This was and should continue to be the longest drive of the trip as long as nothing untoward happens. We covered 595.5 miles which in a conventional car is a long day but by adding in charging stops and what one of the folks we met today called "Tesla time" it stretches out to be a really long day but at least at the charging stops you aren't sitting in the car. "Tesla time" is the time you spend chatting either with other owners at Superchargers or curious people who wander over from elsewhere or as we have seen several times actually drive over, to ask questions. In any case it did not leave time for sightseeing even though everything went mostly according to plan.
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| Sunflowers as far is you can see |
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| A small portion of acres of windmill parts |
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| The Mississippi |
We could not resist one side trip to see a large statue of the Jolly Green Giant that amazingly was not built by the company itself but rather by the townsfolk to commemorate their fruitful (vegetaful?) relationship with the company. So the town of Blue Earth has a Green Giant. Who said Minnesotans lack color. Riding the interstates we must miss hundreds of these weird quirky things that towns do because almost everytime we leave the interstates we see something like this. This country has a lot more personality than shows in the malls, motels and fast food places. It is too bad we are too busy to seek it out. Now I am not saying it is at all sane to put up a huge statue of a pretend giant that represents a food processing company but I am saying it breaks the monotony to have these things scattered about.
Regular Features
Statistics Corner
States involved: We added two new states today bringing our trip total to 26. Minnesota had the privilege of being the halfway one and Wisconsin was 26.
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| The welcome to our 25th state. |
Charging
Murdo SD 45 minutes including breakfast. The chargers have actually been planted in the parking lot of the motel Eric and Larry stayed in when they moved Eric out to California. It brought back fond memories of that trip although the motel itself wasn't that great and had a memorably bad breakfast.
Mitchell SD - 45 minutes mostly because we talked too much -This was our first contact with a couple from Oregon heading east also. Astoundingly he is the owner of not only a really cool Tesla P85D but the EcoCab company whose Tesla cab so impressed me in Portland.
Worthington MN - 45 minutes including lunch where we watched Olympics. We knew we were in Minnesota when the server said. "You betcha."
Albert Lea MN - 60 minutes because we talked to the Oregon couple too long again. They are driving much further than us today and we should have let them go much earlier. When we showed up there was also an older couple with a pretty new Tesla which he was just loving.
Song of the Day: American Pie by Don McLean - There are a couple of reasons for this: Michelle had pie for breakfast and dinner sandwiching a salad for lunch. At least they were fruit pies. About halfway through the trip Slacker and TuneIn both died along with our maps. Comparing notes with the Oregon folks we determined that they had lost theirs too and had rebooted the car thinking it was in their car. We also rebooted ours to no avail. A call to Tesla gave a message that if we we calling about that we need not continue as they were aware of the problem and working on it.
Coolest Car of the day: OK its a mess but it is running and I got a picture of it, The best other car was a '66 Impala that I didn't get a picture of. Actually I should give it to any number of trucks on I-90 pulling trailers with motorcycles. In the 85 miles between Wall and Murdo we only saw five vehicles and four of them were trucks towing cycles.
Church of the day: I like the proportion of big cross in front as it makes a pretty boring building come alive.
Coolest Thing of the Day – Larry - Meeting the EcoCab owner.
Coolest Thing of the Day – Michelle - The hot tub at the motel
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