The first day of the road trip started out with early thunder and torrential rain. I was scheduled to speak at the Texas Emergency Management Advisory Committee’s Preparedness Subcommittee at the Fort Worth Convention Center. I was so concerned about the weather that I almost opted to make my appearance via Zoom. The day before our neighborhood experienced a storm with straight line winds of 80 MPH. A 1-1/2 to 2 foot oak tree was split in half by that storm. It was located about a mile from our house.
As you can see from the top photo above, the rain lightened up and Bonnie and I were able to drive to the Convention Center for the presentation. The Model Y was packed to the gills but held everything we wanted to take with us. Immediately after my presentation, we jumped in the Model Y and started our drive. I had decided to pay for a month of Full Self Driving capability for the car to help me avoid speed traps in smaller, rural towns. There had been a significant upgrade in the service, according to Elon Musk, after our eclipse drive. I had a few times that it suddenly swerved to take an exit, that wasn’t on the route it was navigating, or to the shoulder of the road. I couldn’t discern why it happened, but I kept my attention on it.
FSD also had a change I didn’t like. If I am traveling faster than the car in front of me, the Tesla will signal a lane change and pass the vehicle. So far so good. In the previous release of FSD, the car would then signal a lane change and go back to the lane I had been traveling in. Now, it just stays in the passing lane. In both Texas and Colorado, it is illegal to stay in the left lane, unless you’re passing another vehicle. It would be nice if there was an option in FSD to enable the previous behaviors.
My major beef with FSD was the reason I subscribed for the month: speed limits. In smaller Texas towns, along the interstates, the highway speed limit of 75 MPH will drop very quickly to 65, the 60, 50, 40 and usually bottom out at 30. Most of the time the Tesla would catch this and perform correctly. However, sometimes the deceleration wasn’t quick enough and I had to take over to prevent getting a ticket. Leaving these towns, the speed limit increases from 30 to 40, 50, 60, 65, then stay at 75. Sometimes the car did not pick ups the speed limit changes at all. Sometimes it would perform correctly until the speed limit went to 65 or above. It seemed to just ignore those signs completely. To make up for this, I’d roll the right thumbwheel on the steering up to increase the cruise max speed.
The best thing about FSD was not having to steer. Yes, you have to keep your hand on the wheel and eyes on the road, but so much driving stress and muscle fatigue was eliminated that I loved it. I especially enjoyed being able to look away from the road for 5 or 10 seconds and catch some of the scenery.
Our first charge stop was right at the time predicted by A Better Routeplanner. We stopped at a bank of Tesla Superchargers located in a Sonic drive-in parking lot in Quanah, Texas. Quanah is a tiny farm town so ours was the only Tesla charging until just before we left, when another Tesla pulled in. Following my mantra of “feed yourself when you feed your EV,” we grabbed lunch at the Sonic. As usual, I got a warning that the car was reaching the planned charge limit (90%) before I’d finished eating.
The drive continued uneventfully to our next charging stop, In Amarillo. Again the arrival time was almost exactly what we had predicted on the route map, published a week or two before leaving. While walking from the car to the convenience store, we were stopped by a guy asking if we’d seen the weather radar. We had been noticing growing dark clouds to the west, but since we turn north at Amarillo, we hadn’t paid them much heed.
We had a nice time chatting with the gentleman and he introduced himself as “Santa Charley.” He’s been playing Santa for more than 20 years. He even has a website. Another plus to charging is meeting the other people at the chargers. Not all of them drive an EV. Charley doesn’t.
We chatted with Charley for a while and before we knew it, it was time to hit the road again. Our next charge stop was to be in Clayton, New Mexico. It started to rain, but nothing too heavy, until we got to Dalhart. Grape-sized hail began to fall and everyone was pulling into gas stations for the cover of the canopies. We were desperately looking for a gas station to to the same and saw a closed station with only one car parked under the canopy. We pulled and chatted with the other driver for a moment and listened to the sound of hail hitting the canopy.
After a short while, the hail ceased but the rain continued. Bonnie and I looked at the weather radar and saw a bad storm in Clayton, but that was an hour and a half away. We discussed our options and decided to continue.
The red “X” marks where things got really scary. Rain intensity kept getting higher but we were still traveling near posted speeds, as were the other cars we encountered. Then the deluge began. It was as dark as night even though sunset was 3 hours away. There were no other cars around us by that point, so I moved to the center stripe on our side of the divided, four-lane highway. Our iPhones then made the dreaded weather alert sound and Bonnie read that the was a tornado warning for our vicinity and baseball-sized, very damaging hail. Then, to top it all off, the windshield wipers could no longer keep up with the rain and I could no longer see the road.
I pulled over to the shoulder of the road and turned on the emergency flashers. Semis kept passing by at high speed and I was worried we might be hit, if not seen. As we came to a stop, I heard an odd grinding sound that reminded me of the sound of wet brakes after you’ve driven through deep water. When I put the car in park, the “Park” designator turned red. I had never seen that before, so I pulled up the owners manual on the large touchscreen. In the time we were parked, we were really concerned about our survival. I said something to Bonnie like, “If this is it for me, I am at peace because I’m with you.”
It’s then that I discovered Bonnie was not at peace at all. She was like Kaylee, in Serenity, saying, “To hell with this. I want to live!“
It’s good for a couple to know when they’re in sync…or not.
After a while, the radar images started to look better (for the stretch of highway we needed to drive, at least), so we decided to head out once more. The touchscreen was unresponsive to touch, so I rebooted the touchscreen but the car still would not shift into drive. Then I tried to shift into reverse and it worked! Keeping my fingers crossed, I tried shifting into drive and that worked too! The vacation was back on!
Within about five miles from where we pulled onto the shoulder, we drove through an area with what looked like snow along the side of the road. It was hail. We were that close to driving right into the dangerous hail storm, but the heavy ran stopped us and the touchscreen and shifting issues delayed us enough to avoid disaster. I never heard if the area experienced a tornado or not…
As we approached Clayton, we could see the light of the sun between the horizon and the dark cloud above us. We were almost out. When we got the the grocery store in Clayton, we decided to charge for just ten minutes and head to Trinidad, our hotel and some much needed sleep. There were Mammatus Clouds that looked amazing.
The rest of the drive was uneventful and lasted only 20 minutes. We had dinner, a beer and watched the sunset before retiring for the night. What a day!
Check out Day 2 of the Texas to Colorado EV Road Trip!
