The year in numbers with 2018 values in parentheses:
- 5 (6) = Road trips reported
- 69 (67) = Blog posts
- 47 (66) = Days on the road
- 1641 (1941) = Pictures posted — 543 (473) in the blog and 1098 (1468) in Road Trips
Trips, days on the road, and pictures posted are all down and I believe it can all be blamed on that July through September gap when a variety of life’s activities kept me off the road and close to home. The slight uptick in blog posts comes from me doing a couple more reviews this year than last. Two of those new-for-2019 blog posts join three oldies in the top five list. For the second year in a row, all of the top five trip journal entries were for major trips which is the way I always thought it should be. One was even a 2019 outing.
Top Blog Posts:
- Twenty Mile’s Last Stand
This post takes the number one spot for the third time. It was published in 2012 and was the most popular post that year and again in 2013. It ranked fourth in 2014 then dropped out of this list until reappearing last year at number five. That was quite a mystery and it climbing back to number one this year even more so. A follow-up post, Roadhouse Down, also got a fair amount of attention. As I said last year, I’d like to think some of the visits are from people involved in the demolition of this historic building who are feeling a little remorse. - An Awesome Travel Accomplishment
There’s not much mystery in this post making the top five list. Hugh Donovan’s awesome accomplishment was reaching all 3142 United States counties in less — a lot less — than a year. Of course, Hugh had lots of followers as he racked up the counties, and visits from some of them helped make this my second most popular blog post of the year. By wonderful luck, the feat was completed about three miles from my home so I could attend the celebration, meet Hugh and his family and supporters, and snap the opening photo. - My Wheels – Chapter 1 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner
This post has been on the list since it first appeared in 2013. This is, in fact, its lowest ranking after three firsts and three seconds. Does that mean interest in the first brand new vehicle I ever owned is fading? I wouldn’t count on it. - Much Miscellany 2, Sloopy at 50
Just cracking the top five when it first appeared during Hang on Sloopy‘s fiftieth anniversary year of 2015, this post reappeared last year at number four and hangs on 😉 to the same spot this year. - Portsmouth Road Meet
Technically the fifth-ranked blog post of 2019 was the follow-up to the number one post mentioned above, but assuming that many of the visits to those two posts were connected allows me to slip another new-for-2019 post into the list. This post benefited from having a targeted audience in those who attended but probably even more from those who wanted to but couldn’t.
Top Non-Blog Posts:
- Kitty Hawk Holidays
This was last year’s Christmas trip so it had a full year to accumulate visits. It was scheduled around the anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight and began just over a week before Christmas. The 115th anniversary of that historic flight was celebrated on December 17 and I’m sure some of the post’s visitors came for reporting on that event and the Kitty Hawk area. But there was also a lot of driving around the Outer Banks (It was my first visit.) then through North Carolina on US-64. I spent Christmas in Knoxville, Tennessee. - Sixty-Six: E2E & F2F
The third of my four full-length Route 66 drives returns for its second consecutive and overall fourth top-five appearance. It was number four last year, number five in 2015, and number one in 2012. I can’t explain why it has returned and moved up two places, but I can explain that E2E means End-to-End and F2F means Friend-to-Friend. - JHA 2019 Conference
The Jefferson Highway Association held its eighth annual conference in Natchitoches, Louisiana. That’s not only a great place for a conference but makes for a great drive to and from. It’s nice to see a trip journal in the top five during the year it was posted. - Dirk and Lincoln
I had never seen Dirk Hamilton perform with a band before and took this opportunity to see him in a place where he used to perform in a reunion with the band he used to perform with there. I rounded things out (and cobbled up the title) with some Lincoln Highway. Three recent and consecutive trips made the top five. This November 2018 trip was followed by the Kitty Hawk trip (#1) in December and the JHA conference (#3) in April. - LHA Centennial Tour
Like the #2 Route 66 trip, this one is back for the fourth time. It was also ranked fifth last year and in 2016 after debuting at number four in 2013 when it was new. The journal and a resulting book (By Mopar to the Golden Gate) cover a drive on the 100-year-old Lincoln Highway in a 50-year-old car.
Both website visits and blog views were again down. Website visits went from 100,878 to 96,512. Blog views dropped from 6,757 to 5135. A chart of blog views looks like a near-perfect arch with steady increases to a peak in 2015 and steady decreases each year since. Total visits to the website haven’t been quite as well behaved. A lack of support for small screens triggered a huge drop in search engine hits in 2015 when Google got serious about searches from mobile devices. Adding the support brought a partial recovery over the next couple of years but it looks like a steady decline similar to that seen with the blog has now set in. Visits are less than half of the 2014 peak. Curiously, page views have again increased to 726,399 from 2018’s 658,425. Fewer people are looking but they’re looking at more.
While I believe, and accept, that the popularity of this site is in decline, there is an actual explanation for some of this year’s drop. Sometime around the middle of the year, shared servers at my hosting company, Arvixe, were identified as spammers by Verizon and its Yahoo and AOL divisions. The result, without getting into technical details, is that some, most, or all messages sent from my journal and blog mailing lists to a yahoo.com, aol.com, or verizon.net address have been rejected. There has been some progress since I became aware of the problem but it is far from solved. I am considering changing providers but am reluctant to undertake the effort involved. I am otherwise fairly happy with my current provider and fear trading a known mess for an unknown one. I am, for the moment, undecided. The RSS feeds, incidentally, work just fine.
Last year’s summary spoke of two books nearing publication. There were actually three books published in 2019 and all were “reviewed” in the blog: A Canadian Connection, Jefferson Highway All the Way, and Six of Each. All those and a couple more are listed at Trip Mouse Publishing.
Even though the blog entries for them weren’t popular enough to make the top five, I think three events of 2019 deserve mention in this look back. In July I visited my 200th brewery (200 Breweries), August saw the twentieth anniversary of the first trip reported on this site (It Was Twenty Years Ago Today…), and I celebrated ten years of retirement in November (A Decade Driving and Such). The brewery count is now at 224, 158 trips have been reported on the site, and I’ve now been retired 10 years, 2 months, 3 weeks, and 1 day.