we are renting a house and using the dryer outlet, which is also a 240-volt outlet.  And in some cases, there are now charging options available to us that did not exist a year ago when the trip was being planned, such as hotels that have recently added chargers.  

After all that planning, the last phase was to plan the activities in each park because in some of the parks, tickets or lotteries are now required either for entrance to the parks or for certain activities within them because the parks became so popular over the last couple of years.  For example, we had to have timed entrance tickets to get into Arches National Park.  We also needed to win the lottery to be able to hike the very popular Angel’s Landing Trail at Zion National Park.

So, so many National Parks? When did your passion to see so many parks begin, and what keeps you motivated as the summer months roll in across the country? 

Since we are both East Coasters, we didn’t have a lot of exposure to many of the National Parks when we were growing up.  When we were dating, we occasionally would go out to Shenandoah National Park for a hike.  But, when we were pregnant with our first son, we took a three-week trip to California, driving up the coast from LA to San Francisco.  We spent a few days at Yosemite, and we completely fell in love with it.  We couldn’t get enough of the grandeur and the beauty of it all.  

When our boys were young, we spent a few days in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the boys ended up loving the hikes we did to the tops of mountains.  Hiking is a wonderful family activity.  

Shortly after that, when Kathy and the boys decided they didn’t want to just sit by the pool all summer, Kathy threw some camping gear and the boys in the minivan and headed west without much of a plan.  We headed west to South Dakota where we camped and saw some of the great National Monuments, like Mt Rushmore and Devils Tower, and the wonderful Custer State Park (which we think should become part of a new Lakota Black Hills National Park).  We hiked and had a wonderful time camping and enjoying the great outdoors.  We then drove south to Denver to meet Bob, who flew in for a few days, and we took a day trip to see Rocky Mountain National Park, which we also loved.  Fast forward to 2004 when we took a three-week trip to California with the boys to show them Yosemite, as well as the gorgeous California coast and Lake Tahoe.  In 2006, we took another family trip to explore the National Parks of Colorado.  We visited Rocky Mountain again, as well as Great Sand Dunes and Mesa Verde, and we also snuck in a quick visit across the Utah border to see Arches.  All of the natural beauty of these parks and the fun we had hiking in them made us want to explore more and more of the parks.  

Even though we’ve been to many great parks already, both on this trip and in the past, the thing that keeps us motivated is the next National Park.  We’ve been to many wonderful parks, but there are so many more still to come that we’ve wanted to see for years now—especially those in the Pacific Northwest and the Grand Tetons.  One of the things we’ve learned from the parks that we have visited so far is how different they all are and how we have enjoyed some that maybe we didn’t expect to.  In addition to the natural beauty we have seen, one of the unexpected parts of this trip is how much we are learning in the parks about history, geology, and plants and animals.

Why? Why would anyone conceive this idea? Why would anyone want to do this trip? What keeps you motivated? Do you ever feel like going home now that you’re so far into this project?

As we said before, the two things that keep us motivated are the two things we started with—showing that EVs are ready for prime time and that you can go anywhere in them, and exploring and learning about all the National Parks.  We are also trying to give back to the National Parks by raising money for the National Park Foundation.  Our fantasy is that our little trip will go viral like the ALS Water Bucket Challenge and that we raise a lot of money for our beloved national parks and the National Park Foundation that supports them.  There is a link to our National Park Foundation donation page on our website.

While we are not tempted to head home (at least yet), there are many things we definitely miss about home—our three boys, home cooking, Kathy’s gardens, sleeping in our own bed, our house and sitting on our front porch, and our friends.  The other challenge of being away from home for so long has been illness and injury, both of which have occurred in the almost three months we’ve been on the road.

How much planning did this take? Six months, and 51 parks; that’s a lot of miles. How long did it take to cogitate the calculations? Who did the majority of the “book work”?

Bob conceived and planned this trip from beginning to end.  He spent many late nights and weekends figuring it all out.  It was his second full-time job for the year leading up to our trip.  Of course, as an analyst, he had a spreadsheet to calculate all the dates and miles, and to record our plans for charging at the lodges and on the road.  As we mentioned before, the longest and most challenging planning task was reserving lodging at the most popular parks, which get booked a year ahead of time.  And on top of that, some of the popular parks are now so crowded that we had to secure entry tickets from the National Park Service weeks or months ahead of our arrival.  Unfortunately, that is quite a change from our earlier National Park trips, when we could be much more spontaneous.

While we’ve been on the road and Bob has been behind the wheel of his beloved Tesla (not allowing Kathy to drive), Kathy has been planning our daily itineraries in the parks using such resources as earthtrekkers.com and the AllTrails app, as well as figuring out the best places to eat.

How many miles do you expect this will take, now that you’re out on the road and have some more idea of the wear and tear?

As part of the planning, and because Bob is an incurable analyst, we have a spreadsheet that includes the distance between each park.  That adds up to almost exactly 17,000 miles.  But it will actually be more than with the miles traveled within the parks.  After visiting the first 28 parks, we have traveled 12,293 miles.

How many miles will you two have walked by most of this journey?

When we started off, we had the stretch goal of hiking 1,000 miles.  But now that we are halfway through, we realize that we are older than we thought and that 1,000 miles was a bigger stretch than we anticipated.  Now we are hoping to exceed 500 miles, assuming we stay healthy and avoid further injuries.  After the first 28 parks, we’ve logged about 230 miles.

Electric Cars. The vehicle of the future and the future is now. The perceived need for all who currently drive an internal combustion engine.  How did you get involved in a love for them?

About 30 years ago, there was an article in one of the major news magazines about the emerging problem of global warming.  At that point, it became obvious to Bob that this was going to be a major problem—other than the possibility of nuclear war, probably the most serious problem facing humanity given its far-reaching consequences and the difficulty of transitioning off of fossil fuels.  While the magnitude of the problem can easily lead people to a very pessimistic view, Bob tends to be an optimist and can also see that we have the technologies to solve the problem.  It’s just a matter of getting it done.  

In the past, one of the things that has made America great, is that we have led the world, with optimism, into a better future.  Actually, the idea that the future will be better is really at the heart of the American dream—and that optimism has been one of the things that defines us as Americans.  So it’s incredibly frustrating to see that we seem to have lost that spirit and adopted almost a defeatist view of the future.  But there is the possibility of a fantastically better future just waiting for us to grab it.  A future that is better than the fossil fuel system we have today in every meaningful way—with abundant and low-cost energy, cleaner air, more energy security, and more good jobs for Americans—if we lead the way.  We can’t understand why many Americans seem to be afraid of moving towards this better future, or full of pessimism about America’s ability to meet the challenge.  

Our cars and trucks powered by internal combustion engines are a very large part of the global warming problem today.  But electric vehicles are also one of the biggest parts of the solution, which has three fundamental elements—the three “Es”: electrifying all our machines, especially our vehicles; producing our electricity from renewable non-carbon sources; and improving the efficiency of our energy use.  Electric vehicles are obviously a huge part of the first element—electrifying our machines—but they also dramatically improve the efficiency of our energy use, as EVs are about 90 percent efficient compared to 25-30 percent for internal combustion engines, which waste most of their energy on heat.  And the great thing about EVs as part of the solution is that they allow us to continue our current way of life, which is obviously dependent on the freedom and versatility offered by our cars and trucks, without compromising the health of the planet.  In addition, once you drive an EV, you realize how much better they are—not just more efficient, but more reliable and less expensive to operate, and offering much better performance.  When we were kids in the 1960s, America was a very optimistic place.  By the 21st century, we were going to have flying cars, fusion power, and missions to Mars.  It blows our minds that people are still driving around in gasoline-powered cars, which are certainly not the future!

Are you a tree-hugging, whale-saving, recycling conservationist? How long have you been driving an EV?

Yes, we certainly are!  And shouldn’t everyone love trees and the natural environment?  We even have pictures of us hugging trees in a couple of the parks!  We also drive around with grocery bags full of recycling until we are able to find recycling containers, which, shockingly, are not provided in many of the National Parks!  When Bob is appointed Secretary of the Interior (a job that he would seriously love to have!), he will make sure that all National Parks have recycling containers as well as EV chargers, solar panels, and electric buses.

We adopted electric vehicles soon after they became commercially available, after following their development for years before that.  Bob got a Nissan Leaf in 2014.  Despite its limited range, it served for several years as a perfect second car for commuting, and charging was never an issue for that use.  We had a reservation for Tesla’s Model 3 when that became available—the first affordable long-range EV.  But we switched to the cross-over variant, the Model Y, which has a hatchback and more cargo space and headroom.  We became a two-EV family when we bought the Tesla in 2020, and we have taken a couple of long-range trips in it before our ongoing National Park adventure.

Explain and describe your current, cross-country EV car?

We are making this trip in a Tesla Model Y, which is a crossover variant of the very popular Tesla Model 3.  It has more headroom, cargo space, and a hatchback and is very comfortable to drive and to ride in.  It has about 300 miles range, although that depends on how fast you travel.  

While on the road, we generally charge at one of the Tesla Superchargers along the way while we are eating lunch.  They are remarkably fast.  Not as fast as pumping gas, but that is largely irrelevant because we eat lunch while the car is plugged in at a Supercharger and the car is always done charging before we are done eating.  Once at our destination, we can almost always charge overnight at a charger at our hotel or lodge.  Most of those have been Destination Chargers that Tesla has provided to the hotels to help build out the charging network while helping the hotels attract customers—a very smart strategy by Tesla and a mutually beneficial business proposition for the hotels.  For hotels that offer non-Tesla chargers—which have the very clucky name of “Level 2 J-1772” chargers, we also have a simple adaptor, provided by Tesla with the car, that allows us to use them.

How do you possibly pack efficiently for a six-month trip with lots of exercising and sweating?

We started off with too much stuff in the car with the attitude that “when in doubt, just throw it in” because we had so much cargo space in the car.  However, after being on the road for almost three months, we realized that laundry facilities are found in many of our hotels (and often are free) and it’s easier to function and pack up our bags and the car after each hotel stay with less stuff.  Kathy found that she packed too much non-hiking clothes—nice clothes to go to dinner in—while Bob found that he packed too many hiking clothes.  When our youngest son met us in Zion National Park recently, we sent him home with two extra bags of surplus clothes and gear.  

How long have you two been this much into hiking?

Kathy loves working out, whether it’s at Orange Theory Fitness classes, riding her Peloton at home, biking, taking long walks, and working in her garden. Bob loves playing hockey, taking long walks, biking, and working in the yard.  We both love hiking and being in the great outdoors just about more than anything.  We also both love to eat!  Hiking allows us to enjoy a good lunch on the trail and a good dinner afterwards.  Food always tastes best when it’s been earned!

How long have you two been this much into National Parks? How many parks had your previously visited before this trip began?

Before we started this trip, Kathy had been to 19 of the National Parks, although two of them were not yet designated as National Parks when she visited, and Bob had been to 20—not counting a few he might have been to as a young child but doesn’t remember.

Do your friends and/or family think you’re crazy? Tell us about your family, and your marriage, of sorts?

Many people we spoke to while planning the trip thought it sounded awesome.  A few of Kathy’s friends thought that it was crazy.  And we’re told that some of Bob’s former co-workers had a betting pool that we would run out of juice and be stranded on the side of the road somewhere.  A lot of people had questions about how we were going to do the trip.  And many people, after being told that we were going to ALL the National Parks would ask if we were going to a particular National Park!  Or, they would ask if we were going to places that are NOT National Parks, such as National Monuments and State Parks, as if going to all 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 States wasn’t enough!  

If it’s not too personal, what does one budget to eat over 500 meals and spend @170 nights in hotels while on the road?

Well, let’s start with food.  Most of the time, our hotels provide a free breakfast, and many days we are eating PB&Js for lunch while on the trail, so those two meals are kind of a moot point, and maybe even cost less than eating at home.  With regards to dinner, we often share a meal because American serving portions are much too big.  And, if we were eating at home, grocery prices are just about as high these days.

Lodging is obviously an added expense while we’re on the road.  Hotels are generally $200-$300 a night, sometimes more and sometimes less.  We are staying in hotels a little less than 200 nights, so you can do the math.  It’s a major expense, but much of the trip is being paid with Bob’s accrued PTO that he accumulated over the last couple of years.

When did you get the idea to do this? Whose idea was it? How hard was it to talk the other one into it?

Three years ago, in 2019, when we were visiting Zion National Park, we took a day trip to Escalante National Monument and stopped for lunch in the remote little town of Boulder, Utah.  While there, we noticed that there were three EV chargers in the parking lot.  That struck us as remarkable, given how remote Boulder is.  Bob already had a strong interest in EVs—he owned a 2014 Nissan Leaf and was planning to order a Tesla when the more affordable models became available.  This interest, in addition to coming upon theses chargers, led to the notion in Bob’s mind that if you can travel to places as remote as Boulder, Utah, in an EV, you should be able to go anywhere in an EV.  There were also chargers at our lodge at Zion, and Bob took a picture of them at the time and posted on social media that this is where we would charge when we were on our trip to all of the National Parks.  Of course, he hadn’t broached the idea to Kathy yet, but the idea was percolating in his head.  

Fast forward three years to 2022, and we visited the same two charging stations again.  There is a social media post the day we arrived in Escalante with photos of the chargers from both 2019 and 2022, along with an explanation of the history of the idea.  

Kathy’s first reaction when Bob seriously suggested this trip was, “Are you crazy?  Find someone else to go with you!”  Of course, she has absolutely no recollection of having said that!  Initially, the thought of being away from home for six months did not appeal to her.  The number 1 thing she knew she would miss the most—aside from our three boys—was our house and being able to work in her gardens.  The idea grew on her once Bob started talking about the adventure and the plan to share the experience on social media.  She had the fantasy that once we started sharing on social media, our trip might go viral and by the time we got to California, Ellen DeGeneres would want to have us on her show to talk about our trip and about raising money for the National Parks.  Sadly, Ellen ended her show before we could get to California … otherwise we are certain she would have contacted us by now!

Any second thoughts or current hesitations?

The trip has been wonderful—no second thoughts about it.  The biggest challenge has been dealing with injuries so far from home.  Other than wildfires that could close some of the parks, as they did last summer, injuries are the one thing that could cause us to reconsider completing the trip as planned.

What do you have to say to Americans about their parks, or the need to convert cars over to electric vehicles?

Unfortunately, many of our parks are becoming overly loved and are badly overcrowded.  Zion is the best example—it is the second-most visited park, but it is only 28th in size of the 51 parks in the lower 48 national parks.  And much of it is inaccessible.  That combination makes for a lot of people in a relatively small amount of space, which in turn makes it hard to enjoy nature the way it should be appreciated.  

Other things we would want to say to the American people about their parks include the following.  Get out of your cars and onto the hiking trails.  Heed the National Park signs and rules—stay on the trails, do NOT feed the animals and enjoy them from a distance.  Respect others on the trails by learning proper trail etiquette—keep your voices down, maintain your distance (don’t tailgate other hikers), and let others who are moving faster than you pass you on the trail.  Follow the Leave No Trace principle—this includes things like orange and banana peels and cigarette butts—so that others can enjoy nature the way it was meant to be enjoyed.

We also agree with Ken Burns that our National Parks are America’s best idea.  They reflect the natural beauty of our country, and they are one of our best attractions for visitors from other countries—some of whom we have met during this trip.  A few years ago, we were on a wonderful biking trip along the Danube River through Austria that ended in Vienna.  We were supposed to be awed by all the palaces in the city, but we were actually appalled at the waste of so many riches used to construct gaudy buildings for a privileged few born into royalty.  We are much more attracted to the notion—represented so well in America’s National Park system—that the country’s natural resources should be open to all our citizens to enjoy.  We are so appreciative of the crucial decisions made by Stephen Mather, the first Director of the National Park Service, to open the parks to the people.

We would also note that, although we have seen some improvements in many of the National Parks with recent financial infusions, they still need maintenance and renovations, so we should all help keep them in great shape by donating to the National Park Foundation.  We have a link to a donation page on our website.

From our experience, we have also seen some improvements that can be made to the National Park system—particularly to deal with the recent over-crowding.  The ticketing system for the most popular and crowded parks was necessary and has worked well in places like Arches.  But the timelines for purchasing advance tickets are all over the place for the different parks, and that system might be standardized a little better.  There are also lines at the entrance gates to some of the parks that are much longer than necessary because there are no express lanes for people who already have passes, and you have the crazy situation of Rangers processing credit cards for entry fees when all of that could be done online before arriving at the parks.

We would also like to see the National Park Service do even more to be a leader in environmental protection.  Of course, it already does a great job with the environmental education provided at the Visitor Centers and the signs at the overlooks and trailheads.  But much more could be done.  We already mentioned that many of the parks could do more on recycling.  We would also like to see the NPS transition quickly to all electric vehicles and buses, and to power its buildings with solar power. It should also have fast chargers at all the Visitor Centers and overnight chargers at all the lodges inside the parks.  The visibility and health of many of the parks have been harmed by air pollution—as noted in signs at parks such as Great Smoky Mountains and the Grand Canyon.  The NPS should do its part to implement solutions to those problems by electrifying its own operations and encouraging visitors to do the same.

On the larger issue of converting our cars to electric vehicles, we would offer a few thoughts for our fellow Americans.  First, we hope our little adventure has helped to show that EVs are ready for prime time—that if we can to go to all the National Parks, many of them in very remote locations, you can go anywhere in an EV.  We also hope that the information we have provided on our experiences along the way with charging—which seems to be one of the big issues causing many people to hesitate to consider buying an electric car—will help to change people’s views.  Information is critical in this transition, like any other, and there’s a lack of information or even misinformation out there.

Accurate information on the benefits of electric vehicles is important because we really need to make the electric transition as soon as possible.  In fact, CO2 levels are already dangerously high, and any new gasoline-powered cars bought today will continue to make the problem worse for 10-20 more years.  For the sake of a healthy planet for our children and their children, we really can’t afford to do that.

The great thing about our free enterprise system is that it is incredibly efficient at responding to consumer demands, and then rapidly producing things to meet those demands—the current temporary supply-chain disruptions notwithstanding.  In that system, we vote with our dollars, and the auto companies will only get serious about converting all their models to electric power when customers come into the showrooms and say, “I love this car, but does it come in electric?  Because that’s the only kind of car I’ll consider buying going forward.”  When that happens, everyone will be amazed at how fast the auto companies and all the associated suppliers will shift over.  And when that happens, we will all be amazed at how much better America and the planet will be with a clean, abundant electric energy system.

At this point, we have traveled to 10 of the 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 states on our electric road trip.  That’s about 20 percent of the parks in 13 percent of the 27 weeks we will be on the road.  We will spend more time at each park from now on as we reach the great National Parks of the western states.

The first 10 parks included the following:

1. Shenandoah, April 8-9

2. New River Gorge, April 9-11

3. Congaree, April 11-12

4. Dry Tortugas, April 14-15

5 & 6. Biscayne and Everglades, April 15-20

7. Great Smoky Mountains, April 23-27

8. Mammoth Cave, April 27-29

9. Gateway Arch, April 29-30

10. Hot Springs, April 30-May 2

We have now traveled 4,500 miles, spending $258 on Supercharging—about half of what we would have spent on gasoline.  

We have now traveled 4,500 miles, spending $258 on Supercharging. That’s about half of what we would have spent on gasoline.  A gasoline-powered car getting 30 mpg would have spent about $600 at $4 per gallon.

We have enjoyed Destination Chargers at 9 of the 12 hotels we have stayed in, providing a full “tank” in the morning.

We have enjoyed Destination Chargers at 9 of the 12 hotels we have stayed in, providing both free electrons and a full “tank” in the morning without having to spend time at a charging station during the day. 

Finding chargers and time to charge have been non-issues so far.

Finding chargers and time to charge have been non-issues so far.

We have logged 67.2 miles of hiking toward our goal of 1,000.

Park Impressions

We have enjoyed the first 10 parks, with the exception of Congaree, which did not seem to reach the National Park standard in our estimation.  Of course, our impression may have been influenced by the time of year and the fact that most of the park was flooded and inaccessible when we visited.

Our favorite new parks were Biscayne and Everglades.  Great Smoky Mountains has some of the best trails we have experienced in National Parks.

Our favorite new parks were Biscayne and Everglades.

Great Smoky Mountains has some of the best trails we have experienced in National Parks.

To summarize our impressions of the parks, we have divided them into five categories.

To summarize our impressions of the parks, we have divided them into five categories:

1.  Return again and again

2.  Go again for specific purpose

3.  Loved it, but once was enough

4.  Worthwhile to combine with something else or if it’s on the way

5.  Don’t bother

1.  Return again and again

Shenandoah

Great Smoky Mountains

2.  Go again for specific purpose:

New River Gorge (white water rafting)

3.  Loved it but once was enough:

Dry Tortugas

Biscayne

Everglades

Mammoth Cave

4.  Worthwhile to combine with something else or if it’s on the way

Gateway Arch

Hot Springs

5.  Don’t bother:

Congaree

Lodging

For an electric road trip to the National Parks, this is our assessment of lodging options:

For Shenandoah, Skyland is the place to stay, and it includes a Destination Charger and a Level 2 charger.

For New River Gorge, the Morris Harvey House B&B is a great choice and will be even better if they are able to get a Destination Charger installed.

For Congaree, the Aloft Hotel is a good choice and includes access to free Level 2 chargers.

For Dry Tortugas, the Silver Palms is a good choice and includes two Destination Chargers.

For Biscayne and Everglades, the Hilton Garden Inn-Homestead was a good hotel but, like the other options in Homestead, does not yet include a Destination or Level 2 charger.

For Great Smoky Mountains, the Berry Springs Lodge in Sevierville, located away from the crowded tourist areas, was a good choice and included a Destination Charger and a Level 2 charger.

For Mammoth Cave, the Courtyard by Marriott in Bowling Green was an excellent hotel and included Destination Chargers.

For Gateway Arch, there are better choices than the Hampton Inn in St. Louis.

For Hot Springs, the Doubletree by Hilton was an excellent choice and included multiple Destination Chargers.

Best Restaurants

Two restaurants have stood out for their quality so far:

Blue Marlin, Columbia, SC  (Congaree)

Seasons 101, Sevierville, TN  (Great Smoky Mountains)

Charging

We have enjoyed Destination Chargers at 9 of the 12 hotels we have stayed in, providing both free electrons and a full “tank” in the morning without having to spend time at a charging station.

So far, charging has been almost totally a non-issue, thanks to Destination Chargers, Superchargers, and few well-placed Level 2 chargers.  Lessons to date:

1. Charging Time.  Charge time is a complete non-issue.  Most of the time we have stayed in hotels with Tesla Destination Chargers or Level 2 chargers, giving us a full battery to start the day.  Charging during the day is almost always done before we’re done with something else—usually lunch.  We thought 250 KW chargers were a lot better on time, but usually it doesn’t matter.

2. Range.  Range is an issue.  At today’s highway speeds, even a 200-mile leg is close to the limit, while still leaving a 40-50-mile margin.  The only way we have a 300-mile highway car is when the speeds are 55-60 mph, which is rare these days.  We almost didn’t make it 200 miles between Superchargers in Arkansas.  The chart below shows the steep cost in diminished range paid for high speeds.  As shown in the blue curve, a Tesla Model 3 with range of more than 300 miles at 65 mph approaches 250 miles at speeds approach 80 mph.

3. Inaccurate Range Estimates.  The range issue is exacerbated by the fact that the Tesla range estimator built into the car is inaccurate for travel at highway speeds.  On multiple occasions, the range indicator has shown 300 miles, but the range for travel legs at high speeds of 70 mph or higher has been closer to 250 miles or less.  This seems like an area where a software update would be useful; it should be possible to provide a more accurate range estimate based on the known highway speeds.

4. Availability of Chargers.  In most places, the range issue doesn’t matter because there are so many Superchargers, with Level 2s as a back-up.  This will become increasingly so in the coming years as charging networks continue to be expanded.  An adaptor allowing Tesla vehicles to use CCS fast chargers would further expand the availability of fast chargers as there are some areas where Superchargers are not available but CCS fast chargers have been deployed by Electrify America, EVGO, and other charging companies.

5. Level 1 Charging.  The biggest charging surprise has been that Level 1 charging is more useful than anticipated.  Our previous understanding was that Level 1 charging provided only 2-3 miles of range per hour, but we ran an experiment in Texas, and it’s closer to 5 miles per hour.  In the right circumstances, when the car is going to be sitting for a while, it can be very useful.  Because electric outlets are ubiquitous, Level 1 charging is also the ultimate back-up when other chargers are not available or not operating.

Total Supercharging for the first 10 parks                         $258.09

Hiking Trails and Other Activities in the Parks

Total Hiking Miles for the first 10 parks                                         67.2 miles

Leaving St. Louis on April 30 with a full charge—thanks to the Destination Charger we enjoyed during our visit to Gateway Arch—we headed south and west through Missouri and Arkansas for our next National Park, Hot Springs, the 10^th stop on our electric road trip to all 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 states.

Hot Springs Reservation was established in 1832, long before the National Park concept existed, to protect the natural thermal hot springs.

Hot Springs Reservation was established in 1832, long before the National Park concept existed, to protect the natural thermal hot springs.  It was the first time land had been set aside by the Federal government for use as a recreation area.  It was established as a National Park in 1921, making it one of the earliest National Parks.

Hot Springs is the only National Park that is a city.  It consists of the historic bathhouses, fed by the natural hot springs, and the surrounding mountains, which include hiking trails. 

Hot Springs is the only National Park that is a city.  It consists of the historic bathhouses, fed by the natural hot springs, and the surrounding mountains, which include hiking trails.  Hot Springs was America’s smallest National Park until Gateway Arch was re-designated from a monument to a park.  Hot Springs has about 1.5 million annual visitors.

Hot Springs was the home of Major League Baseball spring training in the early 20th century.  It was also the childhood home of President Bill Clinton. 

Arriving in the early evening, we were able to squeeze in a few activities—walking down bathhouse row, strolling along the Promenade behind the bathhouses, and checking out the lobby of the historic Arlington Hotel before enjoying a good dinner in town. 

The Hot Springs Visitor Center is located in one of the old bathhouses, providing an opportunity to see what the inside of the historic bathhouses looked like.

The next morning we had breakfast at The Pancake Shop because we were told it was a “must do” activity.  We also explored the Visitor Center, which is located in one of the old bathhouses, giving us an opportunity to see what the inside of the historic bathhouses looked like.

The centerpiece of Hot Springs National Park is Bathhouse Row—eight unique, turn-of-the-century bathhouses all built over naturally occurring hot springs.  

Before visiting the park, our assumption was that the hot springs were an outdoor activity where you could just jump into a pool to experience the natural hot springs.  Much to the contrary, the centerpiece of Hot Springs National Park is Bathhouse Row—eight unique, turn-of-the-century bathhouses all built over naturally occurring hot springs.  In the early 20th century, Hot Springs became famous for its supposed therapeutic benefits and developed into a well-known resort.  

Quapaw, which is one of two bathhouses still operating, looks more like the ancient Roman baths, with a set of three large public baths.

Most of the bathhouses featured private rooms with a bathtub, like the ones in the building that now serves as the National Park Visitor Center.  But the Quapaw, which is one of two bathhouses still operating, looks more like the ancient Roman baths, with a set of three large public baths with different temperatures in each of the three pools.

The hot water that emerges from the mountain to feed the baths entered as rainwater or snow melt more than 4,000 years ago.

A fun and mind-boggling fact about the springs: the hot water that emerges from the mountain to feed the baths entered as rainwater or snow melt more than 4,000 years ago.

The water emerges from the springs at about 144 degrees and has to be mixed with cooler spring water so that it is not too hot for bathing.  The National Park Service oversees the operations of the springs to ensure their health and safety and to regulate the amount of water use.

The Observation Tower provides a commanding view of the town and the surrounding mountains. 

After breakfast and our tour of the bathhouses, we worked off the pancakes by hiking up to the Observation Tower, climbing—and counting—all 300 steps.  The tower provides a commanding view of the town and the surrounding mountains.  There’s an elevator if you don’t want to climb the stairs.

The mountains behind the bathhouses feature a network of trails.  Goat Rock is the highlight.

We also hiked 6 miles on the networks of trails on the mountain behind the baths.  Goat Rock was the highlight.

Though not a typical National Park, Hot Springs features both the historic bathhouse row and some nice hiking trails on the mountains behind it that serve as the recharging zone for the hot springs and are protected as part of the park.  In it heyday, Hot Springs was once the most visited National Park.

In all, Hot Springs was worth a quick visit to see the historic bathhouses, and the hiking trails on the mountain were an added bonus.

Lodging

For our visit to the Hot Springs, we elected to stay in a hotel a few miles outside the main town, the Doubletree by Hilton Hot Springs.  This is a great hotel, modern and clean, with spacious rooms and a small restaurant, as well as Destination Chargers.  The Doubletree is just a few miles from the historic area of the town, and we were glad we got away from the noise and traffic of the main town after a long day visiting the park.

Doubletree by Hilton Hot Springs, located a few miles outside the main town, is modern and clean, with spacious rooms and a small restaurant, as well as Destination Chargers. 

In planning our electric road trip, we also considered the historic Arlington Resort Hotel, which has several Destination Chargers.  But we were glad we had elected to stay outside the noisy historic area. 

For dining in Hot Springs, we enjoyed Tex-Mex food the first night at the Colorado Grill.  The second night we decided to relax and have dinner at the Doubletree, which provided a limited menu but a good meal.

The highlight of eating in Hot Springs is breakfast at the famous Pancake Shop in the historic area. 

The highlight of eating in Hot Springs is breakfast at the famous Pancake Shop in the historic area.  They provide friendly service and huge pancakes, and breakfast there should be part of a complete visit to Hot Springs.  But don’t even think about ordering more than one pancake.  The pancakes fill an entire plate, so a pro tip offered by the servers is to carve out a hole in the middle of your pancake for the syrup.

Charging

We had our first charging challenge on the trip from St. Louis to Hot Springs, Arkansas, on April 30.  The day started typically with a full charge as we departed the Destination Charger at our hotel in St. Louis.  We reached the first Supercharger in Miner, Missouri, without difficulty, despite high winds long the way. 

We had our first charging challenge on the trip from St. Louis to Hot Springs, Arkansas, on April 30. 

The Supercharger in Miner told us we had enough charge to continue our trip at about 261 miles of range, but a few miles down the road, the car told us to go back to the Miner Supercharger for more charging.

Our next leg was to the Supercharger in Brinkley, Arkansas, a distance of about 200 miles.  The Supercharger in Miner told us we had enough charge to continue our trip at about 261 miles of range, so we started on our way even though we were not fully charged.  A few miles down the road, the car told us to exit, which we thought was strange.  We soon realized it was telling us to go back to the Miner Supercharger.

We had learned earlier in the trip to listen to the car when it told us to stop for a charge, so we turned around and returned to Minor, putting in 15 more kilowatt-hours to give the car a full charge and nearly 300 miles in range.

As we continued on our way to Brinkley—still experiencing high winds—it was clear that we were expending miles on the range indicator much faster than the miles on the odometer.  Even though the speed limit was 75 mph, the car soon started advising us to limit our speed to 70 mph in order the reach the Supercharger in Brinkley.

As our range margin continued to diminish, we decided to stop for lunch at a location that had a Level 2 charger, allowing us to “top off” with another 20 miles of range while eating.  By the time we reached Brinkley, we had less than 40 miles of range remaining, so we probably would have made it without the topping off, but the extra range gave us more security and didn’t cost us much time because we were ready to stop for lunch anyway.

After the Supercharger stop at Brinkley, we had plenty of range to reach Hot Springs, where a Destination Charger at our hotel would greet us.  Nevertheless, it was a much longer travel day than we had anticipated, and the uncertainty along the way had added stress to the day’s travel.

We drew a few conclusions from this experience. 

The car showed that we had about 300 miles of range, but it could barely make the 200-mile leg to the next Supercharger.

First, it was good we listened to the car and returned to Miner to add more range.  But the car was in error in sending us on our way the first time, costing us time and annoyance.  In addition, the range estimates shown on the car are inaccurate for high-speed highway travel and should be adjusted.  The car showed that we had about 300 miles of range, but it could barely make the 200-mile leg to the next Supercharger, even though we were traveling at or below the speed limit the entire time.  This is an area that could benefit from a software update by Tesla.

Speeds of 70-80 mph on today’s highways eat range must faster than the advertised range numbers.  At those high speeds, our Tesla is not capable of traveling 300 miles on a full charge. 

Second, as we had noted previously, speeds of 70-80 mph on today’s highways eat range must faster than the advertised range numbers.  At those high speeds, our Tesla is not capable of traveling 300 miles on a full charge.  A better estimate is 200-250 miles, depending on conditions.  And we probably had a worse-than-usual experience that day due to the high winds.

Third, if we had been traveling on a route with more Superchargers, we would not have had these challenges.  Tesla tries to locate Superchargers at intervals of no more than 150 miles.  Unfortunately, in this case, there were no other Superchargers along the 200-mile route between Miner and Brinkley.  Although the Supercharger network is excellent—and is the only reason we can make this trip—Tesla still has some work to do in filling in the density of the system in some places.

Level 2 chargers, operating at 240 volts, can’t do the whole job on a long-distance trip, but they are a great supplement if you run into difficulties. 

Fourth, our experience showed the value of Level 2 chargers, which are far more numerous than fast chargers like Tesla’s Superchargers.  Level 2 chargers, operating at 240 volts, can’t do the whole job on a long-distance trip, but they are a great supplement if you run into difficulties.  And, as shown in the PlugShare map, Level 2 chargers are nearly ubiquitous.

When we reached Hot Springs, our hotel, the Doubletree by Hilton Hot Springs, had a great set-up with three Tesla Destination Chargers.  That took care of our needs during our visit and gave us a full charge when we left for Texas on May 2.

In addition to the Doubletree, there are other options for Destination Chargers in Hot Springs.  The historic Arlington Resort Hotel, right in the heart of town, has several Destination Chargers, as does the Hotel Hot Springs and Spa.

As another option, there is a Supercharger in Little Rock on Route 30, about 50 miles on the way southwest toward Hot Springs.

Destination Charger at Hampton Inn-St. Louis Arch, St. Louis, MO

Supercharging at Miner, MO (49 kWh @ $0.34)                         $16.66

Supercharging at Miner, MO (15 kWh @ $0.34)                         $5.10

Level 2 ChargePoint at Best Western, Marion, MO

Supercharging at Brinkley, AR (53 kWh @ $0.35)                     $18.55

Destination Charger at Doubletree by Hilton Hot Springs

Total Supercharging for the trip                                                        $258.09

Hiking Trails and Other Activities in the Parks

The most obvious activity to enjoy in Hot Springs is to stroll along the row of bathhouses and the promenade behind them.  Before our visit, we did not appreciate that there are also lots of nice hiking trails in the mountains behind the bathhouses.

Bathhouse Row and Promenade                                                       .5 miles

Peak Trail to Observation Tower, Hot Springs Mt Trail,

Goat Rock Trail, Upper Dogwood and Honeysuckle Trails       6 miles

Total Hiking Miles for the trip                                                             67.2 miles

Impressions

Hot Springs is not a typical National Park, featuring a historic town and the bathhouses built over its natural hot springs.  The bathhouses are interesting both for their architectural and historic value and for illustrating how our understanding of therapeutic treatments has evolved over time.  We would have enjoyed the town more if it were less commercial and if cars and loud motorcycles didn’t race up and down Central Avenue, the main road through town.

The observation tower and hiking trails on the mountain behind the bathhouses were an added bonus for our visit, allowing us to get away from the noise and traffic in the town.

Visit Duration:  Hot Springs National Park can be seen in a day or less.  The historic bathhouses and surrounding areas can be covered in a couple of hours, and the remainder of the day can be used for hiking on the mountain trails or enjoying one of the bathhouses that continues to operate.  For the latter activity, reservations are recommended.

On the morning of May 2, we left Hot Springs, heading southwest through Arkansas for Texas, where we would enjoy our first break in the electric road trip before heading to our 11^th National Park, Big Bend in west Texas.

Leaving Bowling Green on April 29 with a full charge—thanks to the Destination Charger we enjoyed during our visit to Mammoth Cave—we headed north and west through Kentucky, Indiana, and, briefly, Illinois to the next stop on our electric road trip to all 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 states, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

The Gateway Arch was completed in 1965.  It was a National Monument until 2018, when it became a National Park.  It is the smallest National Park by area—at only 91 acres—but the Arch is the largest monument in the Western Hemisphere, measuring 630 feet high and wide.

The Gateway Arch was completed in 1965.  It was a National Monument until 2018, when it became a National Park.  It is the smallest National Park by area—at only 91 acres—but the Arch is the largest monument in the Western Hemisphere, measuring 630 feet high and wide.  The park accommodates more than 2 million visitors per year.  

Although not a typical National Park, the Gateway Arch served as an appropriate transition for our journey from the eastern parks to the Great National Parks of the west.

Although not a typical National Park, the Gateway Arch served as an appropriate transition for our journey from the eastern parks to the Great National Parks of the west.  And the history of St. Louis as a key transportation hub on the Mississippi River and as the gateway to western expansion is what justified its designation as a National Park.

Prior to the construction of the Arch, the area had been designated the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935.  This area along the banks of the Mississippi River is the location of the original buildings when St. Louis was first established as a trading outpost by the French in 1764.

The Arch is large enough to accommodate a tram to the top—a unique transportation mode that is a combination of an elevator and a ferris wheel.  The ride up is a fun experience, and the views at the top are great.

The Arch is large enough to accommodate a tram to the top—a unique transportation mode that is a combination of an elevator and a ferris wheel.  The ride up is a fun experience, and the views at the top are great.

The Arch is an amazing architectural and engineering feat, and its design, dating from the 1960s, is quite modern in appearance and has stood the test of time well.

The Arch is an amazing architectural and engineering feat, and its design, dating from the 1960s, is quite modern in appearance and has stood the test of time well.  The Arch is designed to withstand earthquakes and lightening strikes and can sway up to 18 inches in each direction in high winds.

In all, the Gateway Arch is a fun spot for a half-day visit and a symbolic transition point for a trip to the western United States.

Lodging

For our visit to the Gateway Arch, we elected to tour the park after arriving in the mid-afternoon and then spend the night at a hotel in St Louis. 

Given the short amount of time needed to tour the Arch, another option would be to continue on afterward and stay outside the city.

Our hotel in St. Louis, the Hampton Inn-St. Louis Arch, was our first bad lodging experience.

Our hotel in St. Louis, the Hampton Inn-St. Louis Arch, was our first bad lodging experience.

The hotel is well located—a few minutes walk to the Arch, just a few blocks down 4th Street.  It also had a good charging set-up, with a Tesla Destination Charger and a Level 2 charger in a protected parking garage.

Unfortunately, this Hampton Inn does not meet the usual standards of its parent Hilton brand.  The rooms need modernization, and the one we initially received had a bad odor.  The hotel representatives changed our room, but the manager on duty was rude, and the second room also smelled.  The furniture in the room was sticky, indicating poor cleaning, and the bed linens didn’t fit the mattress.  We couldn’t wait to leave the next morning.

Other options to consider in St. Louis with Destination Chargers are the Four Seasons Hotel, the Hotel St. Louis, and the Magnolia Hotel.  The Hyatt Regency on Chestnut Street, even closer to the Arch with a direct view of the park, has a 14-50 outlet that can be used for charging with a Mobile Connector.

For our one night in St. Louis we found a good dinner restaurant, the Sugarfire Smoke House, just a few blocks from the hotel.  The restaurant serves BBQ meals cafeteria style, with an informal atmosphere.  Unfortunately, they had run out of ribs by the time we arrived, but the cheeseburger and everything else we ordered were excellent.

Charging

Charging was again uneventful for our travel to Gateway Arch National Park.  We left Kentucky and Mammoth Cave in the morning with a full battery thanks to the Destination Charger at the Courtyard by Marriott in Bowling Green.  On the way, we stopped for lunch and Supercharging at Mt. Vernon, Illinois.  As always, eating our lunch took longer than the charging.

As always, eating our lunch took longer than the charging.

The Supercharging gave us plenty of range to drive to St. Louis, where our hotel had two Destination Chargers to give us another free full “tank” for our departure the next morning.

There are also three Tesla Superchargers on the highways leading into and out of St. Louis, so there were plenty of charging options.  But as noted in previous articles, Destination Chargers at hotels, whenever available, are always the preferred choice because they are typically free, save time by charging overnight rather than during the day, and allow a full charge when needed.

Destination Charger at Courtyard by Marriott, Bowling Green, KY

Supercharging at Mt. Vernon, IL (54 kWh @ $0.41)                  $22.14

Destination Charger at Hampton Inn-St. Louis Arch

Total Supercharging for the trip                                                        $217.78

Hiking Trails and Other Activities in the Parks

Other than the tour of the Arch, there’s not much else to do at Gateway Arch National Park at the time of our visit.  The park encompasses 91 acres, and the landscaped grounds are worth a stroll to get different vantage points on the Arch and the Mississippi River.  The park also includes the Old Courtyard where the initial Dred Scott trials occurred, but it was close for renovations at the time of our visit.

Strolling the grounds around the Arch                               —

Total Hiking Miles for the trip                                                 60.7 miles

Impressions

Gateway Arch is a beautiful and amazing piece of architecture and engineering, one that looks modern even a half century after its conceptualization and construction.  The landscaped grounds make for a pleasurable stroll and some great photo opportunities, and it’s well worth a half day to tour the Visitor Center and ride the tram to the top of the Arch.

Visit Duration: This is a “drive-by” National Park, one that can be covered in a partial day.  We spent about a half hour touring the grounds and taking photos of the Arch.  The trip up to the top of the Arch takes another hour, allowing another hour or two for the exhibits in the Visitor Center, which explain the history of St. Louis as the key gateway in the opening of the west to settlement as well as the construction of the Arch.  There is also a movie, which we missed due to the late-afternoon timing of our tickets to the top.

Another historic landmark, across the street from the Arch, is the Old Courthouse, site of the first two trials in the Dred Scott case in 1847 and 1850.  Unfortunately, during our visit, the courthouse was closed for renovations.

On the morning of April 30, we left St. Louis and the Gateway Arch, heading south and west through Missouri and Arkansas for our next National Park, Hot Springs.

Leaving Berry Springs Lodge B&B on April 27 with a full charge—thanks to the Destination Charger we enjoyed during our visit to Great Smoky Mountains—we headed west and north through Tennessee to Kentucky and the next stop on our electric road trip to all 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 states, Mammoth Cave.

Mammoth Cave National Park was authorized in 1926 but was not formally established until 1941.  It enjoys about 600,000 annual visitors.

Before our visit, we kept forgetting whether the name is Mammoth Cave or Mammoth Caves.  After visiting the park, it’s now easy to remember, after learning from the exhibits at the Visitor Center and the Ranger-led tours that the cave system is one massive—or mammoth—interconnected series of tunnels.

Mammoth Cave is one massive—or mammoth—interconnected series of tunnels.  To date, about 420 miles of the cave have been explored and mapped. 

To date, about 420 miles of the cave have been explored and mapped.  Experts estimate there could be another 600 miles yet to be explored.

In addition to the massive cave system, the park includes 586,000 acres of land on the surface.

Mammoth Cave is the result of some unique geological history in the region. 

Mammoth Cave is the result of some unique geological history in the region.  More than 300 million years ago, when the Earth had a single supercontinent called Pangaea, the area that is now central Kentucky was a large shallow sea, resulting in the formation of a layer of limestone about 400 feet in depth.  Later, as the Appalachian Mountains formed, rivers running from the mountains deposited layers of soil and sand, creating a capstone layer of sandstone over millions of years.  Over the last few million years, sinks have formed in the region, channeling water through cracks in the sandstone, and the underground sources of the Green River, which runs through the area, have carved interconnected tunnels in the limestone.

The Rangers at the park like to say that Mammoth Cave is “the Grand Canyon with a roof.”

The sandstone layer on top resulted in a cave structure rather than a canyon, as typically occurred in other areas where rivers flow through limestone.  In fact, the Rangers at the park like to say that Mammoth Cave is “the Grand Canyon with a roof.”

The trails around the Visitor Center give a good in-person appreciation for the how the layers of sandstone and limestone, together with the sinks that channel water through the tunnels, resulted in the formation of such a massive cave.

The activities during our visit were well sequenced to appreciate the cave system and its origins.  As always, we started our visit with a tour of the nice new, solar-powered visitor center and its excellent exhibits, which explain the geological history.  We then spent the rest of the afternoon hiking 4 miles of the trails around the center.  Those give a good in-person appreciation for the how the layers of sandstone and limestone, together with the sinks that channel water through the tunnels, have resulted in the formation of such a massive cave.

Various sources had recommended two particular cave tours—the Extended Historic Tour and the Domes and Dripstone Tour.  Our experience was that both of those were great tours—and a good combination to appreciate the cave in two very different ways.

The next morning, we traveled back from Bowling Green for a full day, with plenty of time for two cave tours, which we had reserved in advance through the National Park Service ticketing system, Recreation.gov.  Various sources had recommended two particular cave tours—the Extended Historic Tour and the Domes and Dripstone Tour.  Our experience was that both of those were great tours—and a good combination to appreciate the cave in two very different ways.

We started in the morning of our full day at the park with the Domes and Dripstones Tour.  This tour enters through one of the man-made entrances to the cave—an entrance that was initially built as part of a private for-profit enterprise prior to the establishment of the park.  The tour is led by a Ranger and includes a ride in a bus for a few minutes from the Visitor Center to the entrance.

The Domes and Dripstones Tour, about two hours in duration and relatively short in distance at less than a mile, starts with a series of steel stairs down about 300 feet. 

The Domes and Dripstones Tour, about two hours in duration and relatively short in distance at less than a mile, starts with a series of steel stairs down about 300 feet.  One of the initial stops is a large amphitheater deep underground where the Ranger provides information about the cave and then turns the lights off to show what total darkness “looks” like.  The tour traverses several domes and ends with some spectacular formations, including Frozen Niagara.  This area of Mammoth Cave is quite wet, which results in the formation of such stalactites and stalagmites.  The tour ends with a relatively gradual return to the surface, emerging at a different exit.

Lunch options between morning and afternoon tours are relatively limited.  There is a lunch shack in a temporary building near the Visitor Center.  We decided to try the local restaurants at Cave City and Park City, which are on Interstate 65 a few miles from the park.  After driving through each town, we were disappointed in the options and decided to head back to the park for a burger at the snack bar.

The Historic Tour enters through the Natural Entrance, which is a short walk down from the Visitor Center.  And as the name also implies, there is a lot of interesting history with the Extended Tour.

In the afternoon, we took our second tour of Mammoth Cave, the Extended Historic Tour.  As the name implies, this is similar to the Historic Tour, but a little longer.  The Historic Tour enters through the Natural Entrance, which is a short walk down from the Visitor Center.  And as the name also implies, there is a lot of interesting history with the Extended Tour.

In contrast to the Domes and Dripstones Tour, the Historic Tour traverses a very old and dry section of Mammoth Cave.  The entrance is a huge cave opening, and after passing through a security gate, visitors enter a series of massive tunnels.  It is difficult to describe the scale of these tunnels, but the two thoughts that kept going through my mind were that we were in some kind of a prehistoric subway system or on the location of an Indiana Jones movie.

The Historic Tour proceeds rapidly through some massive tunnels, which helps to convey the enormity of the cave system.  Along the way, there is much history.

The Historic Tour proceeds rapidly through these tunnels, which helps to convey the enormity of the cave system.  Along the way, there is much history, including evidence of early activity by Native Americans.  In the initial sections of the cave the tour passes the well-preserved remains of leaching pits used during the War of 1812 to process saltpeter for gunpowder.  Later, the tour passes out-of-place stone houses that were used for a few years to house people suffering from tuberculosis, in an ill-founded experiment to see if living in the cave could provide an effective treatment.

Toward the end of the tour, which lasts about 2-1/4 hours, visitors pass through much narrower sections of the cave, including passages called by the self-explanatory names of Fat Man’s Misery and Tall Man’s Misery.

The 2-1/2 miles of the Extended Historic Tour do a great job of conveying the vastness of Mammoth Cave and is a great combination with the different experience offered by the Domes and Dripstones Tour.

In all, the 2-1/2 miles of the Extended Historic Tour do a great job of conveying the vastness of Mammoth Cave and is a great combination with the different experience offered by the Domes and Dripstones Tour.

Lodging

Bowling Green, Kentucky, is the place to stay when visiting Mammoth Cave.  It is a very pleasant small city, home to Bowling Green State University.  Although it is about a half-hour drive to the park, there are no good options closer to the park, and visits are typically only one day, so you don’t have to make the trip multiple times.

Bowling Green, Kentucky, is the place to stay when visiting Mammoth Cave. 

We stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott Bowling Green Convention Center, which has four Destination Chargers in the back of the hotel.  We were very pleased with this hotel, which is a modern facility with clean, spacious rooms.

In the past, we have found that hotels at convention centers can create issues with noise and bad behavior.  But we had no issues with that during our stay at the Courtyard, even though there was a Corvette convention taking place during our visit.

The Hilton Garden Inn is right next door and also has chargers—though only two—and could be another good choice in the area.

We found two good restaurants for our nights in Bowling Green—Hickory and Oak and Montana Grill.

We found two good restaurants for our nights in Bowling Green.  The first night, we walked to the Montana Grill, which is within view of the Courtyard by Marriott.  That was a well-rated restaurant, and we would rate it as good, with a very nice National Park look and feel.  The second night we drove to another part of town to the Hickory and Oak, which was excellent. 

Charging

Charging was uneventful for our visit to Mammoth Cave National Park—the way it should be.  We left Great Smoky Mountains with a full battery thanks to the Destination Charger at Berry Springs Lodge.  On the way, we stopped for lunch at Chipotle and Supercharging at Crossville, Tennessee.  As always, eating our lunch took longer than the charging.

The Supercharging gave us plenty of range to drive past Bowling Green on our way to Mammoth Cave for the afternoon and then back to the Destination Charger at our hotel in the evening.

With the Destination Charger at the Courtyard by Marriott, we had plenty of range to drive back and forth to the park and to dinner in Bowling Green. 

With the Destination Charger at the Courtyard by Marriott, we had plenty of range to drive back and forth to the park and to dinner in Bowling Green.  And we left with a full charge for our next destination, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, after our two-night visit in Bowling Green and Mammoth Cave.

This is the way the charging will always be in the future.  Start the morning with a full “tank,” charge along the way while eating lunch, and charge again at the next destination.  And this future is not far off, as most of our stops on our National Parks electric road trip are already this way, with more Destination Chargers and Superchargers being added all the time.  In fact, in the year since planning this trip, there are already more options for hotels with Destination Chargers, and the relatively few gaps in the Supercharger network are being rapidly filled in.

As another option for charging at Mammoth Cave, there is also a Tesla Supercharger in Bowling Green.  But with Destination Chargers at the Courtyard, we did not need to use the Supercharger.  When available, Destination Chargers are always the preferred choice because they are typically free, save time by charging overnight rather than during the day, and allow a full charge when needed.

Destination Charger at Berry Springs, Great Smoky Mountains

Supercharging at Crossville, TN (34 kWh @ $0.34)       $10.59

Destination Charger at Courtyard by Marriott, Bowling Green, KY

Total Supercharging for the trip                                                        $195.64

Hiking Trails and Other Activities in the Parks

We knew in advance that we would be taking two cave tours during our visit to Mammoth Cave National Park.  What we did not know was how many above-ground trails surround the area of the Visitor Center—and how interesting they would be in helping to understand the geology of the cave system.  If you visit, make sure you allow time for seeing at least some of those trails.

If you visit, make sure you allow time for seeing at least some of the above-ground trails.

The other surprise about Mammoth Cave is how much surface area the park covers.  You get an appreciation for that as you drive several miles from the park entrance to the Visitor Center where the cave tours originate.  It’s not just about the cave tours below ground.  There are large areas above ground to explore within the park and lots of nature trails and camping sites.

River Styx Spring, Echo River Springs, Sinkhole,

and Heritage Trails                                                                     3.7 miles

Domes and Dripstones Tour                                                    .8 mile

Extended Historical Tour                                                         2.5 miles

Total Hiking Miles for the trip                                                 60.7 miles

Impressions

Mammoth Cave is well named.  Until you have walked through miles of underground tunnels, it is difficult to appreciate the cave’s vastness.  The local Rangers have it right when they call it “the Grand Canyon without a roof.”  Like the Grand Canyon, the park is well worth a visit, both to appreciate its enormity and to gain an understanding of how powerful geological forces have changed and shaped the Earth over millions of years.

If your time is limited, you can’t go wrong with the Historic Tour, or its Extended version.  But two different tours are definitely worth the time and expense to gain an appreciation for both the size and diversity of the cave.

Visit Duration: The duration of a visit to Mammoth Cave is pretty straightforward—a day to do a tour or two, with a little hiking around the Visitor Center to get an understanding of the geology of the area.  We did our above-ground exploration during the afternoon of our arrival, and that was enjoyable.  But there is enough time between two tours—one in the morning and one in the afternoon—to eat lunch and do some hiking around the Visitor Center in one day.

Camping in the area is also an option, which could extend a visit to a couple of days, if desired.

On the morning of April 29, we left Bowling Green and Mammoth Cave, heading north and west through Kentucky and Indiana—and very briefly, Illinois—for our next national park, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri.