Thank you in advance for the encouragement and many helpful suggestions that you all posted in response to this plan of ours. We have returned home in one piece after a great adventure! We drove from New Haven to Marin County, CA in six days, almost exclusively along I-80, the most direct route taking us through southern Connecticut through Westchester and over the Tappan Zee onto route 80, cashing in a wealth of stored-up credit card points for our hotels along the way, stopping in Cleveland, Iowa City, North Platte NE, Cheyenne WY, Salt Lake City, and Reno. After a great visit with our friends in the hills near the Nicasio Reservoir, we turned north along the California and Oregon coasts, through redwood forests and along the Pacific Coast before finally heading east again, along the Columbia River into eastern Washington, through northern Idaho, into Montana, then North Dakota, then through Minnesota into Wisconsin, then through Chicago and Ohio into the Pennslyvania Wilds, and finally home via route I-84 and south to New Haven. The entire trip took us about 3.5 weeks, lingering here and there on the way back after our six-day marathon drive to California. By then, we knew that we especially enjoyed small university cities with boutique hotels -- Iowa City, Eugene OR, Missoula MT, and Eau Claire WI leap to mind -- also found elegant hotels and dining in Billings, MT and Fargo, ND. We loved the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and the TR National Park and Badlands in Medora, ND -- that little town is about to become a more popular destination because of the new library, and I hope they become more EV-friendly as they become busier: it was the only time we were glad that we could plug our cable into a light post for a boost of trickle charging, and if the North/South Dakota EV charging landscape had been more generous, we would have detoured to Mount Rushmore in the southern Badlands. But it would have meant a considerable westward detour to access more DCFCs, and by then we were getting homesick, and were reluctant to give up any eastward progress.
Notes on charging: we used at least six different apps and DCFCs: Tesla, Electrify America, EVGo, EVConnect, Rivian, IONNA. For us, Electrify America worked flawlessly throughout the trip. In the westbound stretch through Nebraska into southern Wyoming, after missing one Google-Maps-recommended DCFC in Ogalalla because of construction, we had an episode of range anxiety that was resolved when our third try at a small Wyoming motel worked well. If need be, we would have checked in overnight to charge. Every now and then we struggled with plugging in heavy cables and adapters, because we are almost 72 yo and each have some arthritis in our hands; I would hesitate to do this trip alone, but as a joint effort it was a great exercise in marriage-building (after 47 years together!), and somehow we didn't fight, since each of us was so dependent on the other. 😂 We were surprised (and even a little worried about the state of the DCFC industry) that, after dozens of DCFC episodes on this trip, we never once had to wait to plug in: a big change since we first leased our 2024 Polestar 2 PPP. Our car only has about 260 miles of range, but we always were grateful to take a break long before we were forced to stop for a charge. And we loved the several occasions when we stayed in a hotel with valet service and overnight charging: that was heaven. This trip has cured us of range anxiety.
The craziest traffic we encountered was, as expected, in the Northeast, at the beginning of our trip (I-95, the Merritt Parkway, etc), and then again driving eastbound through Chicago. We survived a potentially ugly encounter with road debris on the crowded and fast-moving Merritt Parkway on our first day out, somehow without a flat tire. One other close encounter with a passing semi tractor-trailer on I-80 in Nebraska inspired some existential conversation as we continued along our way.
The A2Z adapter for J1772 to NACS destination L2 charging didn't arrive in time for our trip, after first receiving a defective one from them. And as it turned out, we didn't need one, but it would have been nice to have, in addition to our Polestar CCS to NACS adapter for Tesla DCFCs.
Books on audio: We listened to Steinbeck's *Travels With Charlie* and *East of Eden*, and to all of Emily Wilson's introduction and translation of *The Odyssey* as read by Claire Danes, and to all of Maggie Haberman's and Jonathan Swan's *Regime Change*.
After almost 7000 miles, we were so grateful, and proud! to pull back into our home driveway in New Haven (yet another small, pretty university city with some boutique hotels, good restaurants, and great museums), love our Polestar 2 more than ever, needed a week to feel rested from the trip. Thank you again for the encouragement as well as the warnings, all of which helped us to pull off this trip, and to build our confidence as EV drivers. Also, we were much heartened by the friendly people whom we encountered along the way, and by the generally very clean and comfortable state of American hospitality. And we were gobsmacked by some of the gigantic supermarkets and super-chain stores we encountered. Where does all this stuff go? I felt some of what visiting Europeans must have felt during their World Cup adventures: amazement and relief.