Choosing the right charging station for long drives is a bit of an art. Plug share is the best app for giving a list of possible chargers for your Leaf but you always want to confirm while you are charging at your previous stop that the charger you will be driving to next is actually working that day by using the app specific for the charger you are driving to next. I find choosing a charging station at a shopping center is usually a poor choice. They tend to be busy and often have users and people parking in the one chademo charging station you need. This same problem exist for Electrify America who usually have only one chademo that is shared with a cc2 and someone is using that cc2. On the other hand, I find charging stations at gas stations are a good bet because EV drivers hate driving to gas stations so they tend to be less busy and they have the added bonus of windshield washing stations. Charge Point has charging stations at Chevron and BP pulse has charging station at Arco. Another lesser know charging station is Loop EV chargers at US Bank which are older and slower so many CC2 users go elsewhere which means the chademo is likely to be less busy. One single advantage to the Leaf is the obvious choice of charging at “you guessed it” a Nissan dealer. Call ahead to confirm they are open and their charger has the chademo you seek.
Before leaving on any long trip, log into and make sure you have funded the apps you plan on using to charge your Leaf. Charging your Leaf is a problem in so many ways. All of them will require a good cell phone signal or WiFi. Some of them may require you plug in before you tell the app to charge and others will require you to connect after you tell the app to charge. One of them requires that the car be shut off before you start charging. It would be easy to assume, why use an app at all, just use your credit card. That does work sometimes and then again it may not. I usually have my best luck by using an app to identify the machine and then select the start charging option. I have attached a screen shot of the apps I use. I fund the apps using a series of virtual credit cards from capital one.