u/dantose

This is an interesting one, because it's actually the first time I've actually gotten nervous about range on a trip, and nearly had to add a dedicated charging stop due to multiple failed charges.

Route was similar to the last trip, Colorado Springs to Grand Lake, to Estes Park, back to grand lake, but adding Mount Blue Sky to the mix before returning to the Springs.

Day 1: Due to some math errors on my part, we left at 90% charge instead of 100%. First stop, Idaho Falls. There were open chargers, but Tesla, so short cords wouldn't reach. There's like 3 other fast chargers in the town, but we didn't really need to charge, so just grabbed coffee and moved on. Arriving at out overnight, there was a convenient 120v plug, so got some charge there.

Day 2: Drive through Rocky Mountain national park. Estes Park has free level 2 charging at the public parking garage, so added some extra there. It's a fairly show charger even for level 2 though so not a TON of charge, but hey, free juice is free juice. Back over the mountain and into Grand Lake for some time on a boat. The Marina theoretically has a L2 charger, but it's been under repair for a while, so not available. No worries. After the lake, I was going to stop at the DCFC in town, but one cabinet was down for maintenance, the other had someone charging. There was an event going that had the area more crowded than we wanted to deal with, so we bailed and headed back for overnight 2 and L1 charging.

Day 3: At this point, we were around 40% charge, and still wanted to do Mount Blue Sky. We had enough charge to do that, but I've always been paranoid about running out of gas/charge. Wife wanted to stop at a donut place we found for breakfast, and there was a charger a few blocks down that had just opened, so we grabbed our stuff and swung in there to give it a shot. Well, there were two Autel branded ones, but even though they were listed as active on plugshare, they didn't appear in the app to actually activate them, leading to a third failed charge for the trip. At this point I had a choice, actually add a dedicated charging stop to the trip, or trust that charge remaining estimate was accurate for the Mount Blue Sky drive and stop being so neurotic about charge. I decided to just do the drive and charge on out next rest stop. Got up to the top with 10% remaining (estimate was 9%) got some great wildlife shots, then went backs down. Our usual coffee stop at Idaho Falls went off without a hitch, 20 minute stop (coffee place is good, but a bit slow) put us at 65%, plenty to get home.

Trip totals:

Miles: 530

Speed: varied, 75 for parts of the highway, down to 35 for mountain passes.

Trip efficiency 4.5 mi/kwh average (!) I'm not sure how my trip efficiency ended up so high. There was a fair bit of highway, and while the heat wave here seems to have broken, there was still AC in play.

Total charge cost: ~$20

Time spent charging: With the failed charge stops, I probably spent about 10 minutes mucking with it. Everything else was just normal rest stops. This probably makes it the first trip where charging added more time than gas would have.

EDIT: 2025 Equinox for those asking

I started out with a rough plan. There was an interesting looking restaurant on the way next to a good charging spot. About 2 hours into a 3.5 hour trip we were there. Original plan was drive out straight, charge on the way back.

2 hours in. I didn't really need to charge, but figured I might as well since charger parking was free, and otherwise it's paid parking, and I wanted the break. The restaurant was busy and there was a 20 minute wait. Not going for that, so figured coffee and back on the road. Lots of shops around, so found the nearest coffee shop, and grabbed a quiche for the wife and a breakfast burrito for me along with the coffee. Waiting for the food, car hit target charge (90%) and stopped at 17 minutes charge, beating my 20 minute human needs break.

Another 1.5 hours and we were at our hotel. No destination charging, so parked and did out exploring around town.

Next day we were heading through a national park looking for wildlife. 1.5 hours through the park, then ended up in a cute little town. We ended up doing a walk along a river with free level 2 charging available at the public parking spot. It was slow, but free and we were stopping anyway. 1.5 hours back to the hotel (catching some more great wildlife) and into the next day.

Last leg, we were planning on hitting up the same charger from the trip up, but I wanted breakfast before we left. Swung by a local charge point charger while I grabbed a bite to eat the wife wanted something different, then a longer walk, so we ended up charged more than we really needed.

On the way home, we made a detour (more sight seeing) so about 3 hours back to the restaurant we wanted to check out. We didn't need the top up since the breakfast charge ended up longer, also due to human considerations, so we ate, and did the last 2 hours home.

500 miles total, the one charging stop we planned wasn't needed, and we solely used just convenience charging when we were stopping anyway. That did mean that our by-the-numbers charge speed was garbage since none of them were planned stops, so no preconditioning at play. Arrived back home with 30%.

I've been kicking around ideas for trying to get as many too proficiencies on a character at once. I have a build that gets all of them I believe:

"cheat" options like All Purpose Tool or Astral Elf only count as one tool, as while you can get proficiency with any tool, you cant get them all at once.

Baseline, 11 tools: Mountain Dwarf Artificer (any subclass, but I'll say Artillerist), Rewarded Background for skilled, picking up Poisoner, Chef, and Artificer Initiate feats. Initial stat spread 8, 14, 15+2, 15+2, 10, 8. That gets us, Brewer's (Dwarven Tool Proficiency) Tinker's, thieves', Herbalism (arti), Woodcarver's (Artillerist), Glassblower's, Alchemist's, Cobbler's (skilled), Poisoner's (poisoner), Cook's (Chef), Calligrapher's (artificer Initiate). Feats aren't optimal, but not too much of a tradeoff since we'd still have 3 ASIs to max out INT.

Customizing features, +8 more for 19 total: Swap language and gaming set from rewarded for Vehicles and Navigator's (PHB: Customize Your Background) Swap Dwarven Combat Training for Cartographer's, Mason's, Leatherworker's, Jeweler's; and Dwarven Armor Training for Potter's and Weaver's (Tasha's: Customizing Your Origin)

That's what I'd actually play this as at a table. Going white room, we have to actually start sacrificing meaningful power by multiclassing:

Adjusted stats: 8, 14, 13, 14+2, 13, 11+2

Final split Arti 8, Kensei monk 4, Mastermind Rogue 3, Battle Master 3, Forge Cleric 1.

Multiclassing +7 for 26 tools, which should be all of them (though not every musical instrument and gaming set, just one of each):

Mastermind Rogue gets us Disguise Kit, Gaming Kit, and Forgery Kit.

Battle Master gets us Carpenter's.

Bard for Musical Instruments

Forge Cleric 1 for Smith's

Kensei Monk for Painter's

Adding in our cheat option, We could cut out Bard, grab an instrument from background, and pick up Navigator's Tools from an All Purpose Tool. That allows a better stat line of 8, 14, 14+2, 13+2, 15+2, 13, 9, plus another feat to round out INT.

Any others ideas for reducing the opportunity cost to this?