STANDING AT THE CROSSROADS OF DECISION

A welcome cool front rolled in over night leaving us with a low cloud bank and light fog along Lake Huron's shoreline.  Not exactly an inspiring morning but I loaded Pheebs up and we headed out anyway.  Southeast of Bayfield I noticed the cloud cover was down to about a hundred feet off the ground and with the overcast thinning the day began to slowly brighten up.  As did I.

THIS MORNINGS CLOUD COVER WAS SITTING ATOP THE AREAS WIND TURBINES 2 MILES INLAND

We did get us a walk in over near Kerr's Campground south of Varna before the clouds dispersed allowing sunlight through to crank up the humidity.  It was time to head for home and immerse myself in the cooler comfortable air of our A/C house.

OLD DEAD END ROADS ARE ALWAYS GREAT TO WALK ON

NOT A GOOD IDEA TO BE DOWNWIND FROM DUSTY FARM MACHINERY

OH SO THAT’S WHERE WE LEFT THE JEEP

KEEP IT GOING PHEEBS ONLY A FEW MORE STEPS

A BIG WATER DRINK AS THE DAY’S HEAT AND HUMIDITY SETTLE IN

KERR’S CAMPGROUND POND

This may be my last post for awhile folks.  I've been struggling with this since we returned home early last March and even before that.  I'm talking about my blog momentum.  I sense interest in the Bayfield Bunch has been dropping for awhile now and I have all but run out of ideas on how to hold reader's interest.  I either need a break or after 12 great blogging years it is time to call it a day and find myself a new hobby.  Not easy letting go of something I have enjoyed so much over the years and I have the blog's readers to thank for that enjoyment.  Don't know what exactly I am going to do but do know I have to make some decisions about all this. 

When I first started blogging on Microsoft's 'My Space' back in 2004 my focus was on a form of record keeping mixed with a diary format. I had periodically written diaries and kept track of things in my life through the written word for years before that.  My earliest record keeping writings go back to the early 60'and my creative writing efforts as far back as the mid 50's and public school.  When I discovered the computer world's 'Blogger' format in 2006 my efforts took a big leap forward as I grabbed onto the coattails of a fascinating new hobby.  Combined with the advent of digital photography and photo editing in the late 90's I was able to combine my writing and photography with my third great hobby of RV traveling which began in earnest by the Fall of 2006.  With my blog slowly gaining in popularity back then it began to evolve and after a number of years my focus began to shift.   I was no longer writing it just for me.  Through countless kind emails, comments, and personal contact with a number of readers I began to realize my blog was reaching out through the ethers of cyberspace to touch folks in a helpful, positive, and entertaining way.  Hard for me to understand how my blog could do that but there it was in the many comments, emails, and readers visits. 

 

I believe it was about this time where my blog's focus changed and I began writing and taking photos more for the readers than myself.  It was no longer just me and if it had remained just me I would have lost interest in it years ago.  No, it was the readers I mainly wrote for and each day it was a challenge to creatively come up with something of interest and something a wee bit different from the day before all the time worrying about being too repetitive.  A huge challenge to say the least but it was that challenge I enjoyed the most.  By focusing my priority on the readers and not myself it kept my mind sharp every day trying to think of new things, new photos, and new topics to blog about.  Gave me a reason to get up every morning and see what I could do by the end of that day to bring some kind of entertaining enjoyment, knowledge, or enlightenment to the readers of my blog.  A way of paying back all the folks who through there encouragement had given me a purpose to get up in the first place.  I have been so fortunate these past dozen years to not only be an unexpected help to others but through my inner writings to be a help to myself as well.  However nothing remains the same forever so I stand at a crossroads now trying to decide which way to go, what to change, and where do I want to be.

GROANER'S CORNER:((  A big game hunter goes on safari with his wife and his mother-in-law. One morning, the wife wakes up to find her mother gone. Immediately, she awakens up her husband and they both set off to find the old woman.Suddenly, they break into a clearing and there's the mother-in-law, standing face-to-face with a ferocious lion!  "Quick, darling," the wife shouts frantically, "Do something!" "Oh, no," the husband says, "That lion got himself into this mess. Let him get himself out!"

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