Reflections on the US Road Trip

Now that a few days have passed since my return from the 6 week US road trip, I want to jot down my reflections on how it went, what worked well and what did not. 

I achieved most of my goals for the trip, I missed some, and in some cases there were pleasant surprises not part of the original plan. I think it is good to not always get everything we want and better to miss out on a few goals. It keeps us humble! If we score 100% in every exam, it must have been too easy and thus not as impressive an achievement :-)

I had spent some time preparing for the trip, planning the itinerary, all the logistics. I had captured many of these plans and thoughts in the following blog posts.

• Planning for a long road trip in a Tesla
• Road trip across USA
  

But, like all big endeavors there were changes and hiccups. A Covid infection a few days before my planned start, led me to delay the trip by 6 days. I kept my return date the same and cut down the trip duration by 6 days. I ended up dropping several destinations from my original plan - Mt Lassen National Park, Olympic National Park, North Cascades National Park, Enchantments Hike, Congaree National Park and Montreal, Canada. I dynamically added a visit to Cuyahoga Valley National Park at the last minute during the trip. Other than these changes, I mostly followed my original itinerary. It was useful for me to keep in mind the following quote from a good friend and mentor:

Plans don't always work out, but Planning always does

The biggest surprise for me in the trip was how busy I was on most days. There were too many things to do each day - long hours of driving, supercharger stops, preparing meals, eating out, getting ready, checkout/checkin, sightseeing, long hikes, keep in touch with family, daily blog updates, socializing, laundry, cooking, grocery shopping.  Many times during the trip, I wished that I had planned the trip for 8 weeks, instead of doing it in 6 weeks. 

I stayed in a wide variety of accommodations during the trip - Hotels, Motels, Inns, Cottages, AirBnb room in a house,  Bed & Breakfast, Hostels, Cabin, Park Lodges,  Tesla car,  RV and many days of staying at homes of friends and family.  It was wonderful to have this diversity and not get bored with just one type of night stay. I liked the AirBnb stays better in general compared to the hotel stays. The B&B stays were also very good, more relaxed and the opportunity to met interesting people. 

It was great to be able to make just in time bookings for my night stays. Invariably I made a booking the previous night or made a same day booking while waiting at a supercharger. This kept everything flexible and easy to manage. I probably missed out on some good options because of booking at the last minute, but the freedom was worth it. 

Doing the road trip in my Tesla Model 3 worked great overall. It was fun to drive and I liked the quick acceleration while overtaking or changing lanes. I also used the autopilot mode a lot, especially on the freeways. On single lane roads the autopilot did not work as well and I used it sparingly.  The Tesla range estimation was accurate most of the time and helped avoid range anxiety. The Tesla navigation worked well in general and it picked reasonable Tesla supercharger stops. I did supplement the Tesla navigation with Google maps (and sometimes Apple maps). They were in sync most of the time. The navigation systems did take me down gravel roads a couple of times, which was an unexpected stress. With its low clearance, the Model 3 is not the ideal car for off road travel. 

 

Below are the highlights of my plan before I started the trip, and what actually happened.

• The route is a total of around 14,000 miles. I plan to go clockwise.

I covered a total of 13,351 miles in the trip going clockwise, quite close to the original plan.

• Touch all 48 states,  some very briefly :-) Added 2 Canadian provinces as a bonus.

I touched 47 states and almost touched the 48th one, Utah. I went to the Four Corners Monument to touch Utah, but it had closed for the day at 4:45pm. I missed it by 30 minutes. Since I was only a 2000 feet from the monument, I decided to consider this good enough.  I visited only one Canadian province, having taken out Montreal in my revised itinerary.

• Visit 26 national parks, most of them for the first time. 

I ended up visiting  a total of 23 national parks,  20 of them for the first time. 

• Walk an average of 11,000 steps each day to reach the goal of half-million steps 

I walked an average of 11,137 steps each day for a total of 467,753 steps. The original goal was half-million steps over 48 days. Since the trip was 6 days shorter, I feel good about achieving the goal of 11k steps each day on average.

• Adjusted route to include meetups with friends and family. 

Visited friends and relatives in 10 different cities. It was great to meet many folks after a long time,  feel at home and enjoy their warm hospitality.

• Mapped out charging locations. Seems OK except for a couple of places. 

This worked out as planned, even though there was range anxiety on a couple of days. There was a last minute panic because a critical supercharger was out of order, but it worked out. On average, I ended up using superchargers for 88% and destination chargers for 12% of the charging.  I used a total of 3,307 KWh for the trip, for an average of 248 Wh/mile.

• Should take around 48 days for the whole route, averaging 290 miles per day. 

I ended up taking 42 days for the  whole trip, averaging 318 miles per day. This was higher than planned and led to long, tiring driving days. If I do a road trip in the future, I would like to target 250-275 miles per day for a more relaxed pace.

• Focus on smaller towns, especially for night stays. 

This worked out as planned and I stayed in small towns, except for a couple of times in bigger cities.  I got stuck in traffic going through or around big cities, reminding me of the hassles associated with them.

• Cover the northern states in September and the southern states early October.  

This also worked as planned and I had great weather overall, and I did not have to drop my planned activities on any day of the trip. There was heavy rain on a few days, but it was while I was driving or at night time. I really liked the fact that many of my hikes were in cool, partly cloudy weather. I did have overnight snow in Glacier National Park, but it did not affect the driving and the hike next morning.