Wilderness Camping
We parked and camped last night in the wilderness. I mean Outback Nowhere type of camping. Followed a dirt Forest Service Road and looked for a place to pull over. Found a grassy patch and turns out, we did have one neighbor camping next door, down the dirt road a bit farther, next to the creek. Professional outfitters. Yeah, serious outdoorsmen, out to enjoy the great outdoors and some peace and quiet.
The fun begins
We tried something different tonight with our car setup. Different is not always good.
Kathy wanted me to turn my phone completely off because it often goes off in the middle of the night. Okay. We settle into the deep stillness and fall asleep.
Later that night, at about 2:00 AM, I need to answer the call of Mother Nature. I open the door…
…and all hell breaks loose! Alarms, lights flashing, blaring horns!
Well, the car thought I was breaking in because it didn’t ‘see’ a key nearby. My phone is the key and it is off! Seconds feel like hours and I can’t move fast enough to make it all stop!
I grab the phone and turn it on, but it always takes a really long time to boot up. Meanwhile, I desperately fish around and find the ‘credit card key’ in the center console. This will work but I need to touch it to the door pillar outside! I scramble to get myself out of the trunk bed, tap the card, and, Whew! The noise stops. Relief.
But wait, there’s more
Then I see that the frunk has been left open all night.
There is light in there that is on and it’s draining the battery! I walk around to the front of the car and and close the frunk.
Alarms and lights again!
Good thing I have the card in hand, I race back to the side of the car and turn it off. Leaning on car in exasperation…
One more time…
Dang! The alarm goes off AGAIN!!!
But by now my phone has booted up and that makes the car happy. Who’s a good car? Nice car! Don’t bark! No more barking!!!
So here I am, out in pitch-black dark, naked, cold, and now wide awake. Expecting the neighbors to show up (with guns) and dreading the stupid explanation for disturbing the peace, but they never came to check it out.
What bears?
The upside of the commotion was that we did not have to use the patented ‘Kathy Bear Trap,’ as all bears within 100 miles were scared off.
However, now we’ll never know if it actually works. The thinking was, if a bear shows up to check out our food (tripping the bear alarm), the racket would wake us up. The plan was we’d flash lights and honk… or drive away. Neighbors or not, apparently we’d been on our own to sort it out.
We get up EARLY the next day and scamper out of there. Sorry dudes.
Head Out on the Highway
Today, we are like horses to a barn! We are heading home, or at least our temporary home until we head back Down Under. Kathy is getting antsy.
This is going to be the most driving we have done in one day for the whole trip. We will experience the real Wyoming as we cover about 80% of the whole state today. Top to bottom, left to right.
There won’t be many pictures. It’s Wyoming.
We are heading to Rock Springs WY where we will get on I-80. The worst highway in America. It is either ridiculously windy, raining, snowing, or all three at the same time. You have to really watch the weather on this stretch of highway, or you WILL be sorry.
The first stretch is 150 miles of this. Just like this. Never different, so I don’t have any more pictures to show. The drive down I-80 looks exactly the same, too. 380 miles of the same. Fortunately, we had great weather the entire trip. That has never happened for me in 50 years of driving thru Wyoming. So, I am happy about that!
Rock Springs Supercharger
This is not the most first-class charger location. We are in the parking lot of an old mall. We go into the mall looking for a restroom, it’s too early for any shops to be open, and this is what we find:
I shit you not. (pun intended) Now this is the Wyoming I remember.
Anyway, we just want to get some breakfast and a coffee, but that will have to wait until after we’re charged because there is nothing nearby. We leave the mall and head towards town.
Turns out, there is nothing far away either. It is Rock Springs, remember. We eventually find an open coffee shop in the center of this very small town and talk with the people outside. Very interested in the Tesla and we show them a thing or two. They mention that they recently talked with another couple who were traveling/camping in their Model 3 too. Turns out to be our new friends we met in Oregon, Tommy and Bill! Another weirdness. What are the odds?
Off and on the road again!
380 miles of this until we start to get back to some Colorado-type scenery. Can’t wait.
Rawlins Supercharger
A place to get coffee while charging. Let’s keep moving.
Cheyenne Supercharger
Cheyenne is the largest town in Wyoming, and this was a decent charger. Again, this charger is in a shopping mall parking lot with not much else around.
But, when we get there, the slots are all full except one. And, every slot is taken by a brand new, all white Model 3! We think maybe there is a distribution center nearby or something? Nope. Everybody there is from Colorado! Everybody is out road-tripping like us. Cool. But, now let’s get back to Colorado!
We have about 150 miles to go and this charge will get us there easy. We stop in Frederick to see my sister and dad who live there. We have a nice, relaxing visit until a thundrstorm hits and we scramble to put the Model 3 in the garage because of the hail. Welcome to Colorado. After the worst of it, we are off again.
End of an Amazing Journey
We rock up to Ken Caryl about 11:00 PM, about 12 hours after we started driving. We did about 600 miles today which is a full day’s driving in anyone’s book and the car just blew through it.
I have zero range anxiety with this car now.
Total cost for today’s epic journey: $12.13. The ABRP app shows us arriving with 11%, we arrived with 40%. The difference is that this calculation was set to assume we only charge as much as is necessary at each stop to reach the next stop with 10%. In this leg, we could have done that and been just fine, but for most of our journey we needed more than 10% when we arrived so that we had something in the tank for camping.
We generally charge to the full 80% or more at each stop as charging happens quicker than you can get a coffee or go to the bathroom anyway.
We could have done the Rock Springs charger in about 5-10 minutes, for example, and gotten right back on the road. But you can’t find that bathroom in 5 minutes, and having left camp that morning at about 6:00 AM, I needed coffee! If you followed the ABRP recommendation for charging, you could shave about 30-40 minutes off the total drive time, a good strategy if you are really itching to make time. But in our case, it just didn’t matter.
Here are the stats. Bite me, Big Oil Companies.
