Day 49
158 miles
A picture-perfect day in Yosemite
Check-ins for 2024-06-26
- El Portal, CA (#1745) (Comment: Hotel. No internet available for the car or our phones. Checking in 10 minutes after the session )
- Fish Camp, CA (#1746) (Comment: Tenaya at Yosemite Lodge)
- Oakhurst, CA (#1747) (Comment: The Oakhurst Inn at Yosemite )
- El Portal, CA (repeat) (Comment: second attempt. connected to Starlink this time)
Tomorrow (Friday) is the last day of the year when you can enter Yosemite without a pre-purchased time-slotted pass, which means we visited less than 48 hours before the summer mass crowds. In other words, we got super lucky with our timing. Even better, we followed the sun throughout the day and it was always at least slightly behind us. I have so many great photos from the day, but I'll try to be selective. TMC limits me to 10 anyways.
We entered Yosemite from the east via Tioga Road (from Mammoth Lakes). We exited the the traditional four-season entrance on he west side to collect the El Portal supercharger (more on this drama in a minute). We completed our visit by driving to the south exit to collect the Fish Camp supercharger. This means we used every publicly available park access in one day.
We and the car had virtually no cell coverage throughout the day. You can see this in my map below. All of those straight lines represent the time periods over which TeslaFi couldn't connect to the vehicle.
The El Portal supercharger has Starlink, but I didn't know it when we arrived, and my car did not connect to it. Therefore, TeslaFi didn't record the visit, which was frustrating because it left a big gap in my TeslaFi map. When I was whinging about this in a group chat,
@israndy said it had Starlink. We'd gone back into the park and were preparing to head for Fish Camp, but Bernadette was a trooper and let me use another 45 minutes to go back to El Portal and try to connect to Starlink. Initially, Starlink was trying to connect but was saying it couldn't get an IP address. I rebooted the MCU, and that solved the problem. With the car connected, I added another 10kWh to ensure we gave TeslaFi enough time to register the charge session. I couldn't check TeslaFi while charging because my phone didn't have cell service. When we returned to the park, I found a spot that allowed my phone to connect. I confirmed that TeslaFi got the session.
This was my first time on Tioga Road, and I loved it. I liked it more than the other parts of Yosemite (except for maybe Tunnel View). But, wow, it is remote.
And Enty suffered some battle damage today. When we parked to have some lunch at Yosemite Valley Vista Point, we parked in an end spot with a view. Unfortunately, the parking spot was oddly shaped, and I misjudged where I was. The X is hard to know where your front corner is anyway, and I dropped off the pavement with the left front tire. The front valence came down on a rock. The worst damage we can find is that it popped the wheel arch aero shield out. Bernadette got it somewhat back in place, but I'm hoping someone in the Bay area could help me get the quick connects reseated. Maybe
@bmah? The scrapes are all on the bottom, FSD still works, and there is no visible damage to anything important.
When we arrived in Fish Camp, I couldn't find the superchargers, so I went to the lodge and asked the bellman. He looked at me and said: "I think they are down." When I told him that the car showed them as online, he shrugged and pointed me in the right direction. I told him I'd report back. Ten minutes later, I was, much to his surprise, back. I noted they worked fine and showed him how to use the charger display on the MCU to get real-time status. He then asked if I'd already charged, and he seemed genuinely surprised when I said I had. We talked a bit more about charging speeds, and then we moved on. Maybe he is a little more enlightened now.
Tuolumne Meadows (this was one of our first views inside the park)
Tenaya Lake
Half Dome looking west from Olmstead Point
The wildflowers were blooming!
Yosemiti Valley looking north from Tunnel View
There were a ton of dead trees from fires throughout the park. They also seemed to be dying from something else, as many single trees were dead with no visible fire damage. It sounds like this might be from Bark Beetles. As always in today's biosphere, climate change is worsening everything for the trees and the ecosystem. Climate Change exacerbates drought and the intensity and frequency of fire, to name two key impacts. These also stress the trees, which makes them more susceptible to bark beetles and other challenges.
Enty's battle damage
