Keep It Simple! Keep It Fun!

4:03PM  arrived at St Augustine, FL our last charging station before we reach our hotel! 10% charge left. We are recommended to charge for 30 minutes.  5/5 in St Augustine Preminum Outlet! Shop away ladies! After the charge, we reached our destination! Yeah!!!  Our sight seeing drive caused a scare for our family back in Maine. We saw two buildings that are purposely structured to look broken. One was broken and slanded as if it went through an earthquake while the other was upside down. The wife texted pictures to family in Maine with a note "Natural disaster in Orlando right now. We must all evacuate immediately! Will keep you updated!" The husband got many missed calls from family members and wondered why :-) Oh, we can't forget to mention! We traveled through 9 states with everyone  safe and sound. It is not until during our  2 hours drive to the hotel that we almost got into a car accident 3 times! A small Prius tried to push  us o...

10:23AM arrived at Santee, SC charing station (attached picture shows information the car gives us when we have it plugged in including the current miles (98mi), how much mi/hr charge, kW and charge current we are getting, and the recommended minutes to charge (25 minutes) in order to continue onto the next charging station or the trip) 10:42AM  charged with 171 miles. We are leaving Santee, SC charging station.  Rating: 2/5 There are no shops around for us. There are apartments in the area with several hotels. It felt a little unsafe and it was somewhat confirmed by a scene of a woman by Holiday Inn acting upset. Turned out her car windows were seriously damaged. So... we quickly left for Savannah, GA. We will have 20% charge left when we arrive at 12:27PM.  12:15PM Priority - FOOD! We got distracted by southern BBQ so we ended up at Shane's Rib Shack first. Being foodadicts as we are, we ordered too much and were too full for seafood spread afterwards. The...

7:33 AM arrived at Fayetteville charging station. We wanted to go to a diner but with everyone so hungry, we just parked the car at the charing station and decided to try out Waffle House for the first time. We had to cross the street which was SCARY. The Waffle House was the smallest building and the smallest Waffle House building we have ever seen. When we walked in, EVERYONE turned and stared at us. Why? Because we are not sure if there are any Asians who cross through this neighborhood. The employees were African American and all the customers were African American. It felt like they had just saw our faces on America's Most Wanted. It reminded the wife of the time she brought her African American friends to an Asian restaurant in an Asian neighborhood. We laughed about it, made good conversations and some new friends before we finished up our low quality breakfast.  Rating of super charging station: 2/5 Not a lot of useful shops around for us. Was not very clean.  ...

3:15AM Driving to Rocky Mount - Oh no! The Wife is DRIVING! Wife finally woke up and took over the driving for the husband to sleep.  While the wife was driving and everyone was sleeping in the dark, quiet night, it did feel like we were running away from a crime scene, being chased by the police officials. And for a moment, it felt like we were beating them -  Nothing can go wrong when you got one of your partners in crime with you in the passenger seat and one in her car seat with her secret weapon - baby doll Daisy? 65 degrees outside at 3am. Very nice! We want to say we feel bad leaving our friends and families behind in the cold, rainy weather of Maine but as you know, we are awful at lying ... so we will admit it, we are loving the heat :-) 5:25AM arrived at Rocky Mount, NC super charging station. The car suggests we charge for only 15 minutes to continue to the next charging station, which is what we did. The wife continued to drive.  Rating: 3...

4/21/2017  The husband drove through a couple of Virginia super charging stations. Not much details since the wife was sleeping.  People have sent us questions on whether we recommend driving through the night and what is the autopilot like. Below are some of our quick thoughts on the questions.  Would you recommend driving through the night? Yes, especially when you have a little one and depends on how tired you are. She was comfortable in her car seat and slept through the entire night, so we covered a lot of distance with less stress on keeping her happy and entertained. We did not encounter traffic, so again we covered a lot of miles without wasted time. There were not a lot of cars on the road, so using autopilot was amazing! Not that autopilot does not do well with a lot of cars but it just makes it even more relaxing. We were not in a rush to get to a destination, so we kept it open on whether we need to stop or not. Our original plan was to stop at t...

8:35PM arrived at Harrisburg, PA Tesla super charging station Grabbed quick Mexican food again for dinner! Charging Station Rating: 4/5 Two steakhouses and Chiptole as well as a few other restaurants within the plaza. One can walk across the street to other eating places. not a mall plaza but does have plenty of stores    9:07PM Car charged with 228miles Next super charging station: Strasburg, VA with 30% left of charge when we arrive to the destination  Little one fell asleep right away, so the husband wanted to keep driving since he was not tired. You would think living in Maine, we see a good number of deers and don't need to run into anymore deers. No... It had to take us to travel over 4 states to see two deers standing in the middle of the highway, staring straight at us.  Here is a dialogue around 2AM between a scared husband and a sleepy wife: Wife sleeping Little one sleeping Husband driving Two large deers were standing on...

5:45PM arrived at Moosic, PA Tesla super charging station with 44 miles left It took 3 hours from the last charging station to this PA charging station - that long stretch was a bit too long for the little one. She was getting a little restless, but luckily with FaceTime with family, playing with toys and drawing, we made it to PA just fine. Interestingly, the car said we would have 15% charge left when we arrive, but we actually had 17% from the regenerative braking. We have only driven the car in the winter with the observation that we loose more charges and miles  (a.k.a %) in the cold weather. However, with the weather getting warmer and warmer as we head south, we are loosing less charges as we have been experiencing in the winter. Moosic, PA charging station (Rating: 5/5) - A really big mall plaza with tons of shopping stores (great for the ladies! and kids!) - Plenty of restaurants that are walking distance within the plaza parking space - Clean The little one kept...

April 20, 2017 7:30AM While the little one kept sleeping, we all got ready and hung out. 8:30AM we drove our friend to Harvard University where she works and then headed straight to Dedham Tesla shop for a car assessment. 10:45AM We were ready to get on the road towards Florida!! Specs of car: Tesla Model X 90D with 259 miles per charge Instead of going down I95, which would take us through NY and D.C., we routed  our way around that traffic area by going through I84West which then turns into I81. Car recommended charging in West Hartford, CT. 1:30PM Before heading to the charging station, we stopped at Besito, a Mexican/Latin restaurant, 12 minutes from the charging station and before it. It is not your typical, casual Mexican restaurant. It was a more high end atmosphere. The place is very big and with super duper tall ceiling. The staff were very friendly. The food was great too! The husband got two enchiladas and the wife got two tacos. Amazing! After lunch, we charg...

April 19 - we worked all day and came home by 4:30pm. We threw everything that we were bringing on the trip into our luggages. Somehow the little one's things took up 1.5 luggage! We packed so fast amd so many things - you would have thought we were running out of the country because the FBI and squad team were coming to get us. We made sure to let Grandma know to not let the little one nap so she can nap during the car ride to Somerville/Boston, the wife's college friend's condo. Successful! Trip down to Somerville, MA Charge when leaving home: 168 miles and stopped by Grandma's house on the way to pick up the little one. When the little one saw all the luggages and her sleeping bag, she said "Go hotel swimming Mama?" We had to prep her little mind that to was not a hotel, but telling her that we weren't staying at a hotel was too hard for her little mind to comprehend, so we said, "This place is like a hotel but it is too small to have a swimmi...

Friends and families have asked for regular updates while we are on our road trip from Maine to Florida with many suggestions to start a blog. Why would they suggest starting a blog? 1. Funny, crazy things happen in our marriage 2. We are driving an all electric Tesla car that requires charging every 2 hours or so and 3. The third passenger is a strong minded toddler, soon to be 3 years old in May. All sounds crazy right? It absolutely is! But! We love spending time together and seeing the world together. We plan to keep our trip simple and keep having fun through the goods and the bads. As many of you know the motto for our Ngo family: Keep It simple! Keep it fun! (We are starting to add "Keep it safe" now that we have added the little one in our life). We hope our families and friends will enjoy our simple posts and feel free to text recommendations (content to share, format, where to eat, what to avoid, etc.) as we drive our way down from Maine to Orlando Florida. St...