Tesla Model S - Portland* Cannon Beach & Silver Falls
Haystack Rock Model S
Saturday, August 15, 2020
Days Charging at
Destination   Supercharger
0 1
Tolovana Inn and Cannon Beach
We woke to a beautiful morning with a view of Cannon Beach. The evening before we shopped at Fresh Foods across the street to buy breakfast supplies, including cereal and milk. I woke up first to take a few morning pictures before the rest of the family had breakfast.

My car charged up perfectly, however I noticed at all the other charging locations were occupied by gas-powered cars; such charging stalls are said to be "ICEd". This is very rude of these other vehicle owners; imagine if car that did not use gas was parked and locked in front of a working gas pump. I was glad I got in while I could, and I wonder if some other EV driver was blocked by these rude gas-car owners.

Tolovana Inn Charging, with ICEd stalls

After breakfast we took another walk on Cannon Beach and see what it looked like in the morning. It was quite enjoyable, and my daughter had fun chasing and being chased by the surf rolling in and out. We tried to take it in and enjoy it as long as we could.

Cannon Beach

Our time limit was determined by our need to leave in time to make it to our lunch destination at lunch time so that we could make it to our next hotel by dinner time.

  Portland   * In my original itinerary planned back in December, I had in mind, at this point in the trip, us having lunch at Tigard, where there was also a Supercharger. Following lunch at Tigard, my plan was to drive us into Portland because we have extended family who live in this area. I also wanted to take the children to world-famous Voodoo Doughnut, a shop I visited the last two times I visited Portland, so that my children can have donuts to enjoy at our next overnight stay (or two?).

Instead, due to current events, we canceled the entire visit to Portland. How could I possibly have predicted, back in December, the conflicts, clashes, and damage occurring in the presence of Black Lives Matter protesters, politically-opposing counter-protestors, local police, and federal agents? Who knows what road blockages and other traffic snarls might appear on our route in or out of Portland. Who knows what unexpected encounter with disgruntled people we might have. That isn't why I'm taking my wife and children on a road trip; read my all the pages on my web site before trying to argue with me about that.

The problem was NOT the technology in my all-electric car; the problem was the humans not finding a solution.

Therefore, with my wife's insistance, we were to avoid Portland completely, much like how we avoided Seattle completely a few days ago. In July I worked out at least two working itineraries, including one with Portland and a few without Portland. My wife felt that even Tigard was too close, so we did not stop there, nor did the car need to stop at the Tigard Supercharger. Maybe someday when Portland is peaceful we can drive back here.

Woodburn Supercharger
TimeEventRange Remaining
10:28 amDeparted Cannon Beach324
12:12 pmArrived Woodburn Supercharger201
Range/Distance ratio: 1.19
Conditions: Highway traffic

At this supercharger we had plenty of choices for lunch. This time we picked Red Robin Gourmet Burgers.

Cost to Charge: $0

We also had a fairly urgent need to use the restroom here. After that human need was satisfied, we had an excellent filling lunch here. Bathroom Anxiety

Supercharger Woodburn

This restaurant was well appointed and well decorated, including an amusing Star Trek poster, an appropriate reminder of our visits to two Star Trek filming locations early in this trip. Star Trek Homeland Security

Silver Falls State Park
The car's battery was getting rather full before my family was ready to leave Red Robin, so I went out and unplugged my car to let someone else use the charging stall.

TimeEventRange Remaining
1:11 pmUnplugged320
1:19 pmDeparted Woodburn318
2:16 pmArrived Silver Falls State Park270
Range/Distance ratio: 1.16
Conditions: Rural roads, re-route around traffic accident, 98°F

From Woodburn, our route to Silver Falls took us away from I-5 and into very pleasant countryside and farmland via the Silver Falls Tour Route.

Shell Falls Parking

We and other drivers encountered was a major road blockage, apparently due to some sort of serious accident, near Kraemer Farms north of Mt Angel, so we had to divert north and east around it. The Tesla navigation was able to figure it out. We were fascinated by the vineyards and other farming here, including fields and fields of what looked like Christmas trees. We wondered: Do Christmas trees grown here make it down to California?

When we made it to Silver Falls State Park, we promptly needed the restroom. This Park was very impressive and by appearances seems a lot like some of the National Parks we visited, with a thick forest of trees and a wide variety of hiking trails, including those visiting the ten waterfalls of this park. Bathroom Anxiety
Unfortunately we did not have the time to see all ten falls. We only had time to see one, so we hiked to South Falls, the most famous because it is a 177-foot waterfall that people can actually hike behind (and see the "backside of water").

Lower South Falls

We took many pictures along the hike, which made its way down into a loop that led us behind the falls and back out around to a bridge over the river downstream of the falls. On our way back up we looked around the gift shop for a while.

We returned to the car, after having one more bathroom stop, to depart and resume the Silver Falls Tour Route.

West Cascades Scenic Byway
We broke off the Silver Falls Tour Route to go east, and entered Detroit. No not the one in Michigan, but Detroit, Oregon, named after Detroit Lake here. There is even a Supercharger here, which I included on my itinerary, but since we were behind schedule due to the traffic accident near Mt Angel and the time spent at Silver Falls, we decided to skip this Supercharger stop.

After Detroit we joined the West Cascades Scenic Byway. Here we drove through forests that surround lakes, rivers, and tall mountains of the West Cascades.

Detroit, Oregon

West Cascades Scenic Byway

Continuing onto the McKenzie Pass-Santiam Pass Scenic Byway, this was a very enjoyable part of our travels today. At the route 20 we traveled east and could see Mount Washington to our south as the forest thinned.

But in the distance we could see a fire brewing to the east of us and north of Bend, Oregon. It was black and acrid-looking, and seemed to have caused some traffic congestion as we approached Bend. We could see aircraft patrolling and dropping water on the fire.

We later learned that this was the Juniper Ridge Fire triggering evacuations of the area and mobilization of local, state, and federal resources.

Some say that the emissions from internal combustion engines don't influence the environment, so it it was ironic that in fact this fire was started by a motor home's "hot engine/exhaust in contact with grass and brush." An all-electric vehicle would have no such exhaust.

Soon we passed through Bend, Oregon, and south to Sunriver. The fire delayed our arrival.

Juniper Ridge Fire

Sunriver Resort
TimeEventRange Remaining
3:19 pmDeparted Silver Falls269
6:04 pmArrive Sunriver Resort91
Range/Distance ratio: 1.24
Conditions: Modest uphill, scenic mountain roads, 91°F

As we checked into Sunriver Resort, a member of the Tesla Destination Network, they had a highly modified check in procedure due to the pandemic including curbside check-in and communication with the front desk only via text message.

Sunriver room

We found our room in the northeast corner of these sprawling facilities and used the restroom right away. It had every summertime activity you could think of, including golf, a pool (closed by the time we got there), mountain bikes, paddling on the river, and so on.

However the one thing it did not have was laundry rooms. I emailed ahead of time, and they told me there was one in town.

Bathroom Anxiety

I should post a Laundry Anxiety icon here. We were just about out of underwear and needed most of our other clothes washed. So we came down to the Keep M Clean Laundromat to do it all.

Unfortunately the laundromat itself wasn't very clean, but we had to do it, since Tolovana Inn yesterday closed their laundry room. It had quarter machines, I had small-denomination bills, and we tried to use as many machines as possible in parallel to get it done fast. By taking care of it all now, we would not have to do any more laundry for the rest of the trip.

While waiting for our laundry we found online an italian restaurant named Marcello's Cucina Italiana and made a reservation, somewhat later than we would like, but we needed to have dinner. The staff, service, and food were quite excellent here, so I highly recommend it to anyone.

Keep M Clean Laundromat

During dinner I texted with Sunriver Resort to reserve a time for breakfast the next day. After this excellent dinner we returned to the room so we could fold laundry and then allow my my family to rest and shower, then I found charging for the car. Everything ended up later than I would have liked, but we were all safe.

Cost to Charge: $0

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.



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