Pondering Blogging Without Live Writer, and Wildlife Pics

Wesley Chapel, Florida (high 90, low 70)


We’ve been taking care of business since we got back from the Keys.  We miss the Keys, but right now we’re dreaming of the north Georgia mountains.  They have been having wonderfully cool weather, compared to the 90’s and stifling humidity that we’re dealing with here in the Tampa area.

We haven't done anything fun or blog worthy since we got back, but we have had some nice visitors in our back yard.


Al found this little gopher tortoise walking down the street in the campground on the hot asphalt. Gopher tortoises dig holes in the sand/dirt and make their homes there.  They do not live in the water and they don't live in parking lots.

We worried about him walking on the hot pavement.   That is not the usual tortoise habitat and since they are cold blooded, we worried that he could get overheated, not to mention get run over.

We debated where to put him because they usually are heading somewhere and we didn't want to disrupt his pattern.  We put him down in our friends site and he headed right over to some plants and crawled under them.  We think he was happy to be out of the baking sun.

He spent the night in the same place, and our friend saw him early the next morning walking back down the street.   I had considered taking him to the State Park or possibly calling a wildlife sanctuary to see what they thought.  They are a protected species, so we would have had to make sure we didn't break any laws.  I just didn't think a busy campground  was a good place for him.

A campground with paved roads is not exactly tortoise habitat.  It may have been at one time, but now it's people habitat and there are huge zero turn mowers running around all the time, as well as cars and rv's.  

Be safe little tortoise.  I hope you found a better place to live.   Notice the front feet?  You can see how adapted he is for digging burrows.

We've never seen one quite this small.

We have been seeing the otters again.  Last year there were four of them, and we think two were offspring.

This year, we only see two, so maybe some babies will be coming.

They were very cooperative and posed nicely for me.

They sure kept their eyes on me.

There has been a lot of talk in Blog land since the changes with Blogger have caused us to not be able to use Live Writer to write and post our blogs.  Sure, you can post directly from Blogger and it's do-able, but pictures take too long to load, and it's not anywhere as nice a program as Live Writer.

But since the Google gods are going to do what they want to do and since we may or may not be able to use Live Writer, I guess I will have to deal with posting blogs via Blogger.  This will be my first one in years, so I guess we'll see how it turns out.

It's been said that blogging is no longer in fashion and many people have migrated over to other social media options like Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.   I guess Google is encouraging us to quit blogging and use Google +.

I have explored Google + some but I don't find it suits my needs as well as blogging.  I started blogging to keep a picture diary of our RVing life and the places we go and the things we've done.

Before blogger, I actually typed journals on my computer and inserted pictures into those journals.  It worked just fine until I discovered Blogger and a better way to do the same thing.  Once I started blogging, it wasn't long before I got my first follower.  I found other bloggers via blogging and have made many new blogging friends.  I've learned a lot from other Bloggers and I for one will miss it if it goes away.

After thinking about what Rick said about Blogger's "time to shine is over",  I considered other options because I do see some value in Facebook and maybe if I explored Google + a little more, I could make it work for me.  I quickly realized that there are no other options, at least that I know of right now, that will give me the things that Blogger does.

I use Blogger to document our life.  I like the fact that others read my blog and comment.  I like the fact that I have other blogger friends, but even if no one reads my blog, I will continue to post it for our own use.   I like the fact that I can go back to previous times.  I like looking at my pictures and remembering fun times.  I like being able to refer back to things if I can't remember something.  I like going back and seeing what the weather was like at a certain time of year.  I like being able to refer back to when we did a repair and who we used.  I have a separate blog for our RV lots in Georgia and the Keys.  I use it to help me rent them out.  Facebook steers people there and Blogger gives them more information and pictures.

So Google, you can do whatever you wish with Blogger, but I'm going to continue to journal our life, with or without you.   Maybe I need to back-up my blog though.   :)


I just saved and did a preview of this blog post.  It seems to have turned out just fine, so other than it taking much too long to post pictures, maybe it won't be so bad.  They have made some progress because it's easier to resize pictures now and you don't have re-size each photo.   The paragraphs are staying separated when before they all seemed to run together.   Maybe it won't be so bad after all.