Altoona, IA - Military Sinkhole?

For Christmas in 1990, my mother gave me a journal. I had never thought of this but took to it right away and began to log what happened to us over the years. At first, I logged how many times I banged my head into the office bathroom wall over my boss, how often the woodpecker banged his beak on our brick chimney and such mundane matters such as what we had for dinner, how many miles I ran in a day, you, know, dumb things. Our life is not exciting, I didn’t have much of note to write. The first major event I recorded was my father’s phone call on the day of the Super Bowl asking what team I wanted to bet on. The next day he had a stroke and died about 2 weeks later - and I have no notes for these two weeks.

For years, I’ve written my journal, all for myself in spiral notebooks. It gave me a quiet time each evening to think back over the day and record what happened and to think about the next day and what I should do. It satisfied my desire to record our ‘exciting’ life and, then, we could refer to it if we ever needed to know when something happened. Big deal. Then we started RV’ing and a colleague of mine at Wells Fargo asked if I was going to do a blog. Huh? Who’d read it? Well, I would, she said. Yeah, but, it will be so boring, boring, boring. Who wants to read about what we do?
Let me first say that I am thrilled that people actually do read my blog. Sometimes I get comments from people about things I have written. (Hi, Sherron.) Sometimes, people recognize Gary and me from our blog and say ‘hi’ as we walk through a campground or museum. And, believe me, it is a blast to get this recognition, a real upper.

As my mother would have said: ‘who’d have thunk it?’ And, how do I know that people read my blog besides the comments and the recognition in museums? Google has a cute section on my blog page called ‘stats’ where I can see how many people read the blog and where they come from. No names, of course, just numbers. Funny, I’ve got readers in Russia, China, Indonesia, and South Africa, among others listed. Right!? I don’t for a minute believe that I have any readers in China and Russia. I think that there are ‘bots’ swarming through the blogosphere clicking on every blog that they find. And, I’ve been hit too.

However, the funniest thing is seeing which of my blogs over the 5 years that I’ve been doing this are the most read. Which of my blogs has the most viewers? Ta Da, Drum Roll, Please. Over the 5 years my most popular blog is one called Bonneville Dam, Bridge of the Gods and Beacon Rock. Huh? Why in the world would that be the most popular? Are there lots of people wanting to read about the Bonneville Dam? Who wants to read about what we saw at the Bonneville Dam? Is that my most interesting blog?

Interestingly, this blog just recently overtook my previous most read blog about the Walt Disney Museum in San Francisco and climbing the Lyon Steps which are nearby. I see that, who doesn’t want to read about Walt Disney?

Now, over the last month, my most popular blog was one that I wrote back on November 7 in 2013 about our hike on the Military Sinkhole in Payson, AZ. You’ve got to be kidding, the Military Sinkhole? Not only that but I looked on Google which organizes search results by ‘hits’ and my blog was the 3rd listing under Military Sinkhole. Look, here it is, 3rd in line. Cool.

LOL. But, again, I am thrilled to know that people actually read what I’ve written.

I think I mentioned that we had our annual eye appointments this week. Our doctor sprung a new test on us old people, one that required that our eyes be dilated. We both passed the test with flying colors and as our prize, she gave us some us some new glasses. Actually, they were dark glasses to protect our eyes while our pupils were so dilated. We got out to the car squinting all the way and then put them on. A selfie was in order. Now, the sun was so bright and the glare on the phone was so great that I really couldn’t see anything. I just pointed the camera where I thought it should be and snapped. Here’s the first take.

Ooh, we need a second take.

Back at the RV park, we took a walk around and I took some pictures. It was a beautiful day with low humidity and the blues in the sky were so vibrant. Everything is so defined when the air is dry.