Pandemic Pastime: Walking and Picking Up Trash

 2020-08-03 -  ~2 Minutes

It’s been far too long since I posted to this blog; I guess I’ve been busy? Nah, not any more than usual, but during the COVID-19 pandemic I have doubled my efforts to get out and walk in the fresh air whenever possible. I’m thankful for my small “scurry” – that’s the term for a collective of squirrels – who not only take walks with me around Cherry Lake, but all around town.

About three months ago there was some vandalism at Cherry Lake, and there was a time when folks were leaving lots of trash around the lake. So our scurry started carrying “ Niffty Nabbers   ” and now we clean up what we can as we walk. We have even extended the practice beyond the lake, and we generally walk twice a day now, most evenings somewhere in Tama or Toledo away from all the mosquitoes that inhabit Cherry Lake. True to form, we pick up trash as we go.

I would estimate that both solo and with my scurry, I/we have picked up about 100 pounds of trash so far.

This past weekend I was thinking… now that we have expaned to more than just Cherry Lake, it would be nice to plot our routes walked somewhere online so that we can keep track of progress, and see where we haven’t been yet. Fortunately, I tend to activate a “workout” recording on my Apple Watch whenever we go out, and I just realized that those routes can be exported from my iPhone as .gpx files. So, one day soon I hope to create a new section in this blog where I can post records, with maps, of our excursions. Look for it in this blog soon, or at least sooner or later.

That’s a wrap. Until next time…