A Maritimes AdvEVnture

Other than my Gratitude and Glimmers posts, I haven’t really mused much of late. I never wanted this blog to be only about quilting, but have it be a place to share bits of my life and thoughts in my brain. I started this blog 12 years ago this month so it seems fitting I should post a little bit about goings-on which, as you can see by the title, is currently a trip.

Yes, that is Three Pines, and yes, that is Knowlton, hometown of Louise Penny, and yes, we stayed the first night just outside of Knowlton in Lac Brôme Hotel (highly recommend).

Three Pines is really a state of mind. It’s where we live when we choose to be kind.”

One of the reasons I thought I’d write about our trip is that we are doing it in our Ioniq 5 EV. 

Knowlton is a cute little town.

No I didn’t go in the quilt shop 😬

Brome Lake Books in the background

But first, we parked at the Théâtre de Lac Brôme, where there was an EV charger, just a slow one, only 7 kW, not a lot more than our at-home charger which is 5.5 kW. It cost $1/hour. We weren’t there for a full hour, so our cost was .79c which didn’t get us more than a few percent higher. It was unfortunate to only be there such a short time but the bookstore didn’t open until 10, and we had a long day’s drive ahead, so we couldn’t hang around.

MacGyver put it best: you have to approach travelling with a little more planning due to lack of infrastructure, not due to the cars, so it’s a little more work to plan your charging stops. And multitasking is your friend. At every charging stop, we’ve either grabbed a bite or even a light meal (Tim Horton’s takeout is our friend for a light but healthy breakfast snack or lunch) as well as taken a bathroom break. 

Inside is wonderful from the stone fireplaces at each end, to the tin ceiling, 

to the signs and posters here and there 

Look on the wall behind me

and the dishes, napkins, takeout bags, and to-go cup sleeves.

The province of Québec has their shit together for charging infrastructure. Plenty of stations, (we used Circuit Éléctrique and Hydro Québec) with very good power output, 180 kW. This meant we averaged 21 minutes to top up to 80% which is optimum. 

4 Circuit Éléctrique, 4 Hydro Québec, and a total of 16 new Tesla chargers, some of which were still wrapped and not in service

However, in Ontario Shell now has their own chargers, also 180 kW with excellent output too, which we used wherever possible. 

This was a cool sight! TTC is Toronto Transit and this was in Kingston so we think this bus was being delivered.

We’ve hit the fall colours pretty much perfectly.

Roxton, Québec, east of Montreal taken out of my window at 110 kph!

From Québec we went on to St. Andrews, New Brunswick, which, like the entire southern coast of the province, is on the Bay of Fundy. We went to Kingsbrae Gardens, mostly past the best before date, but still pretty. 

Whale watching was the afternoon’s agenda and it didn’t disappoint. Three hours out in the Bay of Fundy where we saw seals, porpoises, and two whales. The weather was soectacular, 25C with next to no wind, blue skies, and calm water.

A minke whale! (Said like Minky😉)

I even got to hold a sea star aka starfish and a sea urchin. The starfish felt rather odd on my palm, like kind of a gentle crawly-touchy feeling, and the sea urchin was a lot heavier than I anticipated. 

After supper, eaten on a patio overlooking the harbour where we witnessed a beautiful sunset,

we took a little drive to the Pendleton Lighthouse. 

Today we spent the morning hiking three of the many trails in Fundy National Park, 

Dickson Falls

and the afternoon at Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park.

The water is chocolate-coloured due to the sediment and minerals, particularly from the sandstone cliffs, that get stirred up at high tide as it was here. 

This was an hour before high tide so we will go back in the morning at low tide and walk on that ocean floor!

One last EV note: we charged at a station that’s only 50 kW behind Shoppers Drug Mart in Sussex. We charged it up to 95% because we needed extra to go back and forth between Hopewell Rocks and our hotel. It took 45 minutes but we took a bathroom break, and I popped in to Shoppers to pick up a couple of snack items. 

New Brunswick Power

As I’ve mentioned before in my EV posts, think of your EV as a smart phone with a motor. A sewing machine type motor at that. You press on the foot pedal, it goes. You lift off your foot, it stops, well, slows right down in the case of the EV. So your brakes last forever. But I digress. When you charge your phone, it goes really fast up until the last 5% or so. The car is the same, though it starts to slow down after 80% - 85% which is why, efficient use of time-wise, we usually only charge to 80%. 

Also, MacGyver has learned something else cool about our car: it has a sort of AI in that the computer adapts to the road conditions, the terrain, and the vehicles around you when using the new-to-him Automatic mode. This saves power and even regenerates it (as does all braking for that matter) which means you’re putting energy back into the battery, so you’re saving battery power. It’s more efficient use of battery power, and in just a day of using this mode, we’ve noticed a difference in economy.

Tomorrow after Hopewell Rocks, it’s on to Prince Edward Island. We’ve travelled 2094 km since leaving our driveway!

I’ll be happy to answer any questions in the comments so others can read and learn. Would that our media and our country in general was not so negative towards EVs. In China, for example, it’s not uncommon to have 500-800 kW chargers!