There was a chance of rain yesterday morning, and the forecast called for the temperature to only be in the high 50s, so I was uncertain what kind of a turnout our Piedmont Recreation Department's Walking on Wednesdays walking group we have for our walk, but instead of a handful of walkers, we had the largest turnout in our seven month history! Twenty four walkers and four K-9 best friends were at the Exedra at our standard 10:30 AM starting time. And instead of a cool, rainy day, the skies cleared as the morning passed, the temperature rose, and it was a beautiful fall day for a walk of about 90 minutes.
As you know, we have an informal objective of eventually walking every street in Piedmont. After a recent walk to one of Piedmont's small, less traveled streets, Gail Lombardi suggested some of her favorites. One is Wallace Road. We had walked it before, but Sarah Johnson suggested route to it, and we knew we could also go to some of the streets around Wallace that we had not gone to before. So Wallace was our initial destination. We went down through Piedmont Park to Wildwood Avenue, past Wildwood School to the "Five Way Stop" intersection of Wildwood, Windsor, Warfield, and Wallace, where we stopped for a group photo in front of 201 Wildwood, whose steps
provided tiers for our picture.
We proceeded down the narrow Wallace Road to Palm Drive where we came upon three very large turkeys that somehow escaped Thanksgiving and were walking the street. These were not your skinny wild turkeys, but well feed and unafraid of us and our four dogs best friends, who the birds probably outweighed. Without picking a fight, but taking a few candid photos (see attached), we continued on to the steep Sylvan Way, Boulevard Way, the Piedmont portion of Crofton Avenue (so that we could check it off our walked streets), Warfield Avenue, and back to the Exedra via a walk up Wildwood and through the park. Along the way we visited streets that many of us had
never seen before, and passed some unique homes and gardens. The home at 486 Boulevard Way with its majestic date palm tree and beautiful natural garden is an example of what we enjoyed. See the attached photo with Sarah and Alicia. It turned out to be a great day for a walk with a record number of old and new friends.
I wanted to remind you that we are going to a presentation next Wednesday by the Piedmont Police Department on Seniors Financial Exploitation. It is on Wednesday, December 5th, from 10 to 11:30 AM. We will meet 30 minutes earlier than our normal start time at the Community Hall at 10 AM to attend the presentation, and then go for a shorter walk after it is completed.
