For many years I have written about my travels, my perspective on life, politics and I have often taken the world to task for not being the most perfect world I think it could be. The readers of my diatribes have been family and friends who patiently put up with me. For several years now, my sons have encouraged me to start a blog. I must admit that I thought it was a lame idea. Who would want to read it? If it was such a cool idea, why weren’t they doing it?
Blogging on the train.
Finally I gave in. Not so much because I wanted to blog, but because I wanted to record our experiences during our trip to the west – for our personal use. As we set off for points west, Andy (my IT guru son) introduced me to WordPress, the blogging application that has made all of this possible. Andy did everything he could to make the blogging experience as fool-proof as possible. He held my hand along the way, offered advice, told me when there were hiccups, and cheer led the effort.
Blogging in the rain.
Betty and I have a large extended family and many friends who are important to us. I thought a blog was a good way to let everyone join our travels without bombarding folks with multiple e-mail updates. No one is force-fed. Readers choose for themselves whether they want to tune in, tune out, or ignore the blog altogether. I shared the blog site with a small (and incredibly SELECT) group of friends and family. The response has been gratifying. Many of you have posted supportive comments on the blog site. Others have sent personal e-mails. I appreciate them all. It is a validation of the time and effort invested.
Illustrating the blog.
Our trip to California is at an end. We arrived home safe and sound. I will be doing a bit more research to fine tune the kinks on my blog before we head off to Nashville and rural Alabama in two weeks. I plan to keep blogging. I enjoy it whether anyone else does or not. If you are interested, stay tuned. We have more trips planned. I will be picking up honeybees in late May. I plan to blog about my beekeeping experience. I’m sure it will be educational for me – and maybe for you, too.
Thanks for taking us along for the ride. I enjoy living vicariously through others travel blogs and they have taken me to some great places. Keep on blogging and I’ll keep on reading.
John, I think you did an excellent job of blogging for such a newbie. I really enjoyed sharing the trip with you and Betty. I look forward to your next travels. Thanks for including Paul and I among your select few! Keep on truckin’ ‘n bloggin’!!
We are very proud of you and excited that you like blogging so much. I bet you’ll have a bigger following than you anticipated 🙂
Yes, thanks for doing this! I had fallen behind on your travels, but just caught up on the whole trip. I am astonished by the amount of text you took the time to write out during your journey—I always put writing about things off until it’s too late and I’ve forgotten half of the juicy details.
After reading through your adventures, the Grand Canyon and Pacific Grove are the places I’m most interested in, but the whole trip looks fabulous—Mom sure is a good trip planner! Glad you’re home safe.