Summer Trip 2026 Day 7

This is the route I was expecting to take today from Logan UT to La Grande OR:

And this is the route I ended up taking today, ending in Missoula MT instead:

I woke up this morning and fired up ABRP (A Better Route Planner) to confirm my charging locations for today and noticed a major problem — I-84 was closed between Ontario OR and Baker City OR! The reason was an uncontained wildfire that had overrun the highway. There was a possibility of getting through, but also a strong possibility that I’d get stuck and either have to add an extra night to this part of the trip or have to backtrack a very, very long ways to get on a different route. There just aren’t many options out here …

So I opted to go to Missoula instead which meant losing the money for a hotel reservation I couldn’t cancel and getting a replacement reservation. Today’s alternate route was also the same distance and time as the original route, but tomorrow will be close to 3 hours more driving than I’d planned for to get into Seattle.

At least today’s drive went smoothly! And I saw at least 30 hawks, an amazing number for a day’s drive, mostly in the southern Idaho region and almost all in the air. This first photo was taken before I got to I-15 and it shows what little was visible of mountains to the south of me — even though the air quality wasn’t terrible where I was, there was still enough smoke in the air to make anything in the distance almost disappear.

My first charging stop was a really nice Tesla Supercharger location in Blackfoot ID. I haven’t seen this arrangement before with the chargers on the side, but it meant that for the most part cars don’t have to back in to charge — just pull straight in with a charger on the side you need it on. There were 8 chargers; one was in use when I arrived and 4 when I left. I charged from 60-80% in 9 minutes, adding 17.838 kWh for $6.77.

Stop #2 was at these very new Electrify America chargers in Dell MT. One was out of service but nobody was at the other three (and I’ll bet they don’t see many cars). I charged from 31-80% in 16 minutes, adding 48.862 kWh for $21.06. The funny thing about this location is that it’s behind an honest-to-goodness “General Mercantile” store and Post Office and that store truly does sell just about anything you might want for home and farm. I would have taken more photos except that people were looking at me oddly …

On the left here is the backside of the Mercantile with what I believe is most of Dell across the street; on the right are three seemingly new cabins that are available for rent (because the Mercantile is also a Hotel!). And below those two is what I believe was probably once a schoolhouse and is now a home.

After that, the scenery was more interesting in places but always where the highway was curving back and forth far too much for me to try to get a photo.

My last charging stop was at a truck stop just outside Butte MT with 8 Tesla chargers and they were busy! I had to block two chargers because these are the old ones with the short cords (and Tesla actually says to do this) but I felt bad because other Teslas were waiting for me to clear out. I charged from 45-80% in 18 minutes, adding 36.367 kWh for $14.50. I think my plan has me stopping here again on my eastbound trip, but I’ll also be in Butte overnight so I think I’ll try to charge here later in the evening when it’s not so busy.

And finally, this is the view from my hotel room tonight looking due north. The mountains are barely visible; the air quality in Missoula is in the “Unhealthy for Sensitive Persons” category. I should drive out of the smoke in an hour or two tomorrow morning and then drive through a bit more a few hours after that, but then I’ll be in clear air in the Seattle area and will have a luxurious three nights in the same hotel rather than getting up and driving every morning!

While it doesn’t begin to offset the cost of the lost reservation in OR and the exorbitant cost of this hotel, at least I get free charging tonight! The hotel has 4 chargers and I was the only EV.

I’m at 2,804 miles for this trip so far and the car is still at 3.1 miles/kWh efficiency, and I’m very happy with that especially considering the mountain terrain of the past few days.