Getting to The Arches

The morning hike through Bryce was a great way to wake up and start the day. It was chilly enough that I needed to wear a fleece. After a relatively quick 45 minutes of hiking around the vistas, it was time to hit the road.

Now, with Teslas, you enter your destination, and it automatically calculates and plans the most effective route, given how much charge you have on the battery. Many times the maps don’t seem to make sense and so far have put me on at least three roads to nowhere. But I am generally up for a surprise and unanticipated adventures. Today the car decided to get brave on me.

Leaving Bryce, I drove along this cool old back road called UT 62. I am guessing it was an old back road, given that I only saw three cars for about 30 miles, then there were the random cows grazing along the unpainted road. The route finally turns off on to, the sister to the ever boring I 80, the difference between I 70 and I 80 seems to be that 70 has more steep graded mountain routes.

This is where OTTO decided to get brave. The next available supercharger is in Green River, UT. Why is this brave?? Well, the car set out, saying that I could reach Green River with ~35 miles to spare. I have to believe that the calculation didn’t account for the steep climbs. It wasn’t long on I 70 before the computer started reporting that I had 32 miles range remaining and 46 miles to the charging station. Yeah me!!

To make matters worse, this stretch of the highway receives no cell signal. Oh, sure, let’s go ahead and see the temperature outside is a lovely 99 degrees. Hmmm, the smart thing to do is drop the speed to 70 (the limit is 80), this starts to help things a bit but still coming up short on the destination (now 25 miles away). So I slow down to 65-60 (depending on if there are trucks behind me). Then the real miracle kicks in, uphill climb rewards you with downhill regeneration.

I’ve never thought the regen, made a notable difference in the range, but today, it was enough to get me to the charger with 30 miles to spare. The lesson learned here is perhaps the car is smart enough; after all, it knew it was using a lot of electricity to get up the mountain and would make up for it on the way down.

So I pull into Green River. Usually, the charging stations are next to a restaurant; in this case, it was next to a rather substantial museum dedicated to the John Wesley Powell River History. If I had gone into the museum, I am assured that it would have contained everything I needed to know about Green River. I had to skip the opportunity but it did really look like a very nice museum.

I ran into another Tesla road tripper; he was from San Francisco and on his way to Monument Valley. He had convinced his wife to let him take a similar road trip that I am doing, the difference being he needed to come home after a week, he also hadn’t turned his model 3 into a micro- RV (but he was curious).

The rest of the drive was pleasantly uneventful.

I had not originally planned on hiking the Arches, but I am super glad I did. Despite the 105 degrees of Utah goodness, the park was fantastic, offering great vistas and relatively flat (yet hot) hikes.