Tin Poodle

One of the challenges of being on the road for three months is the efficient use of space. The Bowlus is a roomy, comfy, cozy camper for two people. Plenty of drawers, closets and storage space.   But when you add in three dogs it becomes a little less roomy and a lot more “cozy” 😟 In order to stay sane we've managed to develop a routine for storing stuff so as to maximize the space. It consists of repurposing space for different tasks. On travel days: Back two rows of seats in the car are for the dogs. Basically the size of a small pickup truck bed when the seats are folded down. Second row floor and under seats holds seldom used stuff (extra food, paper goods, tools, etc) Storage space underneath back floor of car is for water hoses, Tesla charging cords, Bowlus electrical cords, and dog food. Frunk holds all the outside and dirty stuff (mats/rugs, canopy, big green tent, grey water hose) In the...

"The Road Less Traveled" could be the title for this entire trip. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are not considered high on the vacation destination list for most Americans. But on the road less traveled are even smaller roads that are less traveled. International Appalachian Trail Sometimes the road less traveled doesn't have roads 😲 Now here is the payoff for traveling to the end of the road... Canso A small town on the far eastern tip of Nova Scotia. The largest building in town is the curling center. Meat Cove At the northern tip of Nova Scotia. Where the Atlantic and the St Lawrence Seaway meet. Louisbourgh The far eastern coast of Cape Breton.  Site of one of the original French Forts in North America Rose Blanche Literally the end of the road on the south western coast of Newfoundland. Anything further out on that route is only reachable by boat or air. Further out on this coas...

So as soon as I mention how uneventful the electric charging part of the trip has been we ran into a minor snafu. We were heading to a new campground, about 160 miles north of the ferry. Our max range on a “full tank” with the trailer is about 170 miles +/-. The plan was to drive a hundred miles, stop and add about 25 miles of range with a slow charger while grabbing groceries, then finish up the last 60 miles. The short charge was to give us a little cushion for bad weather.  When I went to get directions to the charger I noticed it was no longer listed on the main charger locater app. It was only listed on a smaller Canadian locater. But no one had checked in or rated the charger in over four years. So I called the business listed with the charger. Their number was no longer in service! And this was the only charger listed on the way 😨 I thought about trying the 160 miles straight through. But with rain and winds predicted, both range killer...

It's been pointed out to me that I've been neglecting a blog subject.  Apparently I've been writing plenty about the camper, the travels, and the dogs. But not so much about the electric car part. So today's post will be about the electric car stuff. One of the reasons I haven't written much about the electric car charging is that towing electric has been...well boring. Boring being a good thing. Even outside the coverage of the Tesla supercharger network it's been routine. On travel days we start with a full charge from the campground. If it's a short drive to the next campground (<120 miles) we usually don't stop to charge. For longer drives we've been using the FLO Chademo network throughout Nova Scotia. Not as quick as superchargers (50kW vs 105kW). But we usually combine the stop with grocery shopping, or sight seeing, or lunch. Generally we've got plenty “in the tank” for the next leg when we get back t...

Random musings after three weeks on the road. A three act play. Act 1 Weather forecasts...rain They might as well be called weather "your guess is as good as mine” forecasts! For the first two weeks it seemed as if it rained everyday. That was bad enough. But what made it worse is that we would check the forecast for the next day and there would be no forecast rain...but it would rain anyway. This repeated itself over and over and over again. No rain in forecast...rain the next day. It got old fast. Luckily the weather finally got nice and we've had several consecutive sunny days :-) Act 2 More weather...wind To keep things dry we have a “mudroom” that we put at the entrance of the Bowlus. Also works well as a room to clean the dogs before letting them in. The only bad thing about it is that it takes about 45 minutes to set up. One day we had to switch sites at the campground. We decided it would be easier t...