I awoke to the worst kind of weather for boondocking while relying on solar. It’s frigid and overcast. I’m still bringing in about 4A, but the furnace is taking that out just as fast. I’m trying to keep the rig around 16C and not freezing by staying wrapped in the electric blanket, which has a negligible draw.

Needless to say, I was glad to have an excuse to run back to Assiniboia (three hours round trip) this morning. I may need to go again tomorrow or Wednesday, so I am staying put. I’ll explain what’s going on in my next post.

This morning, I headed south of Swift Current to meet up with Saskatchewan highway 13. The day was spent traversing the wide open undulating amber hills of Saskatchewan. If you’re not into that sort of thing, don’t go that way, especially in the off season as there is barely anything but land and sky for the whole route. But if, like me, you are deeply in love with prairie landscapes, I recommend this route over taking the Transcanada, especially if you’re heading south to cross into North Dakota. For one thing, the road conditions are much better!

I had thought to stop well before highway 39 to spend a few days, but the options were lacking, short of parking behind a vacant building. My GPS told me the nearest Walmarts were in Moose Jaw, which is out of my way, or Estevan, right at the border. But I was able to get online in Assiniboia (cell service in Saskatchewan is spotty) and determined that there is a Walmart in Weyburn, right at the junction of highways 13 and 39. I have permission to stay for a few nights as I may have some more business to attend to before crossing the border.

It’s been frigid and overcast all day, so my batteries are really straining. I hit a full charge about an hour ago, but if tonight is anything like last night, I will have to ration my power usage tonight. One nice little luxury is sitting in the office with the electric blanket instead of running the heat all evening.

My inverter has officially gotten on my nerves. I don’t know what’s with it, but even if I’m registering 12.6V it won’t let me do anything more than charge the laptop before squealing that I have no battery juice left and turning itself off. I know I need to get a battery capacity monitor because voltage readings alone tell me nothing, but I find it suspicious that I can run heat, the water pump, and an LED light at the same time and barely have the voltage flicker on the solar controller while my inverter is asserting that the draw from my laptop is too taxing to my system. This summer, I am going to work out the math and do the pricing on getting a battery monitor and a couple of 12V deep cycle batteries.

Now, I’m off to research inverters. 🙂