July 19 (2) - Boulder City
Updated: Aug 16, 2019
Coming out of Hoover Dam, the car temp gage reads 108 and the car says it has 30 miles of charge left. My spreadsheet says my next stop, Willow Beach, is 22 miles away. I think the Blue Frog and I will not make it.
Boulder City is only six miles away and has free level 2 chargers open to the public at the downtown municipal lot. (I like the person who set up my spreadsheet; she is a more thorough, better organized version of me.)
Boulder City is 8 miles behind me, back the way I came. It it seems a sure bet. It is not as risky as blithely driving down the road, especially if the road goes up more than down, which I do not know. As well, with the heat, level 2's slower charge, less heating to the battery, seems the best option.
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But what to do in Boulder City for 7 hours?
Eat. I eat at Dillingers and have a roasted artichoke which is a perfect for me. It too hot to eat the whole thing or the very large "side" salad I order but now I have dinner, so it is good. (I have been eating Kind bars and handfuls of nuts from a large box I bought with Sarah in LA.)
Buy stuff. I buy a 100 foot heavy duty extension cord at the downtown ACE Hardware in case I have to plug into a house or a hotel room for a level 1 charge. I will have enough cord to snake out a window, from the second floor, across a lawn to the car in a parking lot, as I did last April when I rented an EV Leaf and could not find a charger close by. By this feat of home-made engineering, I charged the car enough overnight to drive to a high speed charger a few miles further away.
Look at buildings.The Hoover Dam construction crew worked for 5 years, 3500 men a shift, 3 shifts round the clock, with just two days off a year. Many of the workers lived around Boulder City in identical little houses. I find a whole street of them, a few blocks from the main drag. I wonder if they are expensive now.
The artichokes look exactly like the one at Dillinger's but I forgot snap a picture. I took this one without permission from Jessica Gavin. You can find her recipe at https://www.jessicagavin.com/roasted-artichokes/