Why Do I Blog?

Why do I write this blog? I began in May 2006 as we started our trip to the Canadian Maritime Provinces. I wanted to keep a good record of our travels and I wanted to provide a way for our family and friends to keep in touch with what we were doing and where we were. That year we were out in the RV 203 nights (some of it before I started blogging) and I wrote 15 posts.

In 2007, we were out 238 nights and I wrote 40 posts. At the end of January 2009, we moved out of our house and went on the road full time. That year, I wrote 91 posts. In the year just completed, I posted 222 blogs, including 107 during our trip through Canada and Alaska.

We get a printed book of the blog posts each year. For 2012, there will be two books--really our scrapbooks--one on the Alaska trip and the second for the rest of the year. Earlier this week, I ordered the second book.

The blog started out as a personal record and a way to keep in touch with family and close friends. It is still that. I also have found a renewed pleasure in writing. My college degree is in journalism, so writing to describe events has always been something I enjoy. But I hadn't done much writing for years. I find I look at life through the lens of the blog--including pictures, picture captions and blog title.

Blogging also has helped us make friends as we move around the country. I read blogs by other RVers, they read mine. We comment back and forth on each others' blogs. And sometimes, we meet for lunch and to share experiences. These virtual friends become flesh and blood friends. This community is important when we don't live in a stationary community.

All of this is the fun and rewarding part of blogging. Except for the time we spent going to and from Alaska this summer, I have never blogged daily. So I don't write about the mundane daily events. And I haven't found much interesting in the past four days to write about. We have now stayed in this Mesa resort five times. There isn't something new every day or two and I hate to write year after year about the same events. We don't need that for our scrapbooks and I doubt if others want to read about it. I guess we will have to find something exciting to do so I can blog about it.

We did go geo-caching today and found three of the caches we hunted for and didn't find another three. That is something we haven't done for nearly two years. We hope to do it more often.

Blogging the Journey

On May 17, we left Littleton, Colorado, headed for Canada and Alaska.  Friday, August 28, we drove off Alaska Ferry M/V Columbia in Bellingham, Washington.  Back in May I decided I would blog every day of our journey to Alaska and back.  I have done that.

We use the blog as our scrap book and get it printed in book form, with all the photos included, through a service called blog2print. We get a hard cover book and a downloadable copy, which I burn to a CD.  (You can never have too many backups.) For 2012, I intend to get one book printed on our Alaska journey, a second with blogs from the rest of the year.  The daily blog posts will be a great trip journal.

Many bloggers post every day.  After this experience, I have an even greater appreciation for what they do.  I enjoy blogging.  My college degree is in journalism, but I have done very little writing many of the years since then.  Since beginning this blog is 2006, I have really enjoyed using (and I hope improving) my skills.  It is fun.  I find myself looking at my world in terms of how I will blog about it.  I think in photo captions and blog titles.

However, over the 100 days between May 17 and August 24, I began to feel real pressure to get the daily blog done.  Each afternoon or evening I had to download dozens, sometimes hundreds of photos from our two cameras, decide which ones belong in the blog, then put the blog together.  When we were without internet, I learned to use Microsoft Live Writer so I could do the blog and then publish it later.

All of this explanation is to explain why I will continue to blog, but the posts won’t be done every day. 

Yesterday, we drove from Mount Vernon to Ellensburg, WA.  We are staying in a KOA, something we rarely do any more.  They are often more expensive than other parks and they usually attract families with children.  We prefer adult parks.  However, when we checked RVParkReviews.com, we decided this was our best choice here.  Tomorrow, we think we will head to Pendleton, Oregon.

The temperatures here are the warmest we have seen all summer.  Finally, shorts weather!  The high temp yesterday was 85 and today it is supposed to get to 90. 

During this journey, we have had incredible good luck (we’ve been blessed) to get good views of Mt. McKinley and the volcanoes Mt. Redoubt and Mt. Iliamna west of Homer and Ninilchik.  Yesterday, we got a quick peek of Mt. Rainier.  That is unusual, too.  Because of the route we were driving and all the tall trees, I never got a good photo, but we did see it.