Tomorrow is Thanksgiving when people will sit down at the dinner table and eat an incredible amount of food all in the name of giving thanks for our many blessings. In order to prepare for the festivities, my youngest son and I went for a rather lengthy hike today. We covered about 10.2 miles and wore my son's dog out. The dog is sleeping soundly on the couch and snoring loudly.
I had hoped to pick up a trail map from the visitor's center of the state park where we hiked today but found it closed because of the coming holiday. Instead I opted to take a photo of the map with my smartphone so I always had it with us even if we lost phone service on the hike, which we did. While I prefer to have a piece of paper for a map, the photo served us well.
This is not the first time I have used a picture on my phone to replace a map. It won't be the last either. As I think about it, a phone picture is a lot better for the environment as paper maps often turn into litter require a lot more resources to create.
A few years ago I took my kids and their spouses to Moab for a family vacation. One of the activities for the trip included rock climbing. We had a guidebook for the area we planned to climb. As we scoped out the area, a couple of other climbers not familiar with the area came and took a smartphone picture from the guidebook of another climbing area next to ours. It worked out well for all. They went to an area away from us so we didn't have to compete for climbing routes and the photo provided important information needed for the climbs.
Taking a picture of a map at the beginning of your hike or of pages out of a guidebook allow you to carry important information in the palm of your hand. All it takes is a little practice on using the photo and a phone with a charged battery. After all, the phone won't do you any good if it won't turn on.
No comments:
Post a Comment