We left the Nevada border town of
Mesquite, NV, and headed into… Arizona, a state that we didn’t realize we would
drive through on this trip. Apparently
I-15 cuts through the northeast corner of AZ on its way to southern CA. That means that we’ll end up driving in 16
states on this trip.
We took the scenic route of our
town to Valley of Fire State Park—given the drought, it’s probably an accurate
name. The drive to the park was across
desert land spotted with scrubby brush and the occasional desert flowers, but
nothing spectacular. And then we turned
the corner to look into the valley, which makes it easy to see why the park is
named what it is. The unexpected rock
formations, with their vibrant red against the vivid blue skies, were well
worth the $10 we had to pay for our 15-minute drive-through of the park. We then followed the northeast side of Lake
Mead National Recreation Area, with a glimpse of the lake among rolling hills
and mountains.
 |
| Valley of Fire State Park, NV |
 |
| Beehives at Valley of Fire State Park, NV |
*******
Coming into the east side of
Vegas, we saw a number of cars on the side of the road watching something up in
the air. It was an F16 as shown below. It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that
we realized it was part of the Nellis
Air Force Base Open House, aka their yearly airshow. This was the first bad travel luck of the
trip, which is pretty amazing for a 4,000 mile drive across the I-90 route in
November.
Here’s what I mean by bad luck: LJ
is a total airplane nerd and had even looked up the Thunderbird shows at the
beginning of the year to see if he would be anywhere near one of them for a
business trip. Of course, that was months
before this startup job and the Tesla Super Trip were even a remote possibility. The only reason we even realized that there
was an airshow is that I saw this smoke loop as we were walking back to get the
Tesla at 3:12 pm, three minutes before the Thunderbirds portion of the airshow was
scheduled to end.
*******
Anyone who’s been to Vegas may
know this, but it’s really two towns (or more).
There’s the bright lights and high-end casinos and hotels whose names
many people know, like the Bellagio and the Venetian. And then there’s old Vegas, the part in the
city limits.
Back in January, Wired magazine
ran an article about how Zappos
moved its headquarters to Vegas and is buying up defunct property to revitalize
it. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Tesla
charger in Vegas is only blocks away from the Downtown Container Park that Hsieh
(the Zappos CEO) had built. It’s a trendy
area of small shops and restaurants that would be at home in any gentrifying
area and has a 40-foot-tall praying mantis sculpture to increase the quirkiness
factor.
This Tesla SuperCharger was
unique in a couple ways: it was the first one we’ve seen that was in a parking
deck—and it was the first one where we saw any vehicle other than a Tesla
parked in the spaces. Here’s a picture
of the clearly-not-a-Tesla that was taking up one of the six spaces. Luckily there was only one other Tesla there
so we had no trouble charging up.
 |
| Not a Tesla |
*******
After lunch at a BBQ place in the
Downtown Container Park, we walked over to The
Mob Museum. In case you’re ever in
Vegas with time to kill in the daytime, it was a fantastic place to visit.
When we got in line to buy
tickets, there were surprisingly few people paying with a credit card. The guy working the ticket window where he
could only take credit or debit cards had to keep announcing that he could take
the next person in line. We were both
puzzled as to why no one used a card. Then
I remembered that we were in Vegas, about the same time that I saw the guy in
front of us in line peel a $20 off the stack of bills that he pulled out of his
pocket.
*******
We left Vegas with a completely
full charge, which meant that our next stop in Barstow was a short one. If you recognize this town name, it’s
probably from the sign at the other end of I-40 in Wilmington.
On the way out of Vegas, we
stopped by the Ivanpah Solar Power
Facility. Over 300,000 mirrors
concentrating sunlight to heat up steam and generate electricity. We were there just as each of the three solar
towers turned off. Edison (the Tesla’s
name) did not seem to recognize how much battery juice was being generated
right there.
 |
| Edison (the Tesla) at the Ivanpah Solar Facility, CA |
*******
The final SuperCharger stop of
the night was at Tejon Ranch at yet another outlet mall. While I appreciate the convenience of having
the SuperChargers near shopping and restaurants, stopping at this many shopping
centers over the course of over a week gets a bit tiring and monotonous. The stop for the night was in Bakersfield,
CA, at a Hampton Inn where we could get a free night on Hilton points.
Day 7 stats:
478.8 miles in 7 days having used
150.8 kWh and 3 SuperChargers:
·
Las
Vegas, NV
·
Barstow,
CA
·
Tejon
Ranch, CA
Overall
trip: 3859.6
miles in 7 days, having used 1344.6 kWh total
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