What People Look At

Warning: 

The following contains Data.

If you are upset by Data, proceed with the greatest caution.

Every effort has been made to refrain from technical concepts, such as "numbers" or "reproducibility"

Never-the-less, it was necessary to retain some technical terms, such as "greater than" or "inexplicable"

You have been Warned! The author has no liability if confusion, headaches or nausea result from consuming this Data 

A while ago I posted pictures of a few more obscure places on Google Maps. I recently went back to see which photos, if any, people looked at. Why did people look a this picture but not that one? Are people more attracted by beauty or information? These are results from that study.

Background: in Google Maps, photos are associated with a place but have no other identifying information. No titles, no text, no legends. And the photos are first seen as thumbnails and only "viewed" when the person elects to see the photo in "full size"

Some Comparisons

I will start by looking at sets of photos from a specific location. All my photos from a specific location have been available for the same length of time. Only people's desire to see more detail makes one photo more popular than another.

La Bajada

People greatly preferred the photo of a stick in a featureless plain over the scenic view of a prehistoric road that dates back at least 600 years. And by "greatly", I mean by 6 :: 1.

Oooops, sorry. I said there would be no numbers.

Pecos Wilderness

People preferred the sign over the view of the wilderness. And the photo of the flowers was the most popular. The differences were small but significant

Moss Landing

The photo of food was preferred about 100 :: 1 over the picture of kayakers with a sea otter.

Mesa Verde

Scenery beats ruins by 600 :: 1

Ooops! There are those damn numbers again.

Least Popular Photos

All the photos had some views, tho some had very few views.

Carrizo Plains

Kasha-Katuwe (New Mexico)

Toadstool Hoodoos (Utah)

Obsidian Ridge (New Mexico) ... prehistoric tool

Denver Botanical Gardens

Most Average Photos

These were viewed a median number of times (damn, another number concept)

Hovenweep

Meow Wolf (Santa Fe)

Sangre de Cristos (New Mexico)

Before I finish

I said I would avoid numbers but I said nothing about avoiding charts. Here is the distribution of views across the photos.

Most Popular Photos

And the Grand Finale. 

The Fourth Most Popular photo is a view from the Dome Wilderness towards the Jemez Mountains.

The Third Most Popular photo was a picture of French Fries.  French Fries!!

The Second Most Popular Photo:  Valles Caldera.

And the Most Popular Photo is from Pueblo Pintado

In Conclusion

I said I was going to present Data. I said nothing about Conclusions.

I have no Conclusion.

Except, maybe I'll start taking more pictures of food and signs.

Sea Trials

Our first RV was small and old. Rattly. Noisy. The engine had to be replaced, the front end suspension repaired. I hated it. Cyndi didn't like it much.

So we traded it in for an older, smaller one. Which is much quieter. Easier to drive and park. Safer. And we don't hate it. Not yet.

We took it out for an overnight shakedown cruise. Decided to head west down the Ohio River, mainly because it was raining to the east. We took a scenic drive along the Ohio River for a hour. Saw lots of trees and lots of brief rainshowers. Passing up the Buzzard Overlook, we settled for the Eagle Roost Overlook and gazed at the Cannelton Dam, Hydro Power plant and Domtar paper mill.

Back on the road, we got directed to a detour and followed a barn for about an hour. Made a good solid 15 miles behind that thing. Most, not all, of the barn made the 15 mile trip before the barn headed north and I gave up on the scenic route and headed south into Kentucky.

We stopped near Paducah and worked on adjusting RV's interior and soothing the cat.

At the first night's campground

The next day we headed for Cairo, Illinois to see the conflux of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. And we saw it twice. From the tops of the most terrifying, rickety, narrow bridges I've been on. Bridges that seem to have been built before gasoline engines were invented. Bridges that large semi's use to bypass the Missouri and Illinois weigh stations on I-57.

Fort Defiance Park is at the conflux but I missed the entrance and found myself on the 2nd of the two bridges and I wasn't about to cross back over for a third trip. So I missed my chance to have one foot in the Ohio and the other in the Mississippi. Oh well, I'll save that for my next lifetime.

Heading north into "Little Egypt", we stopped at a nature preserve to see some tupelo trees and a bit of the Great Illinois Swamp.

A rare photo of me.

And Cyndi wishes photos of her were much rarer
But I like to share pictures of my beautiful wife
And brag a little

And that is a tupelo tree the signs claim to be about 1,000 years old. Looks in better shape than me.

Further up the road we came to Vienna.

This is one of the reasons photos of me are rare.

That photo wasn't a fluke. It is typical. See for yourself

Southern Illinois (actually called "Little Egypt") is the poorest part of Illinois and one of the poor parts of the country. A recent study said things like "general dependence on polluted surface wells for drinking water," "non-existent plumbing", "extremely poor health and few health care facilities."

We decided to have lunch in Harrisburg, one of the larger communities along our route. Entering Harrisburg we saw a lot of fast food places. Lots of churches, many of denominations unfamiliar to me. Empty, abandoned buildings. Thrift shops. The only thriving business was a gun store and it was doing very well.

I stopped several times in Harrisburg to consult the Internet to see if there were any sit-down restaurants. I did not get a cell signal anywhere. But we did find The Old Hog, a southern fried barbecue place. It was actually pretty good but it could have more accurately called itself The Old Salt Lick.

The restaurant did perform a well-needed public service. Without the Internet, it was hard for locals to get the news, so the restaurant posted the front page of recent newspaper editions so the citizens could keep in touch. An example

For the final leg of this test cruise, Cyndi took the wheel of the RV. She just recently got her license, so we wanted to see if she would be comfortable driving the RV.

Actually, Cyndi did fine. She's going to be doing a lot more of the driving from now on.