Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

An electric vehicle changes everything about a road trip.

I’m a deep believer in flying down the highway at 60 mph. The momentum, the smacking rhythm of the tires, the small-town gas stations, the pee breaks in the sagebrush by the highway in the dark. There’s music in it, somehow.

Alone in the car, my creativity fans out for deep consideration. The idea for my first novel came to me on a road trip between Logan, Utah and Kalispell, Montana. The characters for the second novel muscled their way in somewhere along Highway 101 between Brookings and Bandon.

Traveling with another person, I’ve found that conversation has time to unwind and rewind and play again. Spend a week on a road trip with someone and you know them in ways you rarely know people.

I once logged 11,000 miles on a six-week meandering trip from Anchorage to Phoenix and back again.

The route I’m most familiar with, though, is Eugene, Oregon to Lethbridge, Alberta. I’ve run that route maybe two dozen times. In the last five years before my mother died, I did it twice a year.

Two months ago, Craig bought a fully electric vehicle and we’ve done two road trips in it. First thing. You don’t wing a road trip across vast stretches of the West in an EV. Sucking down the power to nothing in an EV isn’t an option. Not like a gas powered oops which results in a slog to a gas station and humping back the gallon of fuel to your car.

The unexpected benefit: We’ve stopped in two towns I’ve sped by for decades.

Ritzville, Washington? Always a flash on our way out or home on that endless stretch of Interstate 90 and Highway 395 between Spokane and the Columbia Gorge’s Interstate 84.

This year we stopped in Ritzville because it has fast charging power. And because charging the EV takes longer than filling a fuel tank, we had time for dinner. Which is when we discovered an Indian restaurant with rich aromatic food you want to linger over. Ritzville has shifted from a signpost to an actual place I view fondly.

Later on that same trip we dropped in on Grass Valley, Oregon, on Highway 97. Hot summer day, low on power. Grass Valley has exactly one store that does quadruple duty: liquor, groceries, deli. Also, a charging station. We had cold drinks at the store with its antique-household-goods decoration while we waited for the car to power up.

At first I didn’t care for this slowing down and pausing.

But I’m shifting away from my urge to hurry. I’m looking around. And it’s not just what’s here at this place I must wait. It’s how did this place come to be here? What do they do here? Who might I meet here?

In Grass Valley, the owner of the store was helping out in the deli, chatting up customers at the register and grinning when I congratulated her on the presence of mind to add the charging station. She was of an age where you’d expect her to be relaxing and watching the great-grandkids bang around.

Two new towns I did not see before. But I do see now. Mind’s eye. Places a story I’m pondering might need.

Photos by Susan Palmer