Safety on the bluebird trail.

I went for a hike on a wilderness land that I have access to and I have houses on. It was magnificent.

As I was going through a small patch of forest, I saw a flash of white a ways from me. It was good to see.

That flash was the tail of a whitetail deer.

But then I started to think about the two falls I had last winter. Serious falls. I separated my shoulder and tore a muscle in my bicep. What if something like that happened to me, when I was tramping around somewhere off the road. As I am getting older my reflexes are getting slower and it is much more dangerous for me, but I sure love getting out of the recliner.

What could I do?

First I thought about an avalanche beacon, but they are rather pricey and I don't know much about them. Then it occurred to me that I could use the find my phone app and let my wife keep tabs on me.

Hahaha! She'll love that.

We bought a small first aid kit to be with me, but what if I fell and broke a leg?

My granddaughter suggested Snapchat. Well that works, but not the way I had hoped. You see I actually need to have the app open to have my location monitored. I think it might be me... but!

We do a buddy system, I keep in touch with my wife when I am on the bluebird trail. This works, but sometimes it is difficult to describe where I'll be. Another good reason for using my phone to track me.

I will try Google maps. Both my wife and I have android phones with Google accounts, that should make it easy. And a really good feature is the terrain feature. That could help my wife describe where I am.

Here are the steps that I used to set Google maps up with:

Open Google maps on my phone.

Tap the icon resembling three dots, one on top of the other, to open the menu. To find this I had to go to the home screen.

Then go to location sharing.

Then get started.

Next go to contacts, to chose whom you want to share your location.

Select the time you'd want it set, I chose indefinitely. I was only allowed 24 hours.

That should be about it, now you can be tracked and most importantly if you got into trouble someone could help you.

Google maps location works great, we tested it today.