GPS Uncertainties¶
With the air quality, pollen counts and risk of infection, I have not been going anywhere by myself. Basically, I’m not going anywhere, even by car. I have to push myself to get out of the house and take a walk. This is sad for Nick.
With improving air quality, and milder pollen counts, I have been making an effort to walk. We have a route and Nick has accepted it though he would like to go farther. I think his preferred walk is a 5K.
We walk to the park and make a loop on a macadam path and then return home. I carry a Victor Reader Trek with me on which I have marked the coordinants of the path. Lately the GPS has been a bit off.
It announced a side street next to the park and we walked a ways. I figured the GPS was off and Nick was playing it close to the vest about the entrance to the park. Maybe he could hussle me into a longer walk down the road.
I had him turn around and suggested left to find the park entrance. Nick was unenthusiastic, but he did find more macadam and we went forward. The Victor Reader Trek announced we had reached an open area so I was confident we had gone into the park. We walked for a little while when Nick forgot to tell me to duck (He really can’t do this, but it explains how my head and some branches connected.)
Well, there are no overhanging branches in the park. We therefore were not in the park. Therefore, we were on a driveway leading into another development.
Now Nick believes in his heart that turning around is never a good idea so he does it quite reluctantly. Unfortunately, when we turned around he quite sensibly crossed the driveway to walk on the other side and that is where we ran into trouble.
There were sidewalks leading to doors. A sensible dog thought I might want to explore those. Not being sensible, I wanted simply to go back out to the street.
At one point we ended up going forward from our initial position past the overhanging branch. The people ahead of us somewhere were still talking.
Turn around.
Hey, here’s the little wooden bridge we found the last time we were lost in this development. I kept trying to direct Nick and he kept finding interesting things. We kept walking.
Finally, there was an up curb and some grass. I realized Nick had found the way out and with no discernable break in the driveway and the road, had crossed it.
Yay Nick! He found our way out of the development.
We crossed back to get on the sidewalk. Much praise.
We came home without incident and Nick received much praise for a job well done.