Fall Trip 2025 Day 7

19 September 2025

Today was a lazy day in Rockford and I only drove 16 miles around town. Along the way, I made two stops for charging (explained later), a stop at a (closed) used book store, and Second Meal™️ at Prairie Street Brewing.

My first goal was to head to a nearby Electrify America to get up to 80%. This location has four of the older chargers and I’d seen in the app that one or two of them were in and out of service — that turned out to be because a technician was there working on them! I plugged in but only got 30kW from a 350kW charger that the technician had just reset, so that wasn’t good. Just then, someone at the next charger said he was leaving so I plugged in there and got 130kW from a 150kW charger, still not great but far better than the alternative. The technician was really nice and said he covers the entire Chicago area and even into northeast Iowa, southeast Minnesota, and souther Wisconsin. Wow. He really wished EA would upgrade this location to the latest chargers because they’re so much more reliable (also my experience).

I was finally able to charge from 35-80% in 17 minutes and headed out to the used book store.

The book store had a handwritten sign on the door saying they were closed but would be back later … I didn’t feel like waiting 45 minutes so I headed for my next stop, the brewery, after which I was off to a Tesla Supercharger 3 miles from my hotel to get the car up to 90% so that I won’t have to make a charging stop during my drive tomorrow.

There are two Supercharger locations in Rockford and one is a V4 (long cables, higher speeds) but customer reports on PlugShare warn that it’s in a very bad neighborhood, not to go there after dark, and definitely stay in your car and keep your doors locked. That was enough to send me to the V3 chargers closer to the hotel — which were also $0.02/kWh cheaper — where I went from 76-90% in 15 minutes.

I’m now back at the hotel with 89% charge and ready for the morning! Here’s where I am in my trip so far (not much different from yesterday):