Summer Trip 2026 Day 4

25 July 2026

Although this was only a 390-mile driving day, traffic (especially slow trucks passing other, even slower trucks uphill) and construction made it a surprisingly long one. The morning was HUMID so even though the temperature was only 69º when I left my hotel at 8:30am, this is what the view was from my hotel room window (and compare this to the same view from yesterday!):

After that, the clouds got even lower to the point that I was driving through a wind farm but couldn’t even see the turbine blades because they were in the clouds! Only the very bases of the towers were visible.

My first charging stop for the day was just west of Des Moines IA at a 4-bay Electrify America. There was one other vehicle there when I arrived (the white pickup, and it was still charging when I left) so I plugged in, and by the time I left 14 minutes later all bays were full and there was another truck waiting for me to pull out! I added 33.728 kWh in 14 minutes for $14.06 to get from 43-80%, and the car got a very respectable 3.4 miles/kWh on this part of the trip (but we went straight downhill from there).

I did try to get some scenic photos today but both were blurry … this was the better of the two, but is typical of Iowa’s rolling hills and occasional trees. In fact, driving through Iowa is rather nice because there are so many trees interspersed with farmland. The funny part of Iowa that I didn’t notice until this trip, so maybe it’s just an I-80 thing, is that rest areas that actually have rest rooms are noted on signs as “Modern Rest Area.” Umm … OK … even though the buildings are clearly many decades old …

Charging stop #2 was on the west side of Omaha NE and trust me, this photo makes it look far, far better than it really is! In actual fact, these EVgo chargers are in a dumpy plaza with dumpy stores — I went in one of the big ones to use a restroom and someone had to be called to unlock it for me even though it was a public restroom. But I was the only car here (that truck pulled in, tried and failed to charge, and left) and I added 45.276 kWh in 15 minutes for $27.70 to get from 30-80%. By this point in the day it was up to 91º and beginning to be both humid and sunny, a nasty combination. In restrospect, it was really stupid of the truck driver to pull in where he did because we would have been splitting the charger (max 175 kW each) — he could easily have pulled into one of the other two chargers instead …

This particularly blurry shot shows what western Iowa and all of Nebraska look like — flat and for the most part, treeless.

It seems that I didn’t take a photo of my third charging stop for the day, a Tesla Supercharger in Lincoln NE. I almost skipped this one because I did actually have enough to get to my hotel but am glad I didn’t as it didn’t take long and the car didn’t do as well as expected on the last leg of the trip, probably due to the A/C and fans running on high because of the crazy heat (103º and full sun by this point). I charged from 58-80% in 11 minutes, adding 21.878 kWh for a cost of $5.90.

Tonight, I’m charging at my hotel but it’s not free; however, it’s only $0.25 kWh so considerably cheaper than I pay to charge at my house so I’m not complaining! I’m charging from 42-100% but because of the slow charging speed (6.4 kW) it won’t finish until the wee hours of the morning so I’ll update this sometime tomorrow with the actual kWh added and the cost. The car got 2.7 miles/kWh on this final 89-mile segment, again, because of the heat and high A/C demands. [Edit] The car took on 56.100 kWh for a cost of $21.11. I’m now at the 1,516 mile point for this trip, not quite halfway, with an average efficiency of 3.1 miles/kWh.

This is the view across the street from my hotel … typical of Nebraska (except for all the trees … must be water there).

Tomorrow will be a long day’s drive to Laramie WY, crossing a time zone and gaining a mile in elevation. The heat will still be with me at least for another day, so I expect to turn in some disappointing efficiency numbers again. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s update!

Before I sign off here, I have three photos from my room. I’m in a very new Springhill Suites by Marriott and there are a couple of features I think are pretty interesting. First, each side of the bed has two lights, one a general light and one a very small reading light:

And second, there is a work desk that works as a partial divider between the sleeping area and the living room (this is a studio room). What I’ve never seen before is the sliding, frosted glass on the desk that can provide some privacy or open up a view to the window: