USA Trip: Snowy Affair with Tesla at Mount Rainier
Amtrak Cascades: Portland - Seattle
Seattle, Washington
We arrived at King Street Station on time at 330pm and booked our Lyft to our AirBnB. Comparing to previous two cities that I was at (San Francisco and Portland), there were definitely more skyscrapers at this part of America. There was slight hiccups when we wanted to check in our stay as both of our eyes somehow missed the door to get to our floor. We spent considerably amount of time in the cold figuring out the instructions from the owner and to find we just made fool of ourselves. Settled down our emotion and luggage, we walked towards Pike Place Market to officialise our itinerary at the seaport city. We passed by The Purple Store and were intrigued to enter. The shop basically was selling everything in purple. ARMY detected? Further down the street, there it was, the place I wanted to go so badly, a must stop. If you know me well enough, you would know which store I was referring to. As we arrived at the place, there were already flock of tourists. There was a queue. Me and my friend decided to come back for another day and went for quick bites at Piroshky Piroshky. We went to the Public Market right opposite but most of the stalls were closed by the time we were there. It was almost 6pm.
King Street Station. Apparently it was not only me amazed by the interior.
We saw more of these in this city. The skyscrapers.
Our AirBnB at Seattle, that was my bed. The couch.
The loft. Warm cozy stay at E Howell Street.
Purple, purple everywhere at this store.
Yours truly, finally at first Starbucks store in the world. Definitely looked like the wallpaper at Starbucks Bintang Miri.
Skip coffee for now, had a quick bite at this shop. I had Smoked Salmon Pâté Piroshky.
As we walked towards the pier, we noticed there were lots of constructions ongoing along the waterfront. We could see loading bay from a distance, I believe it was Pier 46. There were Seattle Great Wheel, Seattle Aquarium and even a fire station. We reached Pier 62 to have overview of Seattle skyline, however, Space Needle was nowhere to be seen from that angle. As we returned to where we came from, we didn't realise that the Gum Wall was just next to the market. It is what it is, it is a wall that full of gums; it was disgustingly colourful and at some point, I think we spotted rubber condom as well. We left for Target right after for grocery shopping as we decided to cook for our own dinner.
Ongoing construction along the waterfront.
Seattle Aquarium, Seattle Great Wheel and Pier 46.
View from Pier 62. Space Needle was on the far left which was not visible from here.
The Gum Wall. Ew.
Public Market Centre at Pike Place.
Home cooked spaghetti for dinner.
Mt Rainier National Park
The very next day it started pretty early since we booked our car at 7am at Seattle Tacoma Rental Car Centre. We commuted using light rail, known as 1 Line which was about 40 minutes away and single trip cost 3 dollars. The train actually stopped at the airport and we took the free shuttle bus to get to the car rental centre. There were plenty of car rental services under the same building and we rented ours with Hertz. After sorting out the payment, lo and behold, today was one of the days that both me and my friend was looking for as for today's agenda, we rented a Tesla! We went for the cheapest option, with mileage of 260 miles at 100% charge. As we got into the car, there was no dashboard and only a large screen in the middle where it acted as control panel for (almost) everything; from unlocking the charging port to shutting down the car.
Say hello to our Tesla!
Done familiarising with the car, sorta, we made our way to nearest Walmart to get our tire chains first. Plan for the day was to visit Mt Rainier National Park. Due to the recent snow, we were actually required to have tire chains on based on latest announcement by the park. From our research most car rental companies actually didn't allow to install tire chains due to the risk of car damage. However, sometimes the requirement, for other national parks that were, only needed to carry them on but not necessarily to have them installed. Me and my friend figured that we may not need to use them but we opted to buy with the hope we wouldn't need to use it so we could return for full refund. Needless to mention that both of us were clueless on how to put the tire chain on, both of us didn't even have any idea how to buy until we noticed there were tires dimensions on the packaging. We couldn't find one that matched ours exactly so we just picked one the closest. I believe it was 80 dollars. Ain't cheap.
Before we continued our journey, we wanted to fully charge our car since it was only 70% at first and it came to our attention that most of the Tesla chargers were at opposite direction of where we were heading so naively we thought, perhaps we could just use EV chargers at any supermarket parking in which they tend to have. We were right about that, until we realised, the port didn't match. There was one Tesla charger nearest Mt Rainier entrance so we assumed we could have our car charged there. Oh, how wrong we were. More on that later. Mt Rainier was about 2 hours drive away and our view slowly transitioned from lush of green to pearly white snow. The snow on the road side was getting thicker and thicker, the more me and my friend were getting worried should we really need to use the tire chains after all. As we were nearby the entrance, we noticed the visitors right in front of us were putting on tire chains. We were, couldn't describe our feelings at that time, but the first thing we did was to detour, getting to the charging port to revisit our plan.
My first driving experience in the States and I gave it to Tesla Model 3.
On our way there before the snow started to thicken as we approach the destination.
As we arrived at the port that we found from the internet, we plugged into our car and we noticed it did nothing. Confused, we went and read the reviews (another mistake) and we found out the port was meant for the lodge's residents. The port was registered under Tesla chargers list so we would think it was for public use. We were wrong. We were disheartened for a while, worrying that our car wouldn't have enough juice to go on with our plan, almost planned to abort if we have to. We were hit by two dilemmas at the time; the need of using tire chains and our car was running out of battery. After having toilet break at nearby restroom, we returned to the lodge and called up number displayed at the entrance. There was a guy picked up the call and he was willingly to turn on the port with a fee of 50 dollars, in which we were willingly to pay as well. Since it was just destination charger, the charge rate was very low compared to that of supercharger. It would take around 5 to 6 hours to fully charge the car. We waited for about an hour to charge the car enough to have return trip from the park.
Was still figuring out where to go from here; the park or back to Seattle.
Made full use of the time at the lodge's snowy surrounding should we decide to go back if this was as far as we could go. We were actually waiting for the office to open.
Only covering the West this time around. The country is so huge to explore them all in single trip.
When we mentioned about tire chains to the guy, he did mention about throughout his time he was there, he never used tire chains at the park. Holding on to his words, we drove to the park and as time went by, the snow on the road that we saw earlier also started to melt away. The moment we arrived at the entrance, the officer asked us what kind of car we drove (4WD didn't need tire chains in which our car wasn't) and whether we did have tire chains. He told us after driving for certain miles, we would need to put it on. With mixed feelings, we drove straight into the park and decided to play by the ear. The road was not as snowy at first but we still drove slowly. As we passed by Kautz Creek trail where we supposed to put on our tire chains, we drove on. The snow did get thicker as we started to get further in but me and my friend agreed that tire chains may not be necessary as the snow wasn't thick enough and made ourselves believed that the instruction was just a conservative precaution as there was no way they could keep track of the road conditions all the time. With that thought in mind, one burden slightly off our shoulder and continued on to drive along the park and did multiple stops along the way, while watching out for our car battery.
The road was still clear at this point, until..
...it was still drivable. We could see the tar of the road.
One of many selfies.
Of mountain, forest covered in snow. Beautiful.
Icicles and there was mini waterfall next to it.
Look at that almost-my-height snow.
It was about an hour drive when our car battery hit 30% and we decided to return to the entrance. The initial plan was to reach Henry M Jackson Visitor Centre but the battery didn't allow us to since the discharging rate was slightly higher when we went uphill. It was snowing right before we turned our car around. As we slowly descended, the car managed to self charge to sustain the battery level. We stopped by Longmire Museum and did quick tracking at Wonderland Trail. The snow was really thick and you could actually sink into it as you stepped on. Reminiscing my time back in Brackley, England playing with snow, made myself a mini snowman before leaving the national park. We noticed the other cars at the park actually have their tire chains on. As we did quick stop at Kautz Creek, there was a sign that asked to put on the chain earlier is now removed. We drove back to the same port earlier to boost our car enough to drive back to the city.
It was snowing before we decided to turn around. Perfect closure.
I was literally wondering about avalanche minutes before we saw this sign.
So much snow. So tall. So white.
This is not Mount Rainier but a memorabilia as the road started to clear up as we were heading down.
Wonderland Trail. Almost candid shot.
One with the snow and not waving US flag.
Squirtle enjoyed his time here too..
.. and even made a new friend.
This is the destination charger, which would take much longer time to fully charge a Tesla.
This is Supercharger that boosted your car battery to (almost) maximum in less than thirty minutes.
Mini vlog of myself talking about first experience with Tesla.
We supercharged our car at The Outlet Collection Seattle, which was the nearest station, 58 miles away from where we were and we still have to drive another 14 miles to the airport. We arrived at the charging station with battery at 10%. Pretty close call and was ensuring ourselves to not miss any turn and to follow the navigation closely. We opted to return the car at the same battery level when we got it in the morning so we drove to another station to recharge since the station only limited the charging up to 80%. Returned the car unscratched, we took the same light rail to Chinatown for our dinner at Chengdu Memory.
Ended our dramatic day with stomach-filling hotpot. Warming conclusion for cold snowy day.
This day is definitely one of my top highlights and most memorable one to the point it deserved a single post on its own. The day didn't go as smooth as we planned it to be but sometimes the best plan is not having any plan at all and just go with the flow.
Now I am missing driving the car already. And Mount Rainier in snow.
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