Category: Alaska (Page 3 of 3)

Another long day of driving thru the massive landscape of Saskatchewan and now Alberta, the province that has financed much of Canada’s wealth through oil and coal development. As my friend and former neighbor in Kota Belud, Sabah (see earlier blog) Paul Gervan said the electrons driving our Tesla are all from fossil fuel sources.  Where he lives in Ontario, and soon in Minnesota, most of the energy will be derived from carbon free sources. 

We are making progress, but is it fast enough?  Part of our reason for doing this trip and noticing the changes embedded in the places we are visiting. Two such examples: the omellet at the Motel 8 yesterday was made with organic eggs and today in Calgary the compostable plate that hopefully will find it’s way to a commercial composting facility. 

Day 3 was all about getting to Calgary and our friend Rob McLeod dear man and holder of 14 Guinness World Records (I told him they will be doing a background check on him soon). If it’s throwing a disc on land, ice, to dogs or on roller blades…Rob is your man.  He also has set up a body work session for Paul’s ailing neck on Tuesday…thank you Rob for all the years of flying friendship…come to MN for our flying disc overall championships Sept 2, American style.

The three of us checked in at the Days Inn in Calgary (pop 1.2 million) then headed to a local charger for a small boost so Mindy could sleep w/o worry before finding a Tesla Super Duper charger this morning.  A lovely meal at a Vietnamese spot  and finally found our squeegee and bug remover (thanks Erin another Tesla driver who cleans her baby at every charge).

Another late night finalizing our route into the mountains and finding the chargers along the way. Rob said don’t miss Canmore, site of the Nordic Center for the Calgary Olympics, on the way to Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper. Today it will be difficult to remember to keep moving toward our BIG goal of Denali and Alaska. We will be camping at Jasper and see how my body does on the ground sleeping.

So grateful for friends, and Mindy’s commitment to planning and organizing. I am trying to be a better listener and staying focused on what needs to be done.  A big ask for this right brained, spontaneous,  adventure seeker.

Bring on the mountains and all the layers of clothing we brought along….would you believe I forgot my swim suit for the hot springs?

Ah- lah- ma as we say in Borneo.

– Paul

We had a good night’s sleep at the Jamestown, ND campground – slept in the back of the car rather than set up the tent since there were still threats of rain.

View out the back of Redd-Y

Most of our stuff is packed in bins that can be piled in the front seats for the night when we sleep in the back.

At the start of the conversation with fellow road adventurer, Mark whose wife Laurie joined the conversation shortly after this.

After a lovely conversation with campsite neighbors Mark and Laurie from Green Bay, we were off to Bismarck and then heading north through North Dakota toward the Canadian Border.  Charging has been relatively easy so far.  We had a Tesla charger in Bismarck, found a CCS high-speed charger in Minot to top off and get us to the next Tesla charger in Estevan, Saskatchewan.  We decided to stop for the night in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan where we found a CCS high-speed charger that wasn’t working as fast as we liked since we were ready for bed and we then discovered there is a Tesla charger in town, so we can stop there before leaving in the morning.  The Tesla chargers are always our first choice since their direct compatibility usually means the fastest charge.  However, we’ve been very happy with the CCS converter we bought that has expanded our options – without it we would have had a tight squeeze to get from Bismarck to Estevan without a charge and would have had to drive slower and possibly without the AC to save energy.  Fortunately we didn’t have to sweat it out with the option to stop in Minot.  And thanks to that stop, we discovered the Scandinavian Heritage park that was worth a quick stop and wander through.

First test of our CCS converter in Minot

Notice this CCS charger has the washer squeegee next to it so I don’t have to walk across to the gas pumps

A Data Horse, of Course

Skiing around the world sculpture

Map of the 5 Scandinavian countries – can you name them all?

We drove through lots of farmland today.  Much of it very flat and massive farms – we could see for miles and saw very few farm houses among the farm fields.  There are also some rolling hills along today’s route.  At one point in northern North Dakota near Kenmare, we noticed large numbers in white rock on the hillsides.  It took a little while to notice a pattern – they seemed to be the graduation years that we presume were put there by the graduates in that class.  Some were more visible than others and may indicate which classes were more diligent in arranging their rocks for the long term.

I can see for miles and miles

Honker spirit?

We saw a number of coal-fired power plants and coal mining in both North Dakota and Saskatchewan.  And we saw a few oil wells in the most northern part of North Dakota and lots of them as we turned west in Saskatchewan.   This is clearly a large energy producing area in both countries.

ethanol

coal

electricity

wind

oil

the biggest transfer station I’ve ever seen

We opted for a hotel stay tonight because Paul has a stiff neck that needed a bed and pillow to see if it will cure things – and it allowed us to drive a little later before stopping since we didn’t need to find a campsite.

– Mindy

And a couple added photos from Day 1:

The world’s largest prairie chicken in Rothsay, MN

Anthony, fellow Tesla driver, as he has now completed his visits to his 48th and 49th states – MN and ND!

It takes a village to get us to Alaska.

The day before leaving home we thought to call T-Mobile to see if our cell phone would work in Canada.  We were a little surprised to learn, that Canada is no problem, but there’s no T-Mobile data in Alaska – talk and text will be fine, but I’m not sure what we would do about finding charging (and activating the chargers) along the way without cellular data.  Thanks, Macarius, for helping us get prepared.

So on our way out of town, we stopped at an At&T store – the one reliable network in Alaska – and turned our old spare iPhone 6s into a prepaid phone with unlimited data for our time in Alaska.  Thanks to Gage for getting our phone set up and guiding us through the process.

That was after the quick stop at Linden Hills Coop and REI – which was after the morning of final cleaning and packing and getting our Tesla, Redd-Y, all loaded.  Thanks to our friend Cary who is staying at our house and taking care of Pickles the cat and the garden while we are gone.  And he will have great support from our wonderful neighbors, the Braatens and the Werrys!

And thank you to the other friends and neighbors – Rick and Loren –  who have lent us the tire repair kits that we hope we will return without having to use them.  But it’s good to be prepared.

And then there is our friend, George, in Anchorage who sent us the milepost travel guide and Alaska maps and is anticipating our arrival in 5-6 days.  And Doreen, our biggest cheerleader who sent us off with our A-Z card for Alaska.

We departed from home with a full charge and will make it all the way to Fargo before needing to stop for a charge.  Then we will head west to Bismarck then turn north toward Canada.  We’ll find camping somewhere in North Dakota for tonight.

– Mindy