Month: September 2023

Today’s drive is our longest yet. We checked out of our AirBnB, and proceeded to a charge station to top up or batteries. This took about 30 minutes. Afterwards, we helped ourselves to a bagel breakfast to go at Tim Hortons. We ended up starting our journey at around 7am.

Today we actually crossed time zones from Eastern to Central, so we actually gained an hour.

The drive was uneventful and we are learning to stop at Supercharging stations at towns or cities with big populations so that there is either a Walmart or some big restaurant row.

There are two things which I find are critical assets for these long drives. The first is a good audio book, and the second is Tesla’s Autopilot / Auto Steering features. Both of these make the hours go by quick.

As usual, Carol’s video of the day gives a better experience than my wordy blog here.

Last night we stayed at the Quattro Hotel in Sault Ste. Marie. I really liked this hotel. Carol got her swimming in using their indoor pool, and we also got some laundry done with their guest laundry facilities. The place also came with complimentary breakfasts with real eggs and sausages!

We started our drive at 11am to Thunder Bay. The first half of the trip was met with beautiful weather. Northern Ontario has some really nice sceneries. We also got a bonus view, with some of the trees already changing into their fall colours.

The second half of the drive was pretty dangerous. It got super foggy on the highway, and we could not see more than 30 to 50 meters in front of us. It was like this for about 300 km. At our last charging stop, we had to use the GPS to guide us to get there.

After about three charge stops and numerous washroom breaks, at around 8pm we finally arrived at Thunder Bay. To our disappointment, most restaurants closed at 9pm here, so we settled for something simple, like McDonald’s for dinner.

Tonight we are staying at another AirBnB place. A very nice one bedroom suite with our own washroom. The host, Dawna was very nice and waited for our arrival. The room has a very “family” feel to it. It is as though we are staying with relatives.

Tomorrow, we plan to start early to Winnipeg.

Carol’s video is worth a million of my words, so here it is.

Today we began or journey to Sault Ste. Marie. We start from Tobermory by hopping on the Chi-Cheemaun Ferry. The ferry ride itself accommodates mostly vehicles, such as cars, motorbikes, various recreational vehicles, vans, etc. I was impressed at how many vehicles it was able to carry in a single trip. There must have been 40 to 50 vehicles easily.

Driving into the ferry was also interesting, as there is two levels. The main level for vehicles that require extra height and motorbikes. The second level consists of mostly regular cars and SUV’s.

The ferry took us to South Baymouth where we had our first road trip incident with our Tesla Model Y. Because the car was transported with the ferry, it lost its GPS position and had to reacquire the signal when we get off the ferry. Well, that is how it is suppose to work. The GPS signal was acquired, but the software map on the main dash failed to update the “current position”.

We tried the following to no avail:

• Rebooting the dash;
• Powering off and on with both a 3 minutes and 5 minutes wait;
• Called Tesla support and they suggested the same with a final recommendation to drive to a Tesla Service Centre!

I am totally blown away that such a software glitch can exists on a Tesla. The fix probably just require a recycling of the GPS module. Unfortunately, there is no user-friendly way of doing this.

We gave up on our troubleshooting and drove from South Baymouth to Sault Ste. Marie without the Tesla navigation app. This is more of a handicap than I thought. The car fails to precondition the battery when we arrive at the supercharger so it takes a little longer to charge. We also miss the mapping functionality that tells us the locations of the on-route superchargers and how many were available. Good old Waze on our iPhone to the rescue, and some manual range calculations.

When we arrived at our hotel at Sault Ste. Marie, and with the help of the hotel Internet, I finally “risked” a software update on our Tesla. I had to use my iPhone’s personal hotspot and download the new software update for the Tesla. With fingers crossed and 30 minutes of unwanted and undesirable anxiety, the update downloaded successfully. Another bare knuckles 30 minutes wait, we were rewarded with a correct map and location on the dash once more!

The moral of the story is, when taking a long road trip, DO NOT transport the Tesla other than under its own power. Lesson learned! Those who are planning on taking a road trip, I highly recommend that you avoid ferries and trains that can transport your Tesla.

Tomorrow, we are off to Thunder Bay with a functional navigation system again.

Here is Carol’s video for the day.