Day Fifteen

Bill got up at 6am to ride the trails we walked yesterday, he wore the Go Pro this time so you get to see what fun he’s having! 8.8 miles in all, it went much quicker than the hike and he was back before I knew it! I packed up all the stuff while he rode and we were on the road just before 8am. **Side bar….While I was packing up my Lighting McQueen and Mater blanket, (which I bought for $3 with a coupon off the waffle box when the kids were little!) I realized I should take a pic with the red rocks in the background like from the movie ‘Cars’ which we lived and breathed in our house for a while when the boys were little! ** We crossed into New Mexico and apparently the Mountain time zone. Suddenly we look at the time in the car and it’s different from my watch, we’re now 2 hours behind the east coast! It’s amazing how the countryside changed from green and flat in Texas to desert like and flat in New Mexico and then some mountains in the distance. There were some ‘Toy Story’ clouds in the very blue sky as we drove along Route 54, which was like a never ending road in the distance. At our first charging stop of the day we were parked next to another Rivian from Maine, Bill realized when talking to the owner that he’s talked to him before on the Rivian forums! Total Rivian’s seen = 8. We passed a train and it had 3 engines and was towing 217 train cars!! We also saw three oversized trucks driving the other direction, each of them carrying one windmill blade, they were absolutely gigantic! This area is apparently known for growing pistachio’s, as we saw fields of trees and went by the largest pistachio at Pistachioland! Our hotel is just east of White Sands National Park which is know for it’s white sands and missile testing. We were going to go and see the sunset over the dunes tonight, but the sunset stroll has been cancelled, as it’s going to be 97 degrees at 7pm. Also, due to there only being slow chargers in the area we didn’t want to have to drive the 20 mins there, 20 mins back and then go that way again in the morning and waste what charge we have. We’re going to get up early and be at the gates of the park when they open at 7am, when it will only be a balmy 75 degrees! When we parked at the hotel Bill saw a plug on the wall outside so has plugged the car in and we just hope no one notices! Cheeky! We’re off to Phoenix tomorrow, where we’ll meet Bill’s brother Gil, who has ridden out from San Diego to meet us…very excited to see him. Later peeps!

Bill Here, The charging infra in New Mexico is not great.. At least not in the areas I’m going it seems. I stopped at a Francis charger thinking I was going to be able to top op quickly and it was all off line. 🙁 Ended up going to a 50kw charger in a Chevy dealership and paid through the nose.. Even better, the charger is only accessible when the dealership is open! Did I mention that I had to download another app to charge? I think I’m up to 9 apps now! And a lot of these require you to pre-load your account.. So now I have $8.00 in a Shell Charger account which I may never use again.

I edited down the video from my ride this morning. I hope you enjoy it and I apologize for very little commentary. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night in the sauna tent and I was busy swatting flies. You can see them flying in the video!! And no, I couldn’t outrun them.. They are effing fast!!

Stats for the nerds

Canyon, TX to Alamogordo, NM
369.8 mi
6 hr 26 min
2.3 mi/kWh
Total Energy 160.4 kWh

Total for the trip so far:
2,956.4 mi
55 hr 8 min
2.03 mi/kWh
Total Energy 1,452.9 kWh