Today is breezy and pretty chilly compared to the unseasonable warmth the other day. The extra-warm weather succeeded in getting my hopes up again, but the wind is cold today and it looks like a good two weeks before it’s warm enough again to try another adventure. The good news is that water levels are dropping now. The bad news is that I don’t think this will be an early season. If I take a look at my first outings for the last few years, I end up with list of starting dates for various seasons. Unfortunately, I don’t think these are all the ‘first’ trips of the season, but they’re the first ones I wrote about here… (I did originally keep a paper diary of my explorations, but stopped doing that because I made this blog instead).
- April 26, 2016 – Digging through the bush…
- May 23, 2015 – Day! Spot!
- May 2, 2014 – First mud of 2014!
Oh and the mosquitos and blackflies are out. In force! It’s going to be a brutal year for pests. I might have to put some extra effort into dealing with the great mosquito hoard.
I’m getting good results from the GPS Essentials, as long as I don’t crash it (or at least, remember to start the tracking again). I have reasonable confidence it will keep me on track and have a backup device capable of guiding me back easily. I’m estimating about a 8-10 km round-trip to navigate the small cluster of spots I’ve marked down. I think this afternoon I’ll see what I can do with the tracking data. It’s already helped me to refine some coordinates for various mud holes and interesting features. I’ve used it a few times to trace my steps around various obstacles and I hope to find a cleaner and less noisy route to the handful of individual mud holes I’ve found or made in the last year.
I’m still hoping that all the flooding will leave behind some interesting seasonal mud holes… But the more of them I spot, the more I think that they’re not going to compare to the mushy bliss I found at the end of last season. And while I may get down and dirty in some new (or used) mud holes in a few weeks, I don’t think I’ll truly enjoy it until late in the season again when the water is low enough and has warmed up significantly.
Related Images: