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Supercharger - Cambria, CA (location unknown)

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wdolson

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Jul 24, 2015
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Clark Co, WA
The Tesla expansion map shows a supercharger going in at Cambria, which I figured could be handy for me as my father lives in Morro Bay. Though Atascadero worked fine the last time I went down there.

I suspect the Cambria supercharger might be a lower priority now that highway 1 north of San Simeon is going to be closed for almost a year. There was a landslide that some are saying was the largest in California state recorded history a couple of weeks ago. A bridge south of Monterey was damaged in a mud slide in February so badly it will need to be replaced. Highway 1 is a beautiful drive and I can see why Tesla was installing superchargers to support traffic along there, but the Cambria supercharger would probably be one of the least used in California if installed this year.
 
Highway 1 is a beautiful drive and I can see why Tesla was installing superchargers to support traffic along there, but the Cambria supercharger would probably be one of the least used in California if installed this year.

Unless you live south of Cambria and enjoy weekend jaunts up Hwy 1.
Cambria is a perfect destination for southlanders and I would enjoy a new SC, even if all to myself. :D
 
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I wish that highway had been closed the time years ago that I did a lowside on my motorcycle just outside the Nepenthe Restaurant in Big Sur. Heavy rain and riding with racers on a "leisurely" ride to the motorcycle races at Laguna Seca is probably a bad formula anywhere, but especially on that road and especially when passing on double lines is optional. I'd like to try the road again someday from the safety of my Model S at a more reasonable speed.
 
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Since whenever something so bizarre happens to close US-101 would much more likely affect fragile California Highway 1 and therefore would probably already have Hwy 1 closed before it even gets to 101, it doesn't make that much sense that Cambria would be a backup to Atascadero for people trying to bypass 101 closures on 1, but it might act as a backup when Atascadero SC has some other type of failure (such as equipment failure or something local and non-road oriented).

No jaunts up highway 1 anytime soon. The rockslide south of big sur will keep this road closed for at least another year.

Big Sur Slide Buries Highway 1, Transforming California Shoreline
OMG! By rough count, 300 cars could fit in the dirt of that slide where the road was! That's enormous! For reference, only 200 cars were caught in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake Oakland thingiemajiggie. The biggest differences being that the Oakland thing was a man made object (not very Earthquake proof) with a lot of traffic, and Big Sur is nature doing its thing and probably had 0 people there when it happened (but if there were, we'd never know unless someone had a buried skeletal tracker).

I like the idea of those who want to go North on 1 from the South being able to do so with a nice southerly charging location. Last time I wanted to see if my car could make it, I set out South on Hwy 1 from Carmel many months ago after some of the rains, but was stopped by some of the most mean law enforcement I've ever seen; they actually acted like it was illegal for me to be driving in the rain. I think they are garbage, but that's probably why they were sent on that donut run right there. They claimed the road was closed because there was some sort of blockage; I wonder if that mud slide was related to the closure those law enforcement were stopping us for. I'm not there often enough to memorize it.

I sometimes consider what it would be like to live there, and quite frankly, the hills come out of the ocean right there, so it's not exactly easy terrain for living. Electric flying vehicles would be a smarter way to live on some solid rock around there, not on the slippery mud with that little rolling car roadway thread hanging off the mud on the side of the cliff they call Highway 1. That's why it's a highway: no way could that thing elevate to the status of anything else but the lowest rung of roadways, a highway. (In California, "highway" is defined to be a rough and tumble anything-goes road where you better watch out, and used for that in instructions and laws to be a big warning that you must be a really capable driver and car to be on a highway (although by law, anybody and any vehicle on the road must be "highway capable", meaning to handle the worst possible most stressful situation of driving). Pretty much every other type of roadway is superior to a highway in terms of at least one of but never all of: orderliness, safety, expense, capacity, controls, or speed. Highway 1 is the perfect descriptor for that road, as was Highway 17 back when it was not divided and Highway 152 and Highway 156 when they weren't divided, and I used to hear old timers complain about Highway 99 all the time back when it wasn't as easy going as now.)
 
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I can get from LA to SLO and Cambria, can't i?
Bummer that Big Sur was hit so badly with the slides. Was that the same area hit by fires last year?

There were fires there about a year ago which probably helped get the slide going.

Cambria is where the coast range gets down near the coast, but the nerrowing happens north of town. The town exists because there is still room between the mountains and the ocean for a town.

My parents moved to Morro Bay in 1984 and I went to Cal Poly. I know the SLO area fairly well.

Tesla is advertising a new supercharger going in somewhere in the SLO area and there is one in Atascadero that has been there since around 2013 or 2014. It was one of the early superchargers. When I went down in October, I stayed overnight in Morro Bay, but didn't charge there. I had plenty of charge after charging at Atascadero to run around town in Morro Bay, stay the night, then head back and supercharge while having a so-so breakfast at Dennys next door to the supercharger. I took the attached picture from the door of the Dennys, it reminded me of the supercharger picture on Tesla's site.
161007_Atascadero_Car.JPG


Since whenever something so bizarre happens to close US-101 would much more likely affect fragile California Highway 1 and therefore would probably already have Hwy 1 closed before it even gets to 101, it doesn't make that much sense that Cambria would be a backup to Atascadero for people trying to bypass 101 closures on 1, but it might act as a backup when Atascadero SC has some other type of failure (such as equipment failure or something local and non-road oriented).

OMG! By rough count, 300 cars could fit in the dirt of that slide where the road was! That's enormous! For reference, only 200 cars were caught in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake Oakland thingiemajiggie. The biggest differences being that the Oakland thing was a man made object (not very Earthquake proof) with a lot of traffic, and Big Sur is nature doing its thing and probably had 0 people there when it happened (but if there were, we'd never know unless someone had a buried skeletal tracker).

I like the idea of those who want to go North on 1 from the South being able to do so with a nice southerly charging location. Last time I wanted to see if my car could make it, I set out South on Hwy 1 from Carmel many months ago after some of the rains, but was stopped by some of the most mean law enforcement I've ever seen; they actually acted like it was illegal for me to be driving in the rain. I think they are garbage, but that's probably why they were sent on that donut run right there. They claimed the road was closed because there was some sort of blockage; I wonder if that mud slide was related to the closure those law enforcement were stopping us for. I'm not there often enough to memorize it.

I sometimes consider what it would be like to live there, and quite frankly, the hills come out of the ocean right there, so it's not exactly easy terrain for living. Electric flying vehicles would be a smarter way to live on some solid rock around there, not on the slippery mud with that little rolling car roadway thread hanging off the mud on the side of the cliff they call Highway 1. That's why it's a highway: no way could that thing elevate to the status of anything else but the lowest rung of roadways, a highway. (In California, "highway" is defined to be a rough and tumble anything-goes road where you better watch out, and used for that in instructions and laws to be a big warning that you must be a really capable driver and car to be on a highway (although by law, anybody and any vehicle on the road must be "highway capable", meaning to handle the worst possible most stressful situation of driving). Pretty much every other type of roadway is superior to a highway in terms of at least one of but never all of: orderliness, safety, expense, capacity, controls, or speed. Highway 1 is the perfect descriptor for that road, as was Highway 17 back when it was not divided and Highway 152 and Highway 156 when they weren't divided, and I used to hear old timers complain about Highway 99 all the time back when it wasn't as easy going as now.)

It's a massive slide. According to the stories I read a bridge just south of Carmel started collapsing due to the hillside shifting back in February. That might be when you encountered the police. I also read replacing that bridge alone is going to be around $26 million. They have no idea how much this slide repair is going to cost yet because the hillside is still shifting and it could get bigger.

Before the slide the highway was already closed because of some minor slides that hadn't done any damage, but had covered the road. The crews working on that area decided it would be smart to get out of there because small slides were coming down and one worker got hit with a small rock. The slide happened the night after they cleared out.

There is a resort almost isolated because of the two closures. There is one very winding mountain road that connects to highway 101 that is the only road locals can use. The resort is offering exclusive getaways with access via helicopter from Monterey airport. They have had a lot of takers from all over the world. I think the package starts at $4300.

When I was in college I spent a lot of my time off from school at my sister's in Bakersfield. I drove highway 58 through the middle of nowhere. It has a bad reputation because of about 12 miles of really treacherous mountain road (there are two 180 degree curves). I rarely saw another car out there and I could drive as fast as the laws of Physics would let me.

I saw a lot of wildlife including two California condors, the second one a few weeks after they had announced they had collected all of them from the wild. Those are massive birds. On one occasion I came around a curve and it was sitting in the middle of the highway. When it took off, its wingtips touched the shoulders on each side of the highway. It flew parallel to my car for about a quarter mile and I got an excellent look at it.

An owl saved my life late one night. I was having trouble staying awake, but had to get back for class the next day. I came around a curve and there was a blinding white flash of light as a white owl took off and its wings reflected my headlights back at me. I had an enough of an adrenaline rush to not only get home, but stay awake a couple of hours after I did.

Yet another time I got caught in a cattle drive. I drove up just as some rancher were moving cattle out of one pasture down the highway to another. One of the cowboys gave me a look like "city slicker who's going to freak out". I drove slowly and the cattle stayed out of my way. They took up the opposing lane of traffic and I stayed on the right, both of us headed the same direction.

Last time I was down there I drove part of that route in my Model S and found driving really windy mountain roads with regen braking is sooo much fun. I've driven the Columbia River Gorge on SR 14 which is kind of curvy and that's pretty nice, but those coast range roads are even better.

California has some nice drives with no other traffic, but you need to know where they are.
 
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There were fires there about a year ago which probably helped get the slide going.
Makes sense!
Before the slide the highway was already closed because of some minor slides that hadn't done any damage, but had covered the road. The crews working on that area decided it would be smart to get out of there because small slides were coming down and one worker got hit with a small rock. The slide happened the night after they cleared out.
Very smart, as it turned out. Good decision.
There is a resort almost isolated because of the two closures. There is one very winding mountain road that connects to highway 101 that is the only road locals can use. The resort is offering exclusive getaways with access via helicopter from Monterey airport. They have had a lot of takers from all over the world. I think the package starts at $4300.
Awesome! That's kind of like making orange juice AND coffee out of lemons.
When I was in college I spent a lot of my time off from school at my sister's in Bakersfield. I drove highway 58 through the middle of nowhere. It has a bad reputation because of about 12 miles of really treacherous mountain road (there are two 180 degree curves). I rarely saw another car out there and I could drive as fast as the laws of Physics would let me.
I think I was on this road only once. It looks like it is a nice one for solar panel spotting. I want to go again. Obviously less rustic now.
Yet another time I got caught in a cattle drive. I drove up just as some rancher were moving cattle out of one pasture down the highway to another. One of the cowboys gave me a look like "city slicker who's going to freak out". I drove slowly and the cattle stayed out of my way. They took up the opposing lane of traffic and I stayed on the right, both of us headed the same direction.
They probably were right to be wary of the nonrural drivers who weren't necessarily trained in their husbandry processes. Animals when not cornered or gravely threatened tend to be fairly amenable. Mythbusters TV show showed that bulls in a china shop are amazingly good at not knocking over the china on the shelves even when running around. I find it slightly more amusing that they kept their lane.

Then this:
I saw a lot of wildlife including two California condors, the second one a few weeks after they had announced they had collected all of them from the wild. Those are massive birds. On one occasion I came around a curve and it was sitting in the middle of the highway. When it took off, its wingtips touched the shoulders on each side of the highway. It flew parallel to my car for about a quarter mile and I got an excellent look at it.

Some things just have to be experienced to know them. (Obviously, the people who had collected them "all" did not expect you to have that experience. I wonder how many they missed. Maybe a naturalist intentionally left a small number out to see if they'd do better out of captivity.) Since according to wikipedia the native Indians said these are spiritual animals, perhaps you were enjoined with some spiritual event.
California has some nice drives with no other traffic, but you need to know where they are.
Occasionally I find one, but they are hard to find again. I think they're more made for the Model X100D than the Model S 60D I have. But, I'm going to try to find some of them again sometime this year.
 
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However, a great time to go to the Hearst Castle. Was there last month on a Saturday - saw maybe 40 people. We had a tour to ourselves.

(Hearst is just north of Cambria - which was hit pretty hard by the decrease in traffic - road closes, as said, a little further north at Ragged Point.)
Remarkably, it takes same amount of time from the Monterey Peninsula to get there using US 101 despite the extra distance as it did using Hwy 1 exclusively.
 
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Cambria is a nice little town to stay in if planning to go to Hearst for the tours. Beautiful country and the Castle and property are really gems of California. We've been there a few times. If not mistaken the Big Sur fires came right outside of Hearst property and they were moving some valuables out a head of time as it got closer. That really would have been a terrible loss had it expanded further south. I'm sure the area since being cut off from the north now along Hwy 1 could use the tourism so don't let it stop you from visiting.

BTW an excellent, informative and great read is a site called BigSurKate, run by Kate Novoa. I found myself checking in daily when the Big Sur fires were raging. Here's the link: BigSurKate Great source of up-to-date info on the area.

Kate's blog is kind of the lifeline to that coastal area and gets updates from emergency resources. Some of the best photos on the conditions in the area (Landslides, fires, etc) from her friends in the air and on the ground. In fact if you are planning any driving down the coast there or along 101 in the area, I'd strongly suggest checking out the updates she posts to the blog. There's a lot of equipment being moved in addressing the landslide area and it's good to know the planned movement and anticipated delays. Also sounds like thru July you might also see troop movement on the roads (like 101) around Fort Hunter Liggett with training exercises going on. I remember being behind a l-o-n-g convoy of vehicles one trip down that way a few years back.

Speaking of fires, if you do encounter fires in your trip down to Southern Calif this summer/fall, you'll appreciate the air filtering packages in the PUP if you got it. On a trip down by Buellton one year the wildfires were close to the highway and extended quite a few miles, plus we were smelling smoke from a wildfire near Vandenberg. For someone with allergies/asthma it was the worst part of the trip in our Honda even on recirc and I couldn't wait to get to fresh air. Can't imagine what it's like to be a volunteer on a fire crew.
 
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