HOMEWARD BOUND

We finally used the segways in Montgomery!!

We left South Padre Island Friday and drove to Channelview Texas.  We never did find the channel or the view, and ended up eating "down home cookin'" in a Karaoke bar.  They did not serve enough beer for us to join in, tho the locals seemed to have a good time!  My Dad would have gotten into the Patsy Kline songs, but up-tempo, it was not!  The most contemporary song we heard was Harper Valley PTA!!

Saturday morning we drove to Biloxi.  We considered going into town and trying a Community Theatre production of an Elvis musical, but after thoughtful consideration decided we weren't quite "covid comfortable" with an unknown theatre crowd.  We opted for Cajun seafood by the river instead.  It was delicious and the whole time we sat by the window, we watched a storm come in and leave and a "junk raft" tie-up under the bridge for shelter.  It looked like the boats that Johnny Depp had in Chocolat, and we kept waiting for him to appear. The waitress seemed peeved by it and assured us, that Depp was not there!  There were obviously at least two adults and a child in the curtained raft, but alas no Johnny!!  After supper, we found the church for Easter Sunday.  After Advent's Covid scare, I emailed the pastor to make sure of the time and see what Covid precautions they were using.  I thought the way they did Communion was very covid-safe and instead of passing the peace, they flashed each other peace signs.

The church was very pretty inside and out and the Pastor was young and had North Carolina ties.  He had pastored a church in Mount Holly and was in LSM at Chapel Hill.  BUT, he has a lot of work to do, and there didn't seem to be much to work with.  There were 2 babies, a toddler, and a bored teenager and everyone else was older than us!! Only about 50 souls graced the Sanctuary on Easter Sunday, in a sanctuary designed for 2-300. Dave and I looked at each other in the car afterward and said, "There was no joy."  If you can't muster some joy on Easter and just plow through the liturgy, that's not good.  I wish I could report something better.

We ran into our first charging hiccough on the way to Montgomery.  First, we were so engrossed in our audiobook (Run, Rose, Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson - she does part of the narration!) that we missed our exit and had to double back 12 (x 2 = 24) miles.  When we got there all 8 chargers were in use and a guy moved and said that the one he had tried to use was broken.  We only had to wait 15 minutes or less for one to come open and we got more than enough charge to get to Montgomery.  Usually, when we stop, there may be 8 - 12 chargers and at most 2 other Teslas will come and go.  But I guess everyone was traveling "to grandma's" for Easter and needed a charge after Easter lunch!! When we left, there were 2 in line waiting to charge.

We got up Monday morning and realized that the museum I wanted to go to was closed until Wednesday so we drove over to Tuskeegee to the Washington Carver Museum, which is run by the National Park Service and was supposed to be open, but alas it was taking Easter Monday off with no warning.  GPS took us through the country to get there as we listened to the ending of the book, placed in backwoods Arkansas (we were in backwoods Alabama).  We thought the villain of the book was going to jump out in front of us at any moment!! lol.  The Tuskeegee Campus is much larger than we thought and though the museum was closed we enjoyed riding around the campus.

Back in Montgomery, we decided to get out the segways and explore their Riverwalk.  They obviously have just begun to develop it and had an amphitheater and minor league ballpark, along with a riverboat (that wasn't running).  Greenville, SC it was not, but it was all "potential".  We found these interesting sculptures while riding around.

OK, time for a few wrap-up lists, musings, and statistics:

Funny signs seen along the way:

• Watch for Pelicans
• on Interstate sign:  Some Bunny Loves you, Slow Down
• Pasternak's (a roadside diner):  Roadside Assistance for Annoyed Parents
• Voted Best Lodging in the country - by our staff
• High School Seniors pictures (at least 2'x 2' headshots) on the blank wall of a high school
• The best I've already talked about... asking you to Venmo the bride drink $$

Best things we brought:

• Dave's earbuds... he could watch his own videos, while I dozed to HBO and HGTV
• "comfort" cups for hot tea and cold drinks and wine
• extra cloth and plastic grocery bags for carrying things from the car to the hotel room, so we didn't have to unload everything
• Dave's smoked cheese to accompany our nightly drinks and wine - but we only made sandwiches twice, yet hauled the fixin's into the refrigerator every night!

Ruby has been very comfortable riding in.  We did experience "phantom braking" a few times, especially near flashing yellow lights; and we got where we could predict when she would get confused about lane markings in construction zones and would take her out of "lane assist".  But 90% of the time, she kept us on the straight and narrow and kept us 7 car lengths behind the car in front of us!

Dave compared his projections, to the "actuals" at every stop!

A few "Ruby Statistics"

• We will have driven 3200 miles and 72 hours of driving
• We spent $375 in energy, 10.8 cents per mile; gas would have been about 15 cents per mile
• The price per kWh averaged 33 cents per kWh, though it varied a good bit depending on the state or municipality.  In some states, the cost was by the minute because of state laws that only allow power companies to sell electricity by the kWh!  Texas and AL were the most expensive and SC the cheapest. It averaged about 3 times more than "home charging".
• We usually would stop 3 times when we drove for a "full" day, maybe one more stop than if we were getting gas.  Charging would take about 20-30 minutes and usually there was a place to grab some fast food or walk around a shopping center.  
• After this trip, we would feel comfortable taking Ruby on any long trip with no "range anxiety".  It does take some advance planning, but the car's software helps a lot with that.  The route planner keeps you on interstates and if you want to do back roads you have to be intentional and figure that in.
• Ruby's cargo space was plenty gracious and of course, we filled it.  We could have definitely packed less, though if we stayed out much longer, we would need a laundro-mat!!