By: Jean Rath
The Rocky Mountains
Our Ford F-150 Lightning got us through our first winter in Moose Jaw. Plugged into the garage charger, the truck was always ready to take us anywhere we wanted to go. Admittedly, none of those places were very far from home. We were pretty typical North Americans in that sense – 80% of the time driving less than 100 km from our home (statistic from Ford CEO Jim Farley).
EV tech and app-based tech are evolving and co-existing together in service to us and our desire for smooth travel. The Lightning and the phone can tell us how far we can go before we need to charge – right down to the percentage. They know where all the charging stations are. They advise us where to stop. Armed with all that knowledge, Christopher and I set off from rainy Moose Jaw on the Thursday morning before May Long. Our destination was my sister’s in Rossland, BC. Cruising past Mortlach, past the wind farms near Morse, past Reed Lake and into the hilly pasturelands, we arrived at our first top-up location: the FLO chargers at the Co-op by the highway in Swift Current.
Swift Current was where we learned to just take the advice from the truck and the phone already.
Second-Guessing the Tech All the Way to Maple Creek
Gas vehicles are refueled in no time; with electric vehicles, one has to wait. It’s no big deal. At Swift Current, the tech told us to charge to 80% and that it would take 20 minutes, so we read our books and checked our email. But when we got to 70%, we calculated that this was plenty to get us to our lunch stop in Medicine Hat. So why wait?
We set out confidently with a comfortable range of 290 km, which would put us at a 16% charge by the time we got to Medicine Hat. At about the time that a range of hills appeared in the distance to our left, the nice-lady voice in the truck politely told us that we may not reach our destination, and the Ford screen advised us that we would have less than 10% – and then less than 8% – by the time we got to Medicine Hat. That percentage just kept dropping!
So we drove into Maple Creek and charged at the Co-op at the edge of town.
The detour cost us almost an hour, but I didn’t mind it. The road into Maple Creek is lovely – we passed an intriguing place called Cypress Hills Winery; it makes fruit wine. I’d like to go all the way into Maple Creek sometime and check it out. And we still got to Medicine Hat around lunchtime as planned.
The most efficient way to plan a trip with an EV is to make sure that a major charging session happens at the same time as a meal break. But one of the consequences of plugging in the car and then going for lunch is that you have to be able to walk to your lunch place. In Medicine Hat, that wasn’t a problem. We left the truck at the Co-op charger and walked over to Cora. Their haloumi and sausage skillet can always get me through an afternoon of travel.
To Lethbridge and Beyond
The charging at Medicine Hat took us to Lethbridge, past small, hilly fields and farmhouses with cows and horses and then large fields with lots of irrigation equipment at work. We drove by wind
farms and solar arrays and crossed several impressive, man-made channels with signs that said “St. Mary River Irrigation District.”
It was late afternoon when we checked into the Fairfield Inn and Suites in Lethbridge and began thinking about recharging ourselves and the EV. We drove to the FLO charger at Henderson Lake Park. Again, our dinner had to be in walking distance – fortunately, we love Indian food. A walk down Mayor Magrath Drive took us to Rivaaz Indian restaurant where, in an intriguing Indian/Italian fusion, I really enjoyed my paneer pizza. If we hadn’t wanted Indian, there were a couple of other restaurants nearby, too.
If I were to do this trip again, I would love to visit that Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden.
The next day, our road took us across the dry beauty of Lethbridge’s Oldman River Valley and toward the mountains. Enough people have experienced that road – or written about it – that I don’t have to go into any detail about what it’s like to travel across the plains and see the mountains appear and then keep driving until you’re right in the mountains, passing the startling Frank Slide and heading along the Crowsnest Pass. What’s most relevant to this article is whether we succeeded in getting our EV to Rossland. We did.
Our first top-up was in Fernie, which we reached after following the narrow, rushing Elk River. The charger is behind the Smitty’s on the Crowsnest Highway on the edge of town. This time, we waited for the exact percentage the tech recommended! We’d learned our lesson. While waiting, I took a quick walk up the sidewalk to get a good look at The Three Sisters.
Then it was off to Cranbrook for lunch and EV charging. Again, others can tell you more about the incredible mountain scenery and the beautiful, wide, flat valley that is the Kootenay River. What was key for us about Cranbrook was that the charger on the Cranbrook Street strip was an easy walk to a nearby A&W. It’s a day for onion rings and spicy crispy chicken.
Keeping up the EV Charging Around Rossland
Kathleen and Wayne live on a property about 7 km outside Rossland, and so we had to be strategic. We didn’t want to arrive at their place with no charge at all! I will mention here that one can always just plug an EV into a regular house plug. But it would take a very long time to charge!
We wanted the truck to be 50% charged when arrived at our outside-of-Rossland destination, so we decided to top up at Creston. I keep saying I’m not going to bother describing a road that others have described better, but Oh My it was a beautiful drive: a valley full of fruit farms surreally surrounded by big mountains. Reinforced by our top-up and a steeped tea from the Tim Horton near the charge station (I walked over there during the charge), the journey continued, up into heights that made us both nervous.
The heights inevitably lead to descents into valleys – we could see Castlegar way down in the valley long before we got there. We charged at the Canadian Tire, which became our go-to while we were in the region. That charge allowed us to reach Kathleen and Wayne’s at 50%, after going back up and then down into Trail and then up into Rossland and then down to the property – so many ups and downs in this part of the country! This is a good time to mention what happens when an EV is going down hills: it charges the battery!
Rossland, BC
We spent the next day tooling around in Kathleen and Wayne’s car, driving into Rossland and climbing the Kootenay-Columbia Viewpoint Trail. The day after that, the truck was needed again. Christopher drove to Castlegar to have coffee with Simon Lindley (Trucked Up EVs channel host, https://www.youtube.com/@truckedupevs ). Kathleen had an event in Nelson and took the car. When Christopher got home, he and I and Wayne piled into the EV to go join Kathleen. Wayne guided us along the back way to show us around – past the “100-acre Woods,” which is the old-growth forest that the municipality owns and preserves; a canal that is part of the infrastructure of the region; past walls of different-coloured green trees that faced us at every turn – like nothing we see on the Prairies or that we would even see in the Ottawa Valley.
It was an amazing drive, and the truck was up for it (and no charging needed).
After walking along Nelson’s main street and then meeting up with Kathleen for a stroll through Lakeside Park by the Big Orange Bridge over Kootenay Lake, the four of us drove in the two separate vehicles to Castlegar – there was plenty of charge left in the EV to do that. Why Castlegar? Because Cuisine of India; that’s why. My go-to paneer tikka masala and naan were exactly right. Admittedly, we would never have gotten to the restaurant from the charging station at the Castlegar Visitors Centre if we had only been in the truck – we needed the car to get us there and back.
With that end-of-day charge from Castlegar, we were all set the next day to begin …
The Journey Home
It was the same deal in reverse, more or less. A top-up at Cranbrook and then the drive along wide, flat, meandering river valleys and into the mountains to Fernie. We had lunch at the Smitty’s while charging, under the same watchful gaze of The Three Sisters. And then Rivaaz and the Henderson Lake Park charger gave us what we needed for our overnight in Lethbridge.
The next day, Medicine Hat provided the top up and Swift Current hosted our lunchtime charge – but not at the Co-op as before. Instead, we used the Tesla chargers at the Swift Current Mall a little further from the highway. We can use Tesla chargers because we have an adapter. These chargers are faster (also pricier) and also an easy walk to Springs Garden Restaurant and Lounge. The tomato and ginger soup was pretty incredible, and my chicken avocado wrap came with nice thick bread. This restaurant was worth the extra drive into town.
We got home to Moose Jaw easily on a Swift Current charge.
Looking to the Future…
Well, the trip to Rossland was fun. Now we could settle back into our 80%-of-the-population habit of going no farther east than Regina, no farther north than Buffalo Pound Lake, no farther west than Mortlach, and no farther south than halfway to Gravelbourg.
Oh. We did go to Saskatoon – Martensville, actually. There’s a nice EV charger at the A&W just off HW16 at Auction Mart Road. Why Martensville? To buy a camper trailer at Traveland RV with a view to taking the EV and trailer to Newfoundland and back this coming summer.
Shall we see how that goes?