Tin Poodle

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East side of continental divide Driving stats for days 3-5 Day 3 Long day, easy driving conditions,  average efficiency Day 4 Horrible driving into headwinds and elevation gain, subsequent poor efficiency Day 5 (crossing the continental divide) Short day driving, great efficiency due to lots of downhill most of the way West side of continental divide

Three Standard Poodles.. two fairly well behaved adults and a 11 month old puppy. What can go wrong? Day 3 and 4... When traveling with three dogs, there’s a lot to consider - behavior, barking, other dogs, other people, water, food, “business breaks”, keeping dogs from eating people snacks, keeping car at comfortable temperature. Here’s some of what’s gone wrong so far beyond almost losing Ellie the first day. Two dogs get right to their rest stop business - no playing around. Puppy has ADD and every car, truck, person, blowing leaf, keeps her from getting to her business. This means lots of walks and cooling heels while puppy runs in circles. Puppy barks at this while driving by...why... In case you’ve never been to Kansas, the wind doesn’t blow in Kansas; it wails loudly. Puppy at night thinks wailing is something that requires barking, setting off other dogs to join in.  Barry to the rescue to stop the barking outbreak. Back to sleep...until 3AM...

Act 1...Wind Holy f#*#*g s### ! Driving through Kansas was like driving through a hurricane. Except no rain. The first clue on how bad the wind was going to be was at midnight when the howling of the wind woke us both up.  By the time we checked out, it had picked up so hard, that the car doors would slam open or closed if you weren't careful. Driving was ridiculous. The wind alternated between a dead headwind to a dead crosswind.  The car was being buffeted back and forth as the semi's next to us were having the same thing happen. Luckily with autosteer/autopilot engaged the car stayed centered in the lane.  I only had to drive manually when vehicles in the next lane would dive toward us. Steering wasn't the only problem.  The headwind made a serious dent on range.  As you can see from this picture even though I was driving at 73 mph the winds made the "gas mileage" equivalent to driving 100 mph!  Range was reduced 40-50% because of the wind...

Act 1...Tech So if it isn't obvious by now we're a bit into tech.  Electric cars, aircraft grade aluminum travel trailer, etc.  I'm going to go in two pieces of tech we use for the dogs. One of the nice things about the Tesla is that we can control and monitor the climate remotely.  Either from the Tesla app on a smartphone or a third party app (I use an app on my Fenix 5 smartwatch).  This allows us to lock the car with the dogs still in it and know they are safe.   We also put signs on the windows to let people know the dogs are safe. And a contact phone number just in case they feel the urge to break the window. Not ours, but you get the idea And just to make sure the dogs aren't getting into too much trouble we have a remote web cam in the car to monitor the dogs and the temp.  The camera is connected to a mobile wifi hot spot in the car. Which leads to Act 2...The Secret Lives of Pets So it was a little war...

...more on that at the end of this post. First two days in the books.  No more dog excitement.  Hardest part is finding good food on the road.   We were lucky on  both days finding good local eateries with the help of Yelp. Of course there's always reviews like this tho the Jr High cafeteria  :-) Stats (courtesy of TeslaFi ).  Notice that we ended up using more rated miles (512 vs 430) and were 17% less efficient (worse "gas" mileage) on day 2.  This was the result of colder temps and stiff headwinds. Day 1 Total Miles Driven 412.65 Rated Miles Used 430.31 Efficiency 95.9 % Time Driven 6 Hours 37 Minutes kWh Used 139.08 kWh Wh/Mile 337 Wh Weather overcast rainy Average Temp 52.93 F Charging      time    43 mins Stops        2        Day 2 Total Miles Driven 403.2 Rated Miles Used 512.57 Efficiency 78.66 % Time Driven 6 Hours 10 Minut...

...no not two Bowluses (?Bowli?)  Two bloggers!  That's right.  For a limited time not only do you get my imaginative musings.  You get Nancy's musings at no additional cost. And just so there is no confusion I'll make sure she gets credit when posting.  So without further adieu...Nancy P.S.  To the Irishman...you know who you are...your wish has come true ;-) ----------------------- Three poodles, two adults, a Tesla, and first phase of a road trip to acquire Bowlus Road-chief in Las Vegas, Nevada. What can go wrong? Nancy's perspective on our Travel Adventure. It didn't take long to find out....First stop charging at Supercharger West of Harrisburg, PA. Me to Barry, "can you open front trunk (frunk) of Tesla so I can get my rain jacket"? Simple request, simply push a button, frunk should open. Me, standing at front of car in rain and whipping wind...waiting...waiting...waiting... looking at husband with my WTF face on. Nothing. Nada. The...