“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.  So, throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

“Better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.” – Asian Proverb

Whistler, British Columbia – Fitzsimmons Creek

Well just got back from vacation.  Great road trip but it feels good to be home.  Decided to go to the Pacific North West.  Made it all the way North to Whistler the Ski Area in British Columbia.  Went through Glenwood Springs – Colorado, Ogden – Utah, Prosser – Washington, Monroe – Washington, Bellingham – Washington (our longest stay), up to Whistler for a day and then retraced most of the route back home.

Glenwood Springs, Colorado – Hot Springs

Ogden, Utah – Catholic Church

The longest stay was Bellingham, Washington – this was about 5 days.  It reminded me a lot of Fort Collins.  Brewery after brewery after brewery.  Bike trails, hiking trails, great restaurants.  And you have the ocean at your doorstep.  It was good to see new places and experience new things, meet some interesting people, and see some of the family that we had not seen in a long time.  The road trip was 14 days in length and covered about 3500 miles of driving.

Bellingham, Washington

Bellingham, Washington

We decided to take our new car, a Toyota Prius – Prime.  A gas hybrid.  And this was a kind of eye opener to what battery powered cars are capable of.  Out of driving 3500 miles our gas mileage averaged about 64.2 miles per gallon.  Which is really good but if there were more “convenient” charging stations, the miles per gallon would have been way higher.  Probably in the 100mpg range.  This was traveling between 65 to 80mph depending on the state laws, fully loaded.  Janet and I packed way too much!  LOL

The weak link in electric powered cars is the charging stations.  There are a lot out there but they are not all convenient.  Every motel, very grocery story, every park, every movie theater, every downtown parking area, every restaurant, etc.…  Needs charging stations.  Any place that you are going to park for an hour or more.  Out of a full fourteen days of driving and exploring we only ended up charging twice.  And the main reason for this was “convenience.”  We found one charger at a downtown public parking area in Bellingham Washington.  This worked out great to go out for dinner, shopping and just walking around while the car charged.  The second one was in a Grocery store / shopping center parking lot in Park City.  Again, this worked out great to load up on groceries, drink a little coffee and to do some other local exploring.  Not one motel that we stayed at had a charging station.  What a perfect place if you are traveling.  You could charge the car each night and it would be ready to go the next AM.  The Toyota got about 50 miles on the battery with in-town driving and about 20 miles on the battery with highway driving and the air conditioner on.  We did a lot of in-town exploring with the car at each stop and figured that at least 500 miles of the trip could have all been on battery power with access to more charging stations.

Views from Mount Baker Ski Area, Washington

I used the app called Plug-Share and it did a great job of helping to find charging stations, but again in a lot of situations they were not convenient.  The technology is out there to vastly reduce the use of fossil fuels.  It just needs to be put in place.  Tesla has a lot of charging stations and seems to get the idea of convenience.  A large Fred Meyer Grocery Store in Monroe, Washington had seven Tesla charge stations in the parking lot.  But unless you own a Tesla you cannot use them because of the amperage.  Tesla’s are superchargers and if we tried to use one it would “melt” our battery.

Anacortes, Washington

Again, a great trip.  Hope you enjoyed this short overview of it.  There were a lot more pictures and things to say, insights and reflections to share.  But I figured this was enough.  Hope everyone has a great week.  See you next week.  Adios amigos!!!