Below is a photo of our home in Vancouver, Washington, that we moved into in 2020. One of the first things we did after moving in was to install a large array of solar panels and 4 PowerWalls from Tesla. The middle photo in the top row below shows the solar panels on our roof. The right photo in the top row below shows all the control panels outside our home associated with the solar panel system and the Tesla PowerWalls. On the second row below you can see our 4 Tesla Powerwalls and two GE Level II EV chargers. I used to have two 80amp Tesla High Power Wall Connectors (HPWC) at a prior house, but I left those there. These 2 Level II EV charges were left over from a Toyota Plug-In Prius that I used to own before buying my first Tesla Model S in 2013. I have 2 EV chargers as I also own a 2016 Tesla Model X P90DL and like the convenience of charging both at the same time. Even though each of these chargers only provide 35 amps, that is plenty to charge a Tesla EV overnight.
Our Tesla solar panels and Tesla PowerWalls provide2 all the electricity we need to charge both our Tesla EV and to power our home all year. We haven't had to pay the electric utility company for years. We are fortunate that our public utility credits us for all the excess electricity we send to them, and then uses those credits to cover the cost of the electricity they send back to us when we require it. Unlike other utility companies, they credit us using the same cost per KWH as they charge per KWH when we take KWHs from the utility. Vancouver, Washington, is at such a northern latitute that the days are very long during summer. The solar panels generate far more electricity than we can use during summer and we end up with a lot of KWH credits by winter. In winter, the days are very short and often overcast so our solar panels don't generate a lot of electricity during winter. It is during the winter that we start using the credits we generated during the summer. But even during the winter, the solar panels generate enough electricity to cover much of our electric needs, but not all of it. So, during the winter, we use the KWH credits we earned with the public utility to supplement our electric needs.
My wife was scheduled to come down to the Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California, for 5 days of treatments. Nothing serious. Since I love driving my 2015 Tesla Model S P85DL more than any rental car, my first thoughts were to just drive from Vancouver, Washington, down to Palo Alto, California, so I'd have my own car for the week we were there.
Since I'd driven many many times the 2,000 mile round-trip between our home in Vancouver, Washington, and our vacation house in Anaheim, California, in my Tesla EV, I figure this would be a lot easier than that at little more than half the round-trip distance of that. I was figuring we'd just do the trip in one day each way with no overnight hotel stays. It wasn't until later, but before our drive, that I checked Google Maps and found that the one way drive would be 684 miles and be over 10 hours of driving each way without charging stops. Once I realized that, we decided to make an overnight stop each way on our trip at about the half-way point, after about 340 miles and 5 or so hours of driving the first day.
While we were on the trip, we realized this may have been a bit silly. After I realized that I had under-estimated the length of this trip, we should have just flown round-trip and rented a car. We have enough points on Southwest Airliners that the flight wouldn't have cost any money and it is only a 1 hours and 20 minute non-stop flight from Portland to San Jose, California. The cost of a rental car would probably not have been much more than the cost of a hotel for 2 nights that we needed during the drive. But we didn't realize this until we were already well into our drive and a few hundred miles from home. Well, on the upside, I'd have my 2015 Tesla Model S P85DL all week with its Autopilot and other advanced features that I love to drive instead of an inferior gas powered rental vehicle.
We left our home in Vancouver, Washington, about noon on Friday, January 30, 2026. I just let the onboard Tesla route planner figure out what Tesla Superchargers I should stop at and for how long I should charge at each. Many years ago I used to plan my charging stops manually. But, when Tesla came out with their onboard route planner, I started comparing my planning to the automatic Tesla route planning. The onboard Tesla route-planning turning out to be much better than my own manual calculations of where I should stop to charge and for how long. When I did the route planning, I tended to be way over-conservative. When I first started doing manual route planning, I'd make sure that I never had less than double the amount of miles remaining on the battery that I needed to reach the next Tesla Supercharger. In contrast, the onboard Tesla Route planner often had me arriving at each Tesla Supercharger with less than 40 miles of range remaining on the battery and to depart when I only had about 20% more than I needed to get to the next Tesla Supercharger. Since the battery charges a lot faster when it is closer to empty, the Tesla onboard route planner made my charging stops much shorter than my own overly conservative planning. This really cut down how long the drive takes and still leaves an adequate safety margin. Since there are far more Tesla Supercharger locations across the nation today than there were when I purchased my first Tesla EV in 2013, it is almost always possible to stop and charge at an earlier and different Supercharger than the one indicated by the onboard Tesla Route Planner if the battery starts running low earlier than expected due to unexpected circumstances such as road closures, detours, etc. But that is rare as the onboard Tesla Route Planner is usually aware of highway delays and takes them into consideration.
On a side note, Elon Musk just announced a couple of days ago that the production of the Tesla Model S and the Tesla Model X would be discontinued this year so the Fremont, California, factory could be reconfigured to produce the Tesla Optimus Robot. The Tesla Fremont factory is the ONLY factory in the world that has ever manufactured the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X. No matter where you encounter one of these Tesla models in the world, it was built in the Tesla Fremont factory. Other Tesla factories such as those in Texas, Germany and China produce either the Tesla Model 3, the Tesla Model Y, or both, but none have ever manufactured a Tesla Model S or Tesla Model X. The only assembly line for those was in Fremont. So, converting that factory to produce the Tesla Optimus Robot meant the end of the line for the S and X models. That is a bit sad for me as I own a 2015 Tesla Model S and a 2016 Tesla Model X currently. They are my favorite models and I was hoping to buy a newer version of one or the other of them once Full Self Driving (FSD) has been perfected and out on the road for a couple of years. But I guess that won't be happening. Someday I'll probably have to replace my existing Tesla EVs with a Tesla Model Y, or some other Tesla model that doesn't exist yet. I'd really love Tesla to come up with a 7 or 8 passenger minivan that looks like a real minivan, and not like the Tesla Model X or Model Y SUV.
This first Tesla Supercharger stop was at a location that appears to once have been a gas station. There were also some signs indicating that food was once sold here but now the building was vacant. Only one of the two restrooms were still operational and were reserved for just Tesla owners. As you can see from the above, you had to have the Tesla App on your mobile phone in order to obtain the lock code to enter the restroom. There was a big puddle over the drain in the middle of the floor. My only guess was the sink was leaking and caused the puddle. It appears that someone had turned the sink valve to an almost closed position to stop the leak. They left it open enough to allow a small trickle of water to still come out of the faucet, enough to wash your hands, but not enough to add to the puddle.
As you can see from the above photos, this Supercharger was pretty empty. There was one other Tesla there, but he left almost at the same time that I arrived. As you will see below, most of the Tesla Superchargers on this trip were pretty empty. Probably because there weren't many people taking road trips on this Saturday. The roads were pretty empty for this entire trip with almost zero traffic. People on Quora.com often ask if EV owners get frustrated having to wait for their turn at EV chargers. I've owned a Tesla EV since 2013 and traveled over 200,000 miles in my Tesla EVs. Over 13 years I only had to wait 3 times for an open Tesla Supercharger. In my experience, waiting for a Tesla Supercharger is a rare event, and is getting even more rare as Tesla continues installing more and more Supercharger locations, and more Superchargers at each location.
This location had a huge number of Tesla Superchargers! When I pulled in, there were almost no other Tesla EVs there, but by the time I left, there were about a dozen there including a Tesla Cybertruck. This location has many eating establishments including a Taco Bell, Starbucks, Dutch Bros coffee, Subway, Dakota Street Pizza Company, and others.
After dinner at the Italian Restaurant, we charged our Tesla Model S all the way up to 80% so that we would be able to drive further when we started out in the morning.
We did stop for a few minutes at the Tesla Superchargers in Corning, California, but forgot to take any photos at the stop. There were 6 150kW Tesla Superchargers here, and according to Google Maps, another two 75kW Tesla Urban Superchargers.
I would not want to live in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are too many people, cars and traffic. I guess the nice thing about this area is that it has so many people that there are restaurants, stores, and other things everywhere. You hardly need to drive more than a few blocks to get to whatever you need.
Both Orange County, California, and the Portland-OR/Vancouver-WA area are much more suburbanized, except for right in Downtown Portland (which is concentrated in about one square mile). From my home in Vancouver and my house in Anaheim, I pretty much have to drive at least 5 miles to get to anything. Most of the stores, restaurants, music venues that I frequent in either place is between 10 and 20 miles from my houses. Even The Fling is about 10 miles from my Anaheim House and the Vancouver Waterfront is more than 5 miles from my Vancouver home. So that is the nicer thing about this Bay Area.
But the most important bad thing about this area is that I can't find much live music here. I've been searching for years. There seems to be some on Friday and Saturday evenings at some places sometimes. But I haven't been able to find anywhere like The Fling that has live classic rock music every night of the week, or like The 1905 in Portland that has jazz almost every night every week, or like Blue Diamond that has live blues almost every night.
There are dozens of venues in the Portland / Vancouver area that have live music almost every night, and many more that have live music every weekend and others that have it sporadically. Orange County, beyond The Fling, are other places that have it every weekend and many that have it sporadically, but nothing like the Portland / Vancouver area, which is one reason we moved there. But this area, I can hardly find any live music at all. I have a list of places from years ago, but most of those are just on weekends sometimes, with maybe a few sporadically. San Francisco doesn't count, any more than Los Angeles counts. I would never go into the big city for music. I hardly ever go into even Downtown Portland for live music. Most of the music venues are far out into the Portland suburbs. Those are the reasons why I would not find this an appetizing place to live.
Also, there is something terribly wrong with the traffic lights in this area. In many parts of Southern California, when you approach a traffic light, it immediately turns GREEN if there are no cars approaching from the other street. At many intersections the traffic lights are computerized and coordinated with cameras and street sensors. It saves time, and for any community concerned about the environment, it reduces emissions of gas cars just sitting waiting at a red light when there is absolutely zero cross traffic. Also, there are many intersections here that don't allow a right turn at a red light.
Here, I find myself often sitting at a red light for a minute or more with absolutely no cross traffic at all! No wonder it takes 20 minutes to drive just 2 miles, even with no traffic! I also find myself wanting to made a right turn on red when there is zero cross traffic and I have a totally unobstructed view of oncoming traffic, but I can't because a sign says a right on red is not allowed.
Most of the intersections have no intelligence at all, no equipment for sensing traffic. I see that some do have cameras and road sensors, but they evidently aren't implemented. This causes trips to take far longer than necessary and adds to poor fuel economy and pollution as gas cars just sit idling at red lights for no reason. For a region known for its "green" awareness, they seem pretty ignorant about traffic management.
Fortunately, my Tesla Navigation is intelligent enough to often send me up a back road, Alma Street, that is parallel to El Camino Real. It runs right along the other side of the Caltrain tracks so has very few traffic signals since few streets cross the tracks. I was wondering why my Tesla Navigation kept diverting me to Alma Street when Stanford is right up El Camino Real (82).
After arriving at our hotel, we went for a great Indian Buffet Dinner with a friend that lives in Fremont, California. They have an excellet buffet dinner on Fridays & Saturdays, 5pm to 9pm.
We ordered the Appetizer Sampler Plate which gave us a nice selection of a number of items. I ordered the Yokut Red Blend Wine from Eastern Anatolia, Turkiye, to go along with the Mideastern Food.
They have a daily lunch buffet and a Special Dinner Buffet with Live Chaat Station just on Thursday. They have Pelli Bhojanam (Unlimited Thali) Monday to Wedneday dinner. That is what we went for. The amount of food they served was amazing! I got the Vegetarian Unlimited Thali and my wife got the Non-Vegetarian Unlimited Thali. For each of us that included: Pulka, Special Rice, Dal Curry, One South Indian Vegetarian Special Curry, One South Indian Special Fry Curry, Dosa (Home Style), White Rice, Sambar, Rasam, Curd Rice, Roti Pachadi (Veg Pickle), Peanut Chutney, Home Made Fresh Curd, Papad and Dessert. My Unlimited Vegetarian Thali also came with One North Indian Special Vegetarian Curry and Vegetarian Dum Biryani. My wife's Unliminted Non-Vegetarian Thali also came with Andhra Chicken Curry and Chicken Dum Biryani.
The server kept coming around asking if we wanted more of anything since they were Unlimited Thali. There was so much food that my wife and I couldn't even come close to finishing what they had already served us. It appeared they were allowing people to take home their left-overs, but as we are staying at a hotel, it would be difficult to store all that food in our small hotel refrigerator that was already full with food and drinks that we had purchased earlier.
Not everyone might like the spice level. The spice level was more than medium. It wasn't super spiced, but anyone adverse to spice would find it too much. Even someone like me who is somewhat used to spice found my nose running constantly while eating. There were a lot of Indians eating at the restaurant as I'm sure they found it to be very authentic. The restaurant itself was good size with maybe 30 tables and there were more than 20 people dining when we were there. My wife looked up the reviews and found that it mostly had excellent reviews.
They also have another location in Pleasanton and expect to open another new location in Newark, California.
First I stopped at the Tesla chargers in the parking garage at the Stanford Shopping Center. There are 20 Supercharger Stalls there, but I forgot to first check the charging levels they supported. They are Tesla Urban Chargers that only support up to 72kW max. I realized that in about 5 minutes, so left and instead went to another Tesla Supercharger location that was just a few blocks away on Bryant Street in Palo Alto. This one has 19 Stalls at 250kW max.
I purchased my first Tesla in 2013. It was a Model S with no Autopilot. Actually it had NO features that most modern cars have. It didn't even have proximity warnings and I once backed into a Level II EV charger as I got no warning. When Tesla came out with a new model that had very advanced features including Autopilot, I wanted to trade up to that model. Barbara's sister and spouse were so impressed when they rode in my 2013 Tesla that they wanted to buy it from me. So I sold them my 2013 Tesla Model S when I purchased my new 2015 Tesla Model S P85DL. Since that time, they first purchased a Tesla Model S, later replaced that with a Tesla Model 3, and most recently replaced that with a Tesla Model Y.
This town definitely takes advantage of their unique name. There is one souvenier shop right at the freeway exit and another directly across the street from the Tesla Superchargers. While our Tesla was charging, we stepped into the "Enjoy Weed ShacK" and picked up a few "weed" themed souveniers, some for our friends and relatives.
We've done trips between Southern California and Vancouver, Washington, in both our 2015 Tesla Model S and 2016 Tesla Model X, and even our original 2013 Tesla Model S, many times so we were very familiar with this route. The entire trip is just straight along the I-5 for about 1,000 miles. We usually make one or two overnight stops during the drive. Since we were only driving up from the San Francisco Bay Area this time and not all the way up from Southern California, we only planned one overnight stay close to the middle of the trip. Ashland, Oregon, is pretty close to the half way point.
We booked this Comfort Inn & Suites through the hotel discount website Super.com. Even if you check Trivago.com, you'll find that it often lists Super.com as having the lowest cost to book a hotel room. We only paid about $70 for our one night stay. This was well below most hotels in the Ashland area.
We were very impressed with the room, especially for the price. The hotel was completely refurbished in January 2025 so everything was new. It may even have new owners / managers. Below is the review that I left at Travelocity.com.
This hotel was totally refurbished around January 2025. Almost everything is new. The rooms have a big TV, a good size refrigerator, a microwave, coffee maker, and even the room itself is pretty large compared to the size of rooms at many newly built motels. There are night stands on both sides of the bed which many hotels lack, and the lamps on each side of the bed have 2 AC outlets each. We were driving from the San Francisco Bay Area to Portland, Washington, and we often do an overnight stay in this area half way through our trip. Anytime we do this trip in the future, this is going to be where we stay midtrip. It is easy on/off from the I-5 freeway with plenty of free parking. There is a driveway right up to the front door to make loading / unloading real easy. There is a comfy lobby with seating and a faux fireplace. They have a breakfast area with free hot breakfast in the morning. As others have mentioned, it is just a few miles from Downtown Ashland and all the tourist attractions of the area. It was also one of the least cost hotels in the region when we stayed.
My wife's nephews live in Talent, Oregon, just a couple of miles from Downtown Ashland. We purposely picked staying overnight in Ashland so that we could visit with them. We went out to dinner with them at Gather Cafe Bistro Bar in Talent, Oregon. The menu was eclectic international. They offered a few Indian dishes so we ordered the Chicken Tikka which was excellent! The decor of the restaurant was as eclectic as the menu.
Our older nephew purchased a Tesla Model S a few years ago and our younger nephew purchased a new Tesla Model Y with Full Self Driving (FSD) recently. I think they were influenced by their parents to buy Tesla vehicles, who were influenced by riding in my Tesla EV. My own younger daughter also owns a Tesla Model Y. I know I've influenced a number of people to buy Tesla EVs, but I have no idea how many.
We charged all the way up to 80% so that we could drive further in the morning without having to make our first charging stop too soon. The Caldera Brewery & Restaurant was right next to the chargers, but we were there so late that it was closed.
ODOT to remove American flags from I-5 overpasses, by NBC 16, Sunday, February 27, 2022. The Oregon Department of Transportation says they need to be removed due to safety concerns. Over the past six months the flags have popped up on multiple overpasses from Cottage Grove to Woodburn."
Well, here we are 4 years later, and fortunately the flags are still there! Seeing these flags is a pleasant surprise in contrast to many "un-American" banners I've seen hanging over freeways lately. Almost every overpass had these flags while driving through a pretty long stretch of Oregon. Flags above the freeway in spite of ODOT, April 1st, 2022, Hasso Hering Today.
Here we are, back at the Harrisburg Tesla Superchargers again, our last charging stop before arriving back at our home in Vancouver, Washington.
