TeslaPittsburgh.com: June Trip 2014 - Part 9: My Neck of the Woods

After nearly a week of celebrations, reunions, traffic and sightseeing, we finally found our trip winding down. The last stop before home would be in Somerset, PA at the Supercharger. Serena would get a snack and so would we... and we were happy to be back in familiar surroundings.

The Somerset Supercharger is one of the cross-country lynch pins in the network... but it isn't the most impressive place to charge.

Let me take a brief moment to point out how great Serena looks in her "classic" grey color. Tesla has recently discontinued this shade of grey and instead opted for a deeper and darker grey. The new color is gorgeous-- don't get me wrong-- but it is also darker and going to show more dirt and scratches. I also wonder if it will easily shimmer between blue-green-grey like our car does. The way the color morphs and bends with the variations of light hitting it is one of the things I like about it. It can look mousey and bland too-- but usually it is complex and quite hard to pin down. Here's hoping the new grey will be equally captivating.

Eating is the usual pastime at a Supercharger stop-- at least for those of us without dogs to walk. At Somerset you'll find the Supercharger conveniently located right behind the Wendy's, but we wanted a fuller meal on this stop so we braved a hazardously narrow bridge and walked to Eat n'Park.

As a fun fact, Jake and I were here months ago when his car, "Tess", was the first Tesla customer car charged here (we were also first at Cranberry-- but if you read the whole blog you already knew that). We'd made a run from Wexford on the expected completion date specifically TRYING to be first and caught up to the construction crew. You can see the video of our "mission" below:

We stuffed ourselves silly with the buffet and goodies at Eat n'Park and waddled back to the car. Backing the car down the driveway into its home garage was immensely satisfying. We'd logged a good first Supercharger Road Trip with no injuries, no damage and lots of memories.

Though not nearly as important at that, we'd also gained a lot of real-world experience with the car and "bonded" to it. You never really OWN a car until you travel with it... and now looking across a parking lot I find I'm not looking for "a grey Tesla" but I'm looking for "MY grey Tesla". That's a good thing!

We'd gained a lot of anecdotal knowledge too-- which I'll be writing up in a more focused post about traveling on the Supercharger network-- and dispensed quite a bit of knowledge. It's a huge credit to my fellow Tesla owners who post on the online forums their wisdom and answer questions, that I was able to embrace such a radical new technology with some confidence-- even to the point of educating other owners. Thank you all for your generosity of spirit and I hope I similarly paid it forward to the owners I helped along the way.

Our next trip (which we just completed) would be a equally daunting distance-wise, made even more so by the complete lack of Superchargers. How would we get on? Heh. That's a long story for another time.

As an aside-- the Supercharger network in this area isn't a new idea. Twitter user @Lanny pointed out to me that the Lincoln Highway already had electric charging stations along it as early as 1914!! Amazing to consider how things have come full circle. You can read more about Rt 30's electric history by CLICKING HERE.

See the map of this detour and more navigation details by CLICKING HERE.