Saturday Saunter

I've had the MapMyWalk app on my iPhone for quite a while now, but I've really just started using it to its full advantage.   Some false starts, to be sure, but I've figured out from whence most of the glitches I have had have come: user error, and sunglasses that are not the strength I need for reading. 

One of the features of this little bit of software/GPS magic is that you can take pictures along your walk, and the map that is created on the website to which the information is uploaded pinpoints the location at which they were taken.  

(I swear, I'm not as big a geek as any of this is making me sound.)

Anyway....   had I been strolling and stopping the first two of these wouldn't look so wonkadoodle. I was having a really excellent walk and I just didn't want to stop.  

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 We are now officially back under drought conditions, made evident by this little bump-a-dilly at the corner of Allendale Road and Green Park Drive.

Lack of rain is causing the streets to buckle and sink. 

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I thought long and hard about ditching this next picture, but there's a story behind it. 

I had just turned from Stratford Lane onto Lansdowne when I spotted something big moving just a wee bit up in a tree.  I'm talking bigger than your average neighborhood bird, folks.

It was a hawk.  An amazing, beautiful hawk.  It's not that it's such a rare thing to see one, but I do not think I have ever been as close to one as I was this time.   He was so majestic I just had to see if I could get a photograph.  As I pulled my iPhone out of my back pocket he startled, spread his wings and began to ascend from the branch on which he had perched. 

It is fair to say that I could barely breathe for the beauty of that hawk, and the reason you see the picture of the street is that in that instant, I decided to just experience the moment fully for the gift it was, and capture it in my memory.  The iPhone was heading back into my pocket, and I must have hit the snap button as it was on its way there.  

So sorry. 

You'd have seen something amazing if I hadn't been so, um, amazed myself.

Now, this last one I'll confess to not taking while I was walking, but I did pick this up on Stratford Lane, and I wanted to share it with you, on account of I just like little acorns.

 

photo taken with my iPhone, but fancied up a bit with my Camera+ app.