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 see 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. Its Wyoming.
Wilderness Camping
We parked and camped last night in the wilderness. I mean outback nowhere type camping. However, we did have 1 neighbor camping next door. It would suck to be him.
We tried something different tonight with our car setup. Different is not always good. Kathy wanted me to turn my phone off because it may go off in the middle of the night. 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, Horns. Well, the car thought I was breaking in since it did not see a key nearby. My phone is the key! I tried turning it on, but it takes are really long time, so I fish around and find the credit card key in the center console. This will work, but I need to touch the door pillar to make it work. I get outside and use the card and the noise stops. Whew! I then see that the Frunk has been left open all night. There is light in there that is on and that will drain the battery, so I go over and close the Frunk. Alarms again! Good thing I have the card now. I turn it off again and then lean on car in exasperation. Dang! The alarm goes off again. By now my phone has booted up and that makes the car happy. Who’s a good car? Nice car! Don’t bark!
So I am out in the complete dark, naked, cold and now wide awake. Strange thing is, the neighbors never came to check it out. The upside is that we did not have to use the patented ‘Kathy Bear Trap’ as all bears in 100 miles were scared off.
We get up EARLY the next day and scamper out of there. Sorry dudes. We are off to Rock Springs WY where we will get on the I-80. The worst highway in America. It is either 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 up I-80 looks exactly the same too. 380 miles of the same. 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. Nothing is open, but we are in the parking lot of an old Mall. We go into the Mall looking for a restroom, 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 we are charged, because there is nothing nearby. Turns out, there is nothing far away either. It is Rock Springs remember. We eventually find an open coffee shop and talk with the people outside. Very interested in the Tesla and we show them a thing or two. They mention that they talked with another couple who were traveling/camping in their Model 3 too. Turns out to be our new friends we met in Oregon! Another weirdness.
Off 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 and not much else around. When we get there, the slots are all full except one. And, every slot is taken by a brand new all white Model 3’s. 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 visit until the storm hits and we have to put the Model 3 in the garage because of the hail. After the worst of it, we are off again. We rock up to Ken Caryl about 11:00PM and about 12 hours after we start. We did about 600 miles today which is a full day’s driving in any one’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 planner shows us arriving with 11%, we arrived with 40% The difference is that this calculation assumes 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 for camping. We generally charge to the full 80% at each stop as that happens quicker than you can get a coffee or go to the bathroom anyway. We could have done the Rock Springs charge in about 5-10 minutes for example and right back on the road. You can’t find that bathroom in 5 minutes and having left camp that morning at about 6:00 AM I needed coffee stat. If you followed their recommendation for charging you could shave about 30-40 minutes off the total drive time if you are like really itching to make time, but in real-life, it just doesn’t matter.
Bite me Big Oil Companies.