Kinda Alaska road trip

[MountainBikeDude]

Most 50A RV chargers will melt if you try to pull a constant draw to charge your EV. Last time I used one I needed to ramp down to 24A before the plug felt cool enough that I wasn't concerned with ruining the equipment or starting a fire...

100%, but at least you have the buffer in the equipment to get closer to the 32amp max of the Rivian portable evse.

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[schwartz83]

Good day fishing today. Limited out on halibut, salmon weren't biting though. Great weather too .

Better luck with charging today too. There is a business here (Exit Marine) that Installed 3 Tesla Destination chargers for public EV use. They ask for a donation through Venmo. It's a solid half hour walk to our hotel, but we'll have a full charge to start the day tomorrow.

I'll add pictures when I get a better connection. Hotel wifi is not great

Here are a few pictures from our fishing charter. Not that il was a competition, but I won first fish, my daughter won biggest fish and my wife won total weight for our two fish limit...we were all winners!

Posted too soon... trying to.get a couple more pictures attached.

 

[schwartz83]

Doing the trip, I would be totally content with reliable 50kW chargers, but if the entire trip was mostly reliant on L2 in Alaska... That would suck. Especially when most are 6kW or less.

Coming from Haines to Anchorage there are "fast" chargers available. 50 kW in Haines Junction, 20 KW in Beaver Creek Yukon, and in Burwash Landing Yukon, 45 kW in Glenallen, AK. So not too fun at those speeds. I'd do the trip again, but I'd give us more time to make it. The one campground we charged at (Tundra RV park in Tok, AK) was EV friendly. Sites had 50 and 30 amp service. I charged at 34 amps on the 50 amp plug. It didn't get warm to the touch. If we'd have gotten there when planned we would have had plenty of time to pick up a decent charge, but we got in much later due to poor roads and road construction.

 

[Thedude]

Lots of good eating small halibut, and those black rockfish make great tacos.

 

[SadHill]

Funny. We just did 2 weeks and 1900 miles around Alaska in an ICE. We noted how few charging stations there were. Started in Anchorage to Seward then to Wrangel and McCarthy, to Fairbanks then Denali and ended in Anchorage.
Also for the 2 weeks we only saw one Rivian. Some Teslas around anchorage but no where else.
Looks like an amazing trip. We were in Seward just before the marathon mtn 5k. Did a great kayak trip with a guide named Blueberry.
Keep us up to date.

 

[Judd]

Lots of good eating small halibut, and those black rockfish make great tacos.

I went up last summer, fishing. I didn’t like the texture of the rockfish. The ling cod wasn’t bad but give me the halibut and sockeye.

Looks like a great trip.

 

[Thedude]

I went up last summer, fishing. I didn’t like the texture of the rockfish. The ling cod wasn’t bad but give me the halibut and sockeye.

Looks like a great trip.

Sockeye you say? I’m stocked for the year after going out two weeks ago.

 

[Judd]

Yes sir…smoke that with brown sugar, dill, cayenne, salt and pepper with cherry or pecan wood. Holy crap it’s one of, if not the best, fish you can eat.

We caught everything flossing…that’s a fancy word for snagging. My shoulder still hurts from doing that for three days…two on the Kenai and one on the Kallispil (spelling?). Do I need to send you my address Seriously, nice haul!

 

[schwartz83]

View of Denali from the Tesla supercharger in Chugiak AK. We seem to have better luck seeing it from the Anchorage area than when we visit the park.

Today had us travel from Anchorage to Tok, with a stop in Glenallen to charge. We got into Tok about 6:30. Turns out that arriving at a reasonable hour (instead of 2:30 AM last week) makes for a better day. Who knew? We're charging on the 50 amp at the campground and should be at

close to 80% when we leave in the morning for Haines Junction. We ended up sleeping on the truck (I found it remarkably comfortable) so we had the HVAC on all night and the outlets to keep our cooler running. So we didn't maximize what we could have put in the battery for travel.

 

[schwartz83]

Tok to Haines Junction today. Charged at Beaver Creek on a 25 kWh unit. Spent some time there to get a good charge. Charging on the 50 kWh in Haines Junction right now. Need a good charge so we can board the ferry with at least a 30% charge based on vampire drain on the way up. Saw a lynx, grizzly + cub and a black bear today. No pics of them though.

 

[schwartz83]

My daughter did end up getting a picture of the Lynx,!

 

[iansriv]

Yes sir…smoke that with brown sugar, dill, cayenne, salt and pepper with cherry or pecan wood. Holy crap it’s one of, if not the best, fish you can eat.

We caught everything flossing…that’s a fancy word for snagging. My shoulder still hurts from doing that for three days…two on the Kenai and one on the Kallispil (spelling?). Do I need to send you my address Seriously, nice haul!

Ya, send us all your address so we can come over for the cookout!

 

[schwartz83]

Pretty easy run from Haines Junction to Haines today. I didn't take any pictures, but it was a beautiful drive, especially between the border crossing and Haines itself. I added a random picture of my dog, because dogs are the best! My recommendation for Haines Junction is the Village Bakery. Great pastries and more substantial breakfast options. Always friendly service. We've been stopping there whenever we pass through over the past 30 + years.

I was concerned about having enough charge to get to Haines and on the ferry with enough juice to make a DCFC when we get off the ferry in a few days. We have to be on the ferry pretty early and I didn't want to spring for a hotel room., so we are planning on catching a little shuteye in the truck.

Plugshare shows no charging options in Haines, but there are only a few RV parks with electric in Haines. We found one that will let us stay here and charge overnight. They don't want to be listed on Plugshare, but if you find yourself in Haines you have at least one option. They were friendly and accommodating.

I think we would have been ok without charging at the RV park,but oh well we needed a place to park anyway...and this will be cheaper juice than what we'll get after we get off the ferry.

 

[schwartz83]

Back on the ferry this morning in Haines. We arrive in Bellingham Friday morning. Picture is the view from my lounge chair in the solarium where we'll "camp"/sleep.

On the way up they loaded us last, today they wanted to load us first. we stopped in early yesterday to make sure we got here when they wanted us. They told us not to get here before 6:15...the guys loading us we're expecting us earlier . It all worked out in the end. Once we get off the ferry in Washington, we'll beat feet across Washington, Idaho, Montana and North Dakota stopping at favorite places from when we'd drive back and forth to Tacoma when my daughter went to college at PLU - lots of super charging. Loving the trip and looking forward to getting home...and planning the next one.

 

[schwartz83]

Trip Summary

5,539 miles, 2,968 kWh and 24 or so charging sessions later our trip is complete. we also covered about 1,822 miles while on the ferry.

if i caught all the charges, we spent $1,022.63 charging using mostly Tesla superchargers, some RAN chargepoint, Recharge Alaska and Flo (free, but not super fast)chargers. We also charged at a couple of different campgrounds. We had absolutely no luck finding hotels with available charging. Napkin math has us spending $830.30 if we drove a gas vehicle. So we spent about 19% more driving an EV. We did have the Tesla membership.

Highlights were the scenery of course and visiting with old friends. Halibut fishing - that's been on my bucket list for 30 years..and the ferry. I love taking it and find it incredibly relaxing.

Things I'd do differently:

- in the photos you probably noticed the rooftop box...I was originally planning on mounting it over the bed, but it was too long. I should have switched to our hitch mounted rack. I have to imagine we took a bit of a range hit with the roof top box.

- give ourselves more time for a days travel. Too often we got to our planned destination much later than expected - between road construction or just plain bad roads. This meant we'd book a hotel room rather than camp or sleep in the truck ( more comfortable than expected). Not the end of the world, but not how we envisioned the trip. Of course, as my wife pointed out, if we'd given ourselves more time, we would have just packed more into the day. She's probably right!

- reassess what we pack. Originally this was to be a 5 or 6 week trip and I packed for that. Due to some late breaking commitments, we had to compress it to just over 3 weeks. I packed way too much for that length of a trip.

- truck issues - none really. We had a slow leak in the drivers side rear tire, but the compressor and fix a flat took care of it. We also needed to do a hard reboot a couple of times to clear some error messages. They went away after the reboot.

Vampire drain was much less than I feared....maybe 5 or 6 % - less I think - over the 3 days in the ferry. I often left tho outlets on to run our cooler. We turned off proximity lock/unlock. We were required to leave the truck unlocked

Would we take the trip again?Sure! I still haven't caught a salmon, so I need to fix that. I'm thinking about an east coast road trip and a southwest national parks trip that we'll want to knock out first, but Alaska is always on my list. My wife and I met there in the late '80s and it has a special place in our hearts.

If anyone has any questions, let me know. I'm happy to help EV roadtrippers!

I'm sure I'm forgetting something and will edit this post if I remember it.

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