ON July 31 – the day before I was due to turn 77 – Melody and I spent a full-day touring Crater Lake National Park. We’re lucky to live less than 80 miles from this spectacular park, whose creation year (1902) puts it among the oldest national parks in the world, and we’ve been going there several times each year since 1970. We haven’t tired of it yet. I don’t think we ever will.

This particular trip was primarily planned because smoke from the Milepost 97 fire near Canyonville, Oregon had made the air unhealthy in many of the places we usually go, but had largely bypassed Crater Lake. But I’ve also been wondering, ever since we got the Bolt, how it would fare on a full Crater Lake day. We’d taken it to the Rim Village overlook and back (see https://drivingonsunlight.net/2019/05/06/the-story-so-far/), but the park includes much more than Rim Village. There is a road – Rim Drive – all the way around the rim of the caldera that holds the lake, with side roads to several other points of interest, including one of the highest spots reachable by car in the entire state of Oregon. Since buying the Bolt in December, I’ve preached that an EV is perfectly adequate for all uses anyone would normally put a car to. Taking Rim Drive its entire length, plus as many of the side roads as we could fit into one day, would add many extra miles over our previous visit; but for outdoor enthusiasts such as us, it would certainly qualify as “normal use”. How would the Bolt’s battery hold up?

So let’s deal with that question, first. We left home with less than a full battery – we usually charge to 95% instead of 100% (there are reasons), and I forgot to make my usual adjustment for longer trips. I drove the 72 highway miles between Medford and Crater Lake as I have always driven them, a few miles over the 55 mph speed limit, with bursts up to 75 and a bit over for passing out-of-state tourists gawking at the big trees. We covered almost every road in the park (we left out only the road from Rim Drive to the north entrance, and the last few miles of the road to the Pinnacles, neither of which we had time for) – a total distance of 195 miles. We got home with 30% of the battery remaining, and 103 miles left on the range indicator. If you have had any doubts about an electric car substituting perfectly for a gasoline car in all normal circumstances, please lay them aside.

Otherwise, the trip was a mixed bag. We got to Mazama Village, where we had planned to have brunch, just as the breakfast line was closing. (We were standing by the counter preparing to order when they suddenly announced that breakfast was over and took all the food away. We were the only ones waiting.) The small collapsible tripod I was carrying to try out for flower photos kept pinching me, leaving me with a blood blister on one hand and a cut thumb on the other. I left my camera bag behind at one stop (the camera wasn’t in it, so I lost only my spare camera battery and cleaning cloth, but still…). But the scenery and the flowers overwhelmed all of that. Looked back on, it was a simply glorious ten hours. Enjoy the pictures. You can follow the course of our day in the captions.