Friday, July 04, 2008

Some other travelin' blogs I have been keeping up with...

Looks like our 2004 original set off several groups of folks wanting to do something similar. Over time I have watched several of these "Travelin' Blogs" to see what kinds of different things I could be doing or what I could do better.

The first one I saw after the Great Western experience was a group of kids from Madera, California, and from Houston, Texas that would meet up in West Texas to ride in wagons, retracing the actual route of Texas gold miner, "William P. Huff", on his trek to California to seek his fortune. The "Huff" expedition had the sponsorship of TPWD, who keep a journal of the students thoughts.

Since 2004, educational adventure touring has become quite an enterprise. So have cattle and wagon trail tours. I am not sure how much your early efforts affected the tourism world or the historical world, nor do I really care. My efforts were for my own pure joy. And to this day, the trip blogs that I enjoy the most are mainly just for the sheer pleasure of documenting it. If you can make more of it great....and if not,....well, I guess that was the way it was meant to be.

There are two more recent adventure tours that I have been keeping up with. One is an effort by Bill Inman and his horse, Blackie, to cross the US. He documented his efforts at Uncovering America by Horseback. He succeeded in his effort by traveling from Oregon to Washington, DC arriving on Memorial Day of this year. This one also has a spin off blog, "I live in my truck", which you can learn more about here.

Another blog I am watching closely is a group of young boys, sailing a ship all the way around England, at Smiling Round Britain. They just finished their journey a couple of weeks ago.

My focus this time will be on how the trail rides were influenced by and influenced other byways and pathways of history. We will be looking at a lot of historical information again, though this time, I am planning a lot more preparatory work. And this time, I will be including some more segments about other trails that may have crossed the Great Western. Stagecoach trails, Military trails, Indian trails, and more will be included. If you are aware of any that I should be covering, please let me know.

Until then, see ya' down the trail.

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