We got into Alabama late in the morning and charged the car in Mobile. We didn’t search out a place to eat while we charged but sat in the car and worked the day’s crossword puzzle together.
For lunch we went to The Brick Pit — a fun, hole-in-the-wall place in Mobile with wonderful BBQ. (Thanks for the recommendation Stacey and Hudson!) It was well worth the stop.
Then up the road to Greenville, where the supercharger was in our motel’s parking lot. This was really handy.
Neither of us like oysters, but rather than eat at any nearby national chains, we went to Wintzell’s Oyster House. This is a chain, too, but only in Alabama. The food was good, and we didn’t have to eat oysters.
The next morning we set off early to get to the Civil Rights Museum in Montgomery when it opened. We got there a bit early and walked about. Then we toured the museum. It was very moving. And a bit disheartening to realize how very much work still needs to be done. As we drove back to the highway from the museum, we were reminded again that there is so much work still to do.
For some reason, personal injury lawyers are doing all they can to support the billboard industry. It seemed like half the billboards were for these lawyers, but probably not. There are a lot of billboards along the highways, and a lot of them are for these lawyers, and most of those are for one in particular, but probably he hasn’t bought more than a quarter of the billboards we saw.
We charged again in Auburn. For the first time since New Mexico, there was another Tesla charging when we were. This was a couple and her mother, from Atlanta. The charger is at a shopping mall. After talking a while to the people in the other car, we set off across the vast parking lot toward a Panera for lunch. About halfway there, we decided it was too far and returned to the car. We had a light lunch of an orange and crackers. We realized later that afternoon that it had been a mistake to not get a good lunch because we faded out. It didn’t occur to us until the next morning that we could very easily have unplugged the car, driven to Panera for sandwiches, driven back, plugged the car back in, and eaten the sandwiches.
We drove to Opelika to take a picture. Long-story-short: We have been collecting pictures of ourselves at each of the 92 location in Johnny Cash’s version of the song “I’ve Been Everywhere.” I had a picture of Opelika from before I knew Andrea. We went there to take a picture with both of us. As sometimes happens, we had to drive around a bit to find a decent sign. By then it looked like it was going to be a very long day.
From Opelika we headed north on back roads through eastern Alabama to Tallapoosa, another of the locations I have a picture of but we don’t have a picture of both of us. It was nice to get off the interstate, but as the miles rolled by I started adding up how much time all this would take. We would lose an hour crossing into Georgia and into eastern time. And we needed to charge again in Atlanta. It looked like we wouldn’t get to the motel until 7:30 — if we were lucky.
Fortunately, we passed a sign for the Tallapoosa River Electric Cooperative. Thinking this was good enough, we took a picture and headed back to the interstate toward Atlanta.
I had reserved a room on the south side of Atlanta, not wanting to have to drive through it during morning rush hour to get south to Macon and Savannah. Unfortunately, the Atlanta supercharger is north of the city center and we were coming into the city from the southwest. We struggled through the late afternoon traffic to the charger, sometimes being eight lanes of stop and go heading north. The charger is in the parking garage of a mall in the city. We charged with four other Teslas, walking to a coffee shop (not Starbucks) in the mall while we waited. Then it was back onto the highway through the middle of town to the motel. Traffic was slowed by a stalled car in one of the center lanes, and then farther south by the right two lanes blocked by fire engines putting out a car fire. At least everyone was cooperative, which always makes things flow more smoothly than otherwise.
I like to get to the motel about 4:30. That gives us some time to unwind and settle in before supper. We checked into the motel at 6:30. We needed to do laundry. I was glad their dryer was broken, so we’d just have to wait to do laundry in Savannah. It was a long, hard day.
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Travels with Kate 