Just a quick post then I’m off to the swamp for a few days. Just spent several days in town not doing much of anything except sleeping and healing up from bug bites.

Since last post I put in a Renogy MPPT Charge Controller that Plume sent to me. It’s great. With it I can run a fan, charge devices and still keep my batteries topped off during the day. At night I ran a desktop fan all night, about 8 hours, and the batteries were still topped by about 11 in the morning.

I ordered an MT-5 LCD display to go with the controller. It came in broke. So it’s on its way back to Renogy while I wait for the replacement to arrive. It’s pretty irritating to have to wait even more time but I do have to say that so far the customer support at Renogy is very good. In the meantime I’ll have to keep using my meter to monitor the system periodically.

Put on the snake boots and did a walkabout last week. I haven’t toured what of the property I can get to in over three weeks so things had changed quite a bit. Things are drying out a lot so I’m able to see and get to more areas that have before now been far to wet to even try. What I thought might have been a spring fed pond turned out to be nothing more than an optical illusion. In truth the whole area is nothing more than a mud bog right now. I was able to get fairly close and take a pic but it’s still much to wet to even try crossing. After it dries some more I’ll trek in as far as possible and get some GPS readings and pics.

Another area previously off limits is opening up also. I was able to get about halfway through before the mud got to deep and I chickened out. This area is very interesting since the west side is the side leading to the back of my property which I’ve never managed to get to. About 40 feet past where I took these pics is a stand of pine trees. They’re to the right in the pics. Usually, where there’s pines there’s fairly dry land and the brush isn’t so dense. I’m hoping to get back to this area soon with the brush cutter and possibly discover the ever elusive westward passage to the back side of the property.

You just never know what you’re going to bump into out there. After awhile you tend to try to get in and out as fast as possible but then something will happen to remind you that it’s time to stop and smell the roses.