After spending a peaceful evening among the spectacular sandstone structures of Red Rock Canyon State Park I set out to explore a couple of ghost towns that I saw listed on a clickbait travel site in a feature called 20 Ghost Towns in California.
I left Red Rock Canyon with a comfortable 40% charge and Apple CarPlay steered me to Brady’s Market to get my charge up to 65%. The gas station and convenience store, described in some reviews as looking like the opening scene in a horror movie, are permanently closed. But there are two brand-new ChargePoint DC fast chargers on the site, and both were available.
I charged to 70% and went on my way, discovering that you can’t believe everything you read when it comes to ghost towns. Robber’s Roost, a convenience store with some vaguely historical buildings, wasn’t open yet.
Golden Cactus Ghost Town was a little better, though not the “small yet beautifully preserved little town” that the article promised. It’s a roadside attraction built, I’m guessing, twenty or thirty years ago. It was locked up when I visited and Google lists it as “permanently closed.”
Next stop was Silver City Ghost Town near Lake Isabella. This also is not a “perfectly preserved old west town” but a re-creation built from decaying buildings relocated from Whiskey Flats and other California mining towns. I was greeted by Shawn, who was running the souvenir shop and gave me an honest rundown of the place. It’s worth the price of a latte to take a stroll around the place and take in the weird contents of the buildings.
The 60 mile drive from Mojave to Bodfish and then to Bakersfield left me at about 40% charge. CarPlay steered me to an Electrify America charging station and found it fully occupied by two Rivians, an Ioniq 5, and a Bolt. This meant a twenty minute wait and having to negotiate with a driver who arrived after me but thought he was next in line. But 350 kWh charging is worth waiting for, particularly because I didn’t want to drive all over Bakersfield looking for a slower charger that also might be occupied by the time I got there.
My Take-Away
All-in-all CarPlay did a great job of monitoring my charge level and giving me plenty of margin so that I could make some side trips when something caught my eye. The charging stops were a good way to break up a long drive, giving me time to post to Instagram and do a little writing. I never once felt like I was going to run low on charge.
But it is a hassle to arrive at a charging station and find it fully booked. This could be improved if (1) you could easily see each vehicle’s charging status from a distance, and (2) you could line up behind a car that’s charging the way you do at a gas station.
