By the end I shot over 900 pictures and videos (iPhone 6 and GoPro Hero4) and logged details about the driving and charging my Model S (right). We didn't have a film crew or a support caravan. We fit our family of four and all of our luggage solely in one Model S. No bruises, no sprained ankles, no car accidents occurred. The only time we needed a band-aid was when my son scratched my daughter's shoulder in a typical sibling fight. No iPad for him. Odometer Ending 54920 Beginning 52096 Traveled 2824 miles!      Number of Charging Sites Used Destination Supercharger Public 5 12 1 (serendipitous but not required) Conclusion The trip went as smoothly as I could have hoped. I personally drove my Model S for all 2824 miles of this road trip, so I think I can speak with authority that the Model S is a fabulous road trip car. We can do away with the extra engine and transmission noise, which formerly leads to a low-frequency rumble and roar that shakes one's innards. The result is relaxing driving experience that eliminates the fatigue I had in gas cars before. If you're looking for a fast-paced trip here, you're missing the point. I was not the first to drive across the US using Superchargers. I did not drive the furthest, e.g., 12,000-mile, road trip. I did not drive the fastest long road trip.

Page 1 of the Log Returned Home with Mud from Monument Valley I felt sorry to wash it off.

I designed this to be a great family road trip. Paraphrasing the most salient quote in the movie Cars: This was not a trip about making great time. We drove to have a great time.

I set out to accomplish several goals with this road trip:

First, I wanted to spend time with my children showing them amazing natural wonders in our part of the country. This 12-day trip was only the beginning, and at their young age that is as much as I can expect. Memories will be planted in their mind that they've been to these unique and beautiful places. I hope it will seed an interest and an appetite to take on reasonable adventures to experience more natural beauty in the world.

Second, I wanted to be able to show that there are beautiful and amazing places that are best driven to rather than flown to. Some people, when I told them my plans, tell me they can't stand being in a car that long. I'd say they haven't driven in the right places because, yes, I-5 in California is boring, but you should not presume all roads are like I-5. Also, it has long bothered me that some Americans refer to the states we visited this month as "flyover states", as if there is nothing worthwhile here except to take a plane to jump over them, and as if somehow knowing the east coast and the west coast of the US means that they understand everything worth knowing in the middle. Not in my pictures were tourists from Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, and Japan who seemed to greatly outnumber the American ones; they seem to understand there is something worth seeing here.

Third, I also wanted to personally gather and post the evidence proving a properly-designed electric vehicle solution (Tesla EVs + Supercharging + Destination Charging) can in fact perform long road trips and perform them extremely well. Tesla is the sole company today making a working electric solution the public can buy and use to perform that feat. Why some people try to push that fact out of their minds is a mystery to me. The data was already out there that it was occurring, but it was a fun challenge to go do it myself and present more beautiful pictures from an all-electric road trip than I had seen elsewhere thus far.

Not only do I hope other EV drivers follow my example, but the evidence posted here (if not others before me) lays to rest forever myths like "electric cars can't do road trips" and "you must have a second car". This Tesla Model S is my sole car. Check out my pictures and links above and it's easy to see they're not "grocery runs" or "city driving". You can do it, and, to the embarrassment of all other car companies, Tesla, starting in 2012 and for 4 years and counting, is the only provider of the all-electric solution that can show that capability.

The excellent performance of Tesla's solution means the only remaining practical question about electrically-powered mobility is deployment: how many qualifying EVs can we make and how much infrastructure is enough. Cars can do trips only when there is enough infrastructure. A century ago there weren't enough gasoline stations to allow cars to drive where Tesla's can go today. I remember in the 1980's drivers had to be mindful that gasoline stations were far and few between on I-5 in California. Maybe it is easy to forget that the ubiquity of gas stations is a very recent phenomenon. Meanwhile the fact that Tesla's infrastructure is continuing to expand makes no sense to keep secret.

Clearly, for this road trip, my access to infrastructure was enough: 17 properly-designed charging sites were more than enough to support 2824 miles of fascinating travel.

Another lesson confirmed here: rushing from place to place without delay, as some critics presume, is not a lifestyle we should expect. Maybe uncommitted single people and truck drivers can live that way, but the pace of a family works best at a slower pace. It so happens that Tesla designed its cars and Supercharger network to fit that real-world human pace very well.

As a family, we've already decided that we want to someday revisit these places (we did only easy hikes this time), and spend more time at the places this electric car can take us.

P. S. The next fortune cookie I opened after this trip was:

Thanks to Tesla Motors, the Moenkopi Legacy Inn, the Far View Lodge, the Red Lion Inn Salt Lake City, the Grand Lodge at Brian Head, and The Mirage in Las Vegas, the cost to refuel on this 2824-mile trip was $0. Sweet!

Dean E. Dauger holds a Ph. D. in physics from UCLA, where his group created the first Mac cluster in 1998. Dr. Dauger is the award-winning author in multiple American Institute of Physics' Software Contests and co-authored the original, award-winning Kai's Power Tools image-processing package for Adobe Photoshop. After founding his company, Dauger Research, Inc., its debut product, Pooch, derived from Dr. Dauger's experience using clusters for his physics research, was soon awarded as "most innovative" by IEEE Cluster and continues to revolutionize parallel computing and clusters worldwide with its patented technology.