The year in numbers with 2024 values in parentheses:

• 3 (7) = Road trips reported
• 69 (68) = Blog posts
• 20 (72) = Days on the road
• 1110 (2,491) = Pictures posted — 732 (671) in the blog and 378 (1,820) in road trips

The last three years have certainly been interesting ones to look back on, statistics-wise. In 2023, I wrote that everything went up except interest, and by that I meant traffic. In 2024, traffic joined the other statistics in posting increases. This year, interest/traffic is just about the only thing that has gone up. Scheduling conflicts and other issues kept me essentially off the road for the entire first half of the year, which naturally resulted in fewer road trips, days on the road, and pictures posted. Blog posts did increase by one, and pictures posted in the blog also went up a bit, but the bulk of pictures always comes from road trips, so the total went down, and neither blog posts nor blog pictures equaled the 2023 numbers. Three of the top five blog posts are frequent members of the list, including last year. The other two are not only new to the top five list, but both were also newly published in 2025. Three of the top five non-blog posts are also frequent list members, but only one appeared last year. Both of the newcomers to the non-blog list were published in 2024. That’s quite a shakeup from last year, when both lists contained four repeats from the year before.

Top Blog Posts:

1. Scoring the Dixie
   This post moves from fifth to first for its ninth top-five finish. It described my tracking of multiple outings on the Dixie High that eventually led to clinching it.
2. Twenty Mile’s Last Stand
   After two consecutive first-place finishes, this post drops slightly for its eleventh appearance in the top-five list. Its subject is a nineteenth-century stagecoach stop destined for destruction by developers.
3. My Wheels – Chapter 1 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner
   Back for the twelfth time; the only time this post did not appear in the top five was 2022, when it was sixth.
4. Book Review – Route 66: The First 100 Years – Jim Ross and Shellee Graham
   This review did OK on its own, and posting a link on my Facebook page helped a little, but there is no doubt that the reason it made this list is that both Jim and Shellee posted links to it on their own Facebook pages. It’s a great book, and I’d like to believe I helped sell a copy or two, but I think it is mostly selling itself.
5. An Auto Park Turns Two
   This one got plenty of help, too. It’s about my visit to an Indiana diner and associated car museum during its second anniversary celebration. I posted a Facebook link, and the diner shared the post to its own page.

Top Non-Blog Posts:

1. Alaska
   After a three-year absence, this nearly six-week-long trip makes its sixth top-five appearance with its second first place. 
2. My Fiftieth: Hawaii
   It’s a little hard for me to believe that this is only the second time that the trip where I celebrated my fiftieth state and my seventieth birthday made the top five. It ranked third in 2018.
3. NOTR and PPOO Part 2
   In 2024, I drove the full length of the National Old Trails Road and the Pikes Peak Ocens to Ocean Highway. For reasons not worth repeating, the drive was divided into two parts. Part 2 involved the two named auto trails west of the Ohio-Indiana border. Part 1’s traffic placed it well down the list, but the combined total would top it. Of course, that doesn’t mean that an undivided trip would have garnered the same numbers, but I think it does mean NOTR and PPOO Part 1 deserves a shout-out.
4. Route 66 Miles of Possibility 2024
   This and NOTR and PPOO Part 2 are the newcomers. In real life, the end of the NOTR drive morphed into the start of the drive to the 2024 MOP without a break.
5. Sixty-Six: E2E & F2F
   The only returnee from the 2024 list is my 2012 end-to-end and friend-to-friend drive of Historic Route 66. It was number one last year, and this makes its ninth top-five appearance.

All three of the main traffic measurements were up again this year. Overall site visits grew from 164,460 to 356,700, blog visits rose from 5,236 to 7,268, and page views went from 815,886 to 2,596,26. I said I didn’t think last year’s increases were anything to get excited about, and the same is true this year, but there’s nothing wrong with being mighty pleased.

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Back in 2018, I noted this blog’s 500th post and figured I ought to note the 1000th as well. But, as it neared, I decided to be a little perverse and mark the 1Kth (1024th) post instead. The 500th post was noted in the regularly scheduled Sunday post that followed. That was more or less the plan for this post. However, when the 1Kth post went up last Sunday, I quickly realized that a post was already planned for the next Sunday. That’s why I’m taking Wednesday, the day normally reserved for reviews, to wish this blog a Happy 1Kth.

Preparing for this post consisted mostly of rereading the announcement for the 500th post. There were some statistics in it that I doubt meant much to anyone, and I’ve not bothered with most of them this time. I’m using the fact that I have invalidated any comparisons with an increment of 524 posts rather than 500 as an excuse. I will note that it took over 14 years and 3 months to go from zero to 1K posts. Since less than seven of those years were spent reaching 500, even without getting very precise, it looks as if things have slowed down a bit. And it seems fairly obvious that the rate of recorded road trips has slowed down. A side effect of that is that the current supply of trip journals for use in Trip Peek posts stands at 37 (186 trips – 149 Trip Peeks).

At the end of the post marking 500, I wondered if the blog would reach 1000. Although it was certainly not assured, there was really no end in sight, and it seemed somewhat likely. Will I reach the next accomplishment of note, maybe 1500, maybe 1536? I don’t know, and don’t consider it a goal. I am, however, happy to have reached 1000—and a couple of dozen more.

The year in numbers with 2023 values in parentheses:

• 7 (7) = Road trips reported
• 68 (81) = Blog posts
• 72 (47) = Days on the road
• 2,491 (2,029) = Pictures posted — 671 (866) in the blog and 1,820 (1,163) in road trips

Last year I wrote that everything went up except interest. This year even that increased with more visits to both the blog and the trip journals than in 2023. I made the same number of trips as last year but spent over three weeks more on them. That is undoubtedly why road trip pictures are up and probably why blog posts and pictures are down. There were just eight reviews published in 2024 compared to sixteen in 2023, and that is a big part of the difference. The number one post on both the blog and non-blog lists is a repeat of last year. In fact, both lists have four of last year’s entries returning this year. Could that be a sign of website maturity? Stagnation? Irrelevance?

Top Blog Posts:

1. Twenty Mile’s Last Stand
   This is the second consecutive first place for this post. That makes a total of five times in first and ten times in the top five. Clearly, this post about a nineteenth-century stagecoach stop destined for destruction by developers continues to attract attention.
2. Review: Route 66 Navigation
   “Product Review — Route 66 Navigation — by Touch Media” was posted in February of 2023 and it accumulated enough visits by year’s end to rank fourth. In 2023, the Twenty Mile’s Last Stand post became the first ever to see more visits than the blog’s home page, and this year the Route 66 Navigation review joins it in outperforming the home page. I was rather impressed with the reviewed product, and hope this post has sent a customer or two its way.
3. My Wheels – Chapter 1 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner
   Since it was published in 2013, this post has appeared in the top five every year except one. In 2022, it was sixth.
4. Review: Every Christmas Story Ever Told
   Last year I made something of a big deal of the fact that a play review (A Christmas Carol) earned a spot in the top five with only a couple of weeks to draw readers. A year previous, the review of another annual Cincinnati theatrical offering in nearly identical circumstances wasn’t even close. But in 2023, that review of Every Christmas Story Ever Told missed the list by just one position and this year moves from sixth to fourth.
5. Scoring the Dixie
   After a second-place finish last year, this post about tracking drives on the Dixie Highway slips but hangs on for its eighth top-five appearance. As I have noted several times, I know that some visits are for the wrong (i.e., Dixie bashing) reasons but I hope that all visitors leave with the realization that the Dixie Highway was an important part of American transportation history.

Top Non-Blog Posts:

1. Sixty-Six: E2E & F2F
   This 2012 end-to-end and friend-to-friend drive of Historic Route 66 appears in the top five list for the eighth time and tops it for the fourth time.
2. Lincoln Highway Conference 2011
   This trip moves from third to second for its fourth top-five appearance. It includes a full-length drive of US-36 before reaching the Lincoln Highway.
3. Lincoln Highway West
   This 2009 trip swaps positions with the 2011 LH conference trip this year but stays in the top five for a fifth time.
4. Kids & Coast
   Helping to make the 2024 list resemble the 2023 list, this west coast trip takes the number four slot for the third time in a row.
5. JHA Conference 2024
   The two most recent top-five lists have included the Christmas Escape Run from the previous year. I’m sure at least part of the reason is that those posts each had a full year to accumulate hits. This year, despite its twelve-month existence, the 2023 version of that trip was edged out of the list by the 2024 Jefferson Highway Association Conference trip that took place just eight months ago in April.

All three of the main traffic measurements were up this year. Overall site visits grew from 95,651 to 164,460, blog visits rose from 4,366 to 5,236, and page views went from 651,826 to 815,886. I don’t think the increases are something to get excited about but they are encouraging or at least not discouraging, and I’m pretty happy with that.

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The year in numbers with 2022 values in parentheses:

• 7 (6) = Road trips reported
• 81 (68) = Blog posts
• 47 (35) = Days on the road
• 2029 (1675) = Pictures posted — 866 (748) in the blog and 1,163 (927) in Road Trips

Everything went up this year. Everything that is except interest. I’ll discuss website traffic toward the end of this post but it’s probably not much of a spoiler to note that it continues its general decline. As for my own activity, I did get in one more trip than last year, and, unlike last year’s added trip, this one did translate to an increase in days on the road and pictures posted. Again, no trips from the year being reviewed made the top five but, unlike 2022 when there were no repeats from the previous year, the first four of 2023’s top five were repeats from 2022 and the fifth sort of was. Two of 2022’s top five blog posts made it again this year along with two brand new posts and one returning after an unusual absence.

Top Blog Posts:

1. Twenty Mile’s Last Stand
   Making its ninth appearance in the top five, this post about a nineteenth-century stagecoach stop turned roadhouse follows three consecutive seconds with its fourth first place. The previous three were in 2012, 2013, and 2019. It also ranked fourth in 2014 and fifth in 2018. On top of all that, this year the Twenty Mile’s Last Stand post accomplished something never before seen. In years past, the blog’s home page has always had more visits than any individual post but this time even it was bested by this post.
2. Scoring the Dixie
   Like the Twenty Mile Stand post, this one moves up one spot from last year. It also appeared at third in 2015 plus first in 2020 and 2021 and fourth in 2012 and 2017. It describes my tracking of driven portions of the Dixie Highway. Because of some Conferedate-themed markers placed beside the road and what I consider a misunderstanding of the name, the Dixie Highway has been the subject of some negative stories in recent years. I’m not sure I entirely believe that “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” but I hope it is true in this case and that anyone brought here because of one of those negative articles sees that the Dixie Highway played an honorable and important part in the development of transportation in America.
3. Review: A Christmas Carol
   Not many posts make the top five in their first year of existence. The full twelve months that posts from previous years have to accumulate visits is hard to compete with which makes the fact that this post did it in barely half a month almost unbelievable. A Christmas Carol has long been a favorite at Cincinnati’s Playhouse in the Park but was skipped in 2022 while a new theater was built. This post took a look at a new production in the new theater and that seems to have been something that quite a few people were interested in.
4. Review: Route 66 Navigation
   This post, with the full name “Product Review — Route 66 Navigation — by Touch Media”, is also new for 2023. The product is a smartphone app that I wanted to review since its 2018 introduction but I did not get a chance to use it until the very end of 2022 then posted the review in February 2023. It was somewhat refreshing and quite encouraging to find that the product does just what it claims.
5. My Wheels – Chapter 1 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner
   It’s baaaack! After slipping from the top five last year for the first time since it was published, the initial post in the My Wheels series returns in the fifth spot. Previous rankings have been first (2014, 2015, 2018), second (2013, 2016, 2017), third (2019, 2020), and fourth (2021).

Top Non-Blog Posts:

1. Sixty-Six: E2E & F2F
   My third full-length drive of Historic Route 66 is back for its seventh top-five finish and its third finish in the top spot. It was also first in 2012 and 2021. In addition, it was second in 2019 and 2022, fourth in 2018, and fifth in 2015. The abbreviations in its name stand for End to End and Friend to Friend.
2. Lincoln Highway West
   This 2009 trip was my first documented travel on the Lincoln Highway west of Indiana. It ranked third last year, fourth in 2020, and fifth in 2014.
3. Lincoln Highway Conference 2011
   This Lincoln Highway-centered trip did not even appear in the top five until it took third in 2020 then placed first last year. It’s a good trip that adds all of US-36 and bits of the CA-1 and Route 66 to the Lincoln Highway bits.
4. Kids & Coast
   This makes two fourths in a row for this 2008 Seattle to San Francisco trip. Like the 2011 Lincoln Highway trip above, it waited a long time to make the list but came in second in 2020 and is becoming a regular.
5. Christmas MOP
   This is the top five finisher I said was sort of a repeat from 2022. The fifth-place non-blog entry in 2022 was the Christmas Escape Run of 2021. This year it is the Christmas Escape Run of 2022. My October Miles of Possibility trip had been cut short by COVID-19 so when Christmas came around I used a modified version of that unfulfilled itinerary for Christmas MOP. It may or may not be a coincidence that this trip is where I was able to study the Route 66 Navigation app for the review that was the fourth most popular blog post of 2023.

Blog visits edged up a bit but overall website visits continued to decline. I’m not completely confident that my web host is tracking and reporting statistics accurately but they are all I have. Overall visits dropped from 102,804 to 95,651. Blog visits rose from 4,187 to 4,366. Page views were completely out of sync with everything else last year when they hit an all-time high of 924,495. This year they are back in sync with the dropping visits at 651,826.

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The year in numbers with 2021 values in parentheses:

• 6 (4) = Road trips reported
• 67 (65) = Blog posts
• 35 (51) = Days on the road
• 1675+ (1895) = Pictures posted — 748 (449) in the blog and 927 (1399) in Road Trips

For the third year in a row, the first topic mentioned in the year-end review is COVID-19. On one hand, its grip on travel was loosened a bit and some postponed trips and events were allowed to take place. On the other, the virus had its most personal impact on me yet. In the middle of a trip, I tested positive for COVID-19 myself and, although the symptoms were quite mild, the trip was effectively over at that point. I drove directly home and isolated. Evidence of the loosening of COVID’s grip is the increase in my personal trip count but none of those trips were particularly long so days on the road and the number of photos posted from road trips both decreased. None of the 2022 trips generated enough traffic to make the top five non-blog posts and none of last year’s top five non-blog posts returned this year. A personal post noting my own birthday was the most visited new blog post of the year.

Top Blog Posts:

1. Book Review A Good Road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound
   This is the first book review to ever appear in the top five and it is pretty obvious why it is here. It was published in October 2021 and got a decent number of visits on its own but the vast majority of visits in 2022 came from the YellowstoneTrail.org website which added a link to the review as part of its information on the book. That led not only to the review becoming one of the year’s top five posts but to YellowstoneTrail.org becoming the number three (behind Google and Facebook) source of visitors to this blog. There are aspects of that “captive” relationship that might mean it should not be considered in the rankings but other posts have received boosts from aligned websites with no ramifications so I’m ignoring them for now.
2. Twenty Mile’s Last Stand
   For the third year in a row, this post about a nineteenth-century stagecoach stop turned roadhouse and then destroyed comes in at number two.  Before the three consecutive seconds, it had three firsts (2012, ’13, 19), one fourth (2014), and one fifth (2018).
3. Scoring the Dixie
   After two consecutive firsts, this post about tracking driven portions of the Dixie Highway drops to third. It was also third in 2015 as well as fourth in 2012 and 2017. Although I’ve made other posts on the Dixie Highway, search engines seem to like this one best. “Dixie Highway map” brings some of the searchers here and some are looking for information on the historic Dixie Highway. Sadly, I know that some folks arrive here because they think Dixie is a dirty word. I don’t know what they think when they leave.
4. I 75
   The fourth most popular post overall was the most popular of new posts for the year and that makes it the one from which the opening image is taken. It was created for my seventy-fifth birthday. Proving, in a bizarre way, that skin sells, it seems all but certain that its popularity was due to that photo of my freshly shaved head. At the time, I was using a 2015 photo taken at The Bean in Chicago as my Facebook profile picture. I decided I would try to produce a hairless version of that photo using the same shirt and sunglasses and attempting to copy the angle and position. Although it may not always be obvious, images in these Rear View posts are reversed from the original so that they appear as they might in a rearview mirror. That is how the 2015 photo already appeared as it was of my reflection in the stainless steel sculpture. Since my attempt at reproduction did not involve a reflection, I reversed the image in the I 75 post to more closely match the original. So, when it came time to put the image in this year-end summary, I had to unreverse it. I can only hope that this attention to detail is appreciated appropriately.
5. Cincy Burger Week Plus
   I ate seven hamburgers on seven consecutive days for this post. Since my blog week is skewed from Cincinnati Burger Week by a day, my seven ‘burgers included one from outside the city. This post barely edged out the 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner post for fifth place ending the Flightliner’s unbroken run in the top five since its publication in 2013. I could have included it by booting the Yellowstone Trail book review based on its cozy relationship with the YT site but I was far from comfortable with that.

Top Non-Blog Posts:

1. Lincoln Highway Conference 2011
   After waiting a decade for its first appearance, this Lincoln Highway conference outing is back in the top-five list for the second time in three years. It ranked third in 2020 but takes the number one spot this time. Of course, I have no idea why, but I do know it has a lot to like. It’s twenty-five days long and includes, besides considerable Lincoln Highway, some time on CA-1 along the California coast, bits of Historic Route 66, and the entire length of US-36. 
2. Sixty-Six: E2E & F2F
   My third full-length drive of Historic Route 66 is back for its sixth top-five finish. It has previously achieved two firsts (2012, 2021), a fourth (2018), a fifth (2015), and another second (2019). The abbreviations in its name stand for End to End and Friend to Friend.
3. Lincoln Highway West
   This 2009 trip was my first documented travel on the Lincoln Highway beyond Indiana. It ranked fifth in 2014 and fourth in 2020.
4. Kids & Coast
   This 2008 fly-and-drive is making only its second top-five appearance after cracking the list at second in 2020. It’s a good one with a drive on the west coast between Seattle and San Francisco where my sons lived at the time.
5. Wild and Wonderful Again
   After a stay-at-home holiday in 2020, it was good to make an actual Christmas Escape Run in 2021. As I did in 2013, I targeted a West Virginia state park for Christmas Day but it was not the same park. The six-day trip drew enough attention over the next year to earn a top-five spot.

Both blog visits and overall website visits continued or renewed declines that had briefly paused. Overall visits dropped from 112,255 to 102,804. Blog visits dropped from 5,201 to 4,187. The decline in visits makes the increase in page views surprising to the point of being shocking. Last year’s all-time record of 832,848 page views was surpassed by this year’s 924,495 page views. It seems that fewer visitors are enjoying (I sincerely hope so) it more.

I finished up last year’s Rear View by mentioning a book that had been published during the year based on a trip made the previous year. I’m now doing it again. Amazingly, both the journal and the blog post for the trip on which 20 in ’21 and the YT Too is based appeared in their respective top five lists last year. Neither made the cut for 2022. The book was published in May, and “reviewed” here.

In case your seeing of DennyGibson.com posts is haphazard and you’d like it not to be, email lists and RSS feeds are available. Descriptions and links are provided in the website FAQ under How can I keep up with it? 

The year in numbers with 2020 values in parentheses:

• 4 (2) = Road trips reported
• 65 (65) = Blog posts
• 51 (30) = Days on the road
• 1895 (1059) = Pictures posted — 449 (496) in the blog and 1399 (563) in Road Trips

I know it’s a sign of a desperate search to find something nice to say, but I’ll say it anyway: 2020 makes 2021 look good. But COVID-19 continued to impact our lives greatly and to end far too many of them. In the U.S., deaths attributed to the virus in 2021 actually exceeded those of 2020 and the total has passed 800,000. Worldwide, that number is near 5.5 million. The United States has already passed its death count for the 1918 flu pandemic (675.000) while the worldwide count has a long way to go to hit the most conservative estimates for 1918 (12 million). Explain that to yourselves as best you can. My personal trip count doubled (from 2 to 4) and days of travel tried to do so (30 to 51). Two of the 2021 trip journals made the top five as did the blog entry for one of them. The most visited new blog post was one remembering Larry Goshorn who died in September.

Top Blog Posts:

1. Scoring the Dixie
   This post scores its second consecutive first to go with two fourths (2012, 2017) and a third (2015). Although I’ve made other posts on the Dixie Highway, search engines seem to like this one best. “Dixie Highway map” brings some of the searchers here and some are looking for information on the historic Dixie Highway. Sadly, I know that some folks arrive here because they think Dixie is a dirty word. I don’t know what they think when they leave.
2. Twenty Mile’s Last Stand
   This post about a now-gone nineteenth-century stagecoach stop also duplicates its 2020 finish. Before the two consecutive seconds, it had three firsts (2012, ’13, 19), one fourth (2014), and one fifth (2018).
3. Remembering Larry
   Musician Larry Goshorn died in September and I shared some of my memories of him in this post. He contributed his playing and songwriting skills to numerous groups including Sacred Mushroom, Pure Prairie League, and the Goshorn Brothers Band. Hearing echoes of 2017 is unavoidable as I write this. That’s the year when Larry’s brother Tim died and Remembering Timmy was the most visited post of the year.
4. My Wheels – Chapter 1 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner
   This post has been in the top five every year of its existence. Previous rankings have been first (2014, 2015, 2018), second (2013, 2016, 2017), and third (2019, 2020). This is its first time at fourth. Note that, had this finished one slot higher, the top three list of 2021 would have completely matched that of 2020.
5. Yellowstone Trail and US-20
   This is a Trip Journal Link post. None have ever appeared in the top five before and I don’t think one ever will again. In fact, this one probably should not be here. Each one ends with the line “This entry is to let blog-only subscribers know about the trip and to provide a place for comments” along with a link to the associated trip journal. I imagine a few people are occasionally led to a journal through one of these posts and they do sometimes get a few comments. None of my posts get many comments. This one got more than normal but even it has less than thirty entries. It seems likely to me that it was people returning to the post multiple times that caused sufficient visits to bump it into the top five. I probably should throw it out but am instead offering this explanation for why I will probably do that next time and including a #6.
6. Much Miscellany 2 Sloopy at 50
   As explained above, this should probably be considered the fifth most visited post of 2021. It is another repeat from last year and previous years as well. It was fifth in 2015 then fourth in 2018, 2019, and 2020.

Top Non-Blog Posts:

1. Alaska
   For the first time, my longest documented trip (11,108 miles in 41 days) is also the most popular. With that, it completes the set having previously scored a third (2016), a fourth (2017), a second (2018), and a fifth (2020).
2. Fiftieth: Hawaii
   This is the second top-five finish for this fly-and-drive-and-fly-and-drive-and-fly-and-drive-and-fly trip. The 2016 adventure allowed me to celebrate my seventieth birthday in my fiftieth state. Its previous top-five appearance was in 2018 at third.
3. Yellowstone Trail and US-20
   This 9095-mile, 37-day outing took place in June and early July of last year so this is obviously its first top-five appearance. It is my second-longest trip and bumps the 2013 Lincoln Highway Centennial trip (7341 miles, 35 days) into third. Starting with Historic US-20 from Ohio to its eastern terminus in Boston, the trip continued with the full length of the Yellowstone Trail from Plymouth to Seattle, then finished with the remainder of Historic US-20 from Oregon back to Ohio.
4. Birthday Breakout 2021
   My most recent birthday was spent on a short trip that was part celebration and part experiment. The experimental part came from my testing what travel in 2021 might be like. It included a visit with Mothman in Point Pleasant, West Virginia which I suspect is the reason for the journal’s popularity. Mothman is indisputably a bigger draw than I.
5. Corner to Corner to Corner II
   This is another fairly recent trip making its first appearance on this list. It is basically a 2020 repeat of a 2001 trip from Ohio’s southwest corner to its northeast corner and back. One direction used US-42 and the other used the historic 3C Highway. I have no idea why it was visited so often this year.

Website visits were almost perfectly flat with a slight rise from 112,115 to 112,255. Blog views dropped from 6,060 to 5,201. Page views climbed from 670,115 to 832,848. That is actually the highest number of page views ever despite the number of visits being less than half the 2014 peak of 248,033. 2014 had also been the year of highest Page views at 741,404.

An offline but related event was the publication of Tracing a T to Tampa, a book about retracing my great-grandparents’ 1920 trip to Florida. The retracing on which the book is primarily based began on the original trip’s 100th anniversary. The journal for that trip is here. The journal for a 2001 retrace which also contributed to the book is here. The book is “reviewed” here.

The year in numbers with 2019 values in parentheses:

• 2 (5) = Road trips reported
• 65 (69) = Blog posts
• 30 (47) = Days on the road
• 1059 (1641) = Pictures posted — 496 (543) in the blog and 563 (1098) in Road Trips

It might be nice if 2020, like Dracula, simply did not appear in mirrors — rear view or otherwise — but the truth is, we’re going to be reflecting on this strange year a lot and for a long time. In last year’s Rear View post, I lamented a drop in travel. Trips, days on the road, and pictures posted were all down, but those were the good old days. This year the counts didn’t just drop, they plummeted. I do not, of course, have to guess at the cause. It is clearly the shutdowns and precautions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to that becoming a factor in mid-March, I had 2020 identified as a big travel year with plans for two major trips and several of medium-size. In the end, only one of the major trips and a single small trip actually took place. The top five trip journal entries were again for major trips including one repeat from last year. Neither 2020 trip made it. Only one new blog post made the top five and that was at the bottom behind four posts that were at least five years old.

Top Blog Posts:

1. Scoring the Dixie
   This post ranked fourth when published in 2012 to describe my struggle with keeping track of sections of the Dixie Highway I had driven. It was third in 2015 when I announced that quest complete (as far as I knew then), and reappeared at number four in 2017. It takes over the top spot for its fourth appearance. I don’t doubt that some of the traffic is due to the misguided notion that the word “Dixie” is associated with the Confederacy and should, therefore, be removed from public view. On the other hand, an increasing number of people were brought to this website, and possibly to this post, by a search for “Dixie Highway map”. I believe that indicates an interest in the road and not just the name, and that I consider a good thing.
2. Twenty Mile’s Last Stand
   This post was in the top five for the first three years of its existence then missed it for the next three. This year’s appearance secures another 3-in-a-row by scoring a second to go with three firsts (2012, ’13, 19), one fourth (2014), and one fifth (2018). The Twenty Mile House may be gone but it is clearly not forgotten.
3. My Wheels – Chapter 1 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner
   The very first My Wheels post keeps its top five streak intact by racking up its second third place to go with three firsts and three seconds.
4. Much Miscellany 2, Sloopy at 50
   There was so much miscellany in 2015 that it required two posts. This one placed fifth in that first year then dropped out of the top five for a couple of years. In making its fourth appearance, it lets me recycle a bad joke by noting that it hangs on 😉 to fourth place for the third consecutive year.
5. Blocked
   This was the most popular of 2020’s new blog posts and the only one to crack the overall top five. It isn’t about travel or an event or an attraction. It is about social media — specifically, Facebook —  and I’m not exactly proud of that even though I am fairly active on the platform and don’t have any particular gripes with it. I avoid the head-on collisions that many enjoy but I will occasionally respond to a debunked claim with a link to some evidence of its incorrectness. I do this without adding my own comments and I’ve done it for claims from people of various persuasions. Some people apparently think fact-checking is somehow evil and I guess I encountered a couple of them. In the year just ended, my post about those encounters attracted more readers than any other.

Top Non-Blog Posts:

1. Sixty-Six: E2E & F2F
   This was my third full-length drive of Route 66. It ranked first when it first appeared in 2012, disappeared for two years, reappeared at number five in 2015, then disappeared for two more years. It started its current climb in 2018 at fourth, then second, and now first. Why? I have no idea.
2. Kids & Coast
   It’s hard to believe that this fly-and-drive trip from 2008 is just now making its first appearance in the top five. It started with a flight to Seattle where one of my sons lived and ended with a flight from San Francisco where my other son lived. In between the flights was a drive south along the coast. It was a great trip that should not have had to wait twelve years to get some attention.
3. Lincoln Highway Conference 2011
   This is another great trip that is getting its first mention in a year-end review. At the time this trip was completed, it was my longest in days (25) and possibly miles (6698). It included driving a US Numbered Highway (36) end-to-end, plus a big chunk of Lincoln Highway, some California coast, and some pieces of Historic Route 66.
4. Lincoln Highway West
   This 2009 trip isn’t a total stranger to the top five but it’s close. Its only previous appearance was in the number five slot in 2014. I referred to this trip as the one that clinched the Lincoln Highway for me despite knowing there were some alignments I had yet to cover. I claimed a clinch because I had driven at least one LH alignment from coast to coast.
5. Alaska
   After a year’s absence, the reigning champion in both days (41) and miles (11,108) returns to the top five with a fifth to go with a second (2018), third (2016), and fourth (2017).

I was surprised to see that both website visits and blog views reversed a trend and increased a bit. Website visits went from 96,512 to 112,115 and blog views from 5,135 to 6,060. Page views again moved in the opposite direction and dropped from 726,399 to 670,115. When the reverse happened last year, I commented that fewer people are looking but they’re looking at more. I guess more people are now looking at less.

Last year I suggested that one reason for the drop in visits and views could be the fact that mailing list messages sent to Verizon, Yahoo, and AOL addresses were being refused during the last half of the year. This was the result of shared servers at my hosting company, Arvixe, being identified as spammers. This year’s increase cannot, however, be credited to solving that problem since it remained a factor until mid-October. Even then it wasn’t solved in the sense that Arvixe got things cleared up. It stopped being a factor when I did what I said I was considering last year and switched hosting providers. The switch to Bluehost was announced and explained in the blog post A New Web Home. l still have access to my installation at Arvixe and occasionally test the email there. The problem that caused me to move is still unresolved at the end of 2020.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.