This post is for the #wednesdaywalk challenge and the #makemesmile challenge collaboration. This collaboration initially took place once a month, but due to its popularity, @tattoodjay (of the #wednesdaywalk) and @elizacheng (of #makemesmile) decided to make it a weekly thing.
If you want to know more about the rules, visit this week's post by @tattoodjay where you will find all the rules at the bottom of his post after you've enjoyed his beautiful photos from his walk.
With that in mind, I would like to thank you, @tattoodjay, for the nice surprise I found in my wallet when I logged in this morning. I really do appreciate it, thank you!
My post for this week in #wednesdaywalk was actually more of a drive than a walk.
Last week Friday morning, we received a disturbing phone call from my wife's sister in Johannesburg.
My eighty-year-old mother-in-law lives in a double-story townhouse and she fell down the stairs.
She was seriously injured and we had to get to Johannesburg as fast as we could.
The cheapest flight would only depart on Friday night, and the earliest flight would cost us more than double what it would cost us to drive up. Taking that flight, would also only be some hours later, and traveling by car meant we would arrive about an hour later than if we took that flight.
So we just packed the absolute necessities and started the 600KM journey.
To keep our sanity intact under those circumstances, we decided to take photos with our cellphones as we were traveling, to keep our minds occupied.
I was driving most of the time, so my wife took the majority of the photos...and we got quite a few...
I'll share a few here today, most of which were taken on our way back on Sunday. As this is a Wednesday walk post, I'll at least include the halfway mark where we got out to stretch our legs.
As far as my mom-in-law is concerned...She has a fractured cheekbone, a broken arm (one bone completed crushed), a broken thumb, and she had difficulty breathing due to damage to her lungs.
They operated on her arm on Saturday. On Sunday morning she seemed to have stabilized and we decided to return home (for now). The doctors did inform us though, that she is on "borrowed time". She needs to be taken care of 24/7 and we as a family will have to discuss the road ahead.
On Monday she had a relapse and we had a stressful time once again. But she has been stabilized once again and there is a possibility for her to go home today.
But we will be back in Johannesburg soon for a family meeting to discuss the way forward and my wife obviously wants to spend some time with her mom too.
But let's get to the photos for my post...
All these photos were in the Harrismith region in the Free State province (previously known as the Orange Freestate, as the Orange river forms one of its borders).
Today's photos were taken by me with my cellphone while my wife took a turn to drive.
In the first photo, I just loved the mountain being edged off against the blue sky.
The next photo is a typical farm scene as can be seen when driving through the Free State. As you can see, not as green as you normally see in my photos in the coastal area...
The next photo, in my opinion, came out almost looking like a painting (might be because of the distance while in a moving vehicle)... But to me, this is a typical farm landscape...
Clouds started forming, and I loved the look of it, with the mountains in the distance.
Then we passed a grazing herd of cattle...
Some nice mountains stood out as we approached Harrismith (on our way back).
We then arrived at Harrismith, a nice little town in the Free State countryside.
A moment later, I managed to get this clear shot of the mountain in the distance, visible through an opening between the trees.
.
We pulled over at the rest area in Harrismith (the halfway mark) to stretch our legs before I would take over from my wife, driving the last 3-hour stretch of our journey to get back home.
I have quite a few more photos. I will go through them over time and share them in some other posts as well.
So that's it for today, folks.
Thank you for reading my post, I do appreciate it.
PS: Under the current circumstances it is not always possible to plan ahead. We will be heading back to Johannesburg soon again to see how my wife's mom is doing and obviously discuss the road ahead with the family. But we also might have to pack and go again at a moment's notice. We are taking it from one day to the next at the moment. So, if I become a bit quiet at times, you know why...
