A year of blogging

Nantasket Beach, Hull, MA, drone shot
Drone shot of Nantasket Beach in Hull, MA, looking towards Boston in the distance

I bought the drewsview.xyz domain a year ago and the out reach of this page has exceeded my expectations. My Twitter page has grown at reasonable clip thanks in no small part to my #NHpolitics and liberty followers. My public Instagram and YouTube pages need more love, but they have generated positive impressions. I’d like to be more active on Odysee, which is a video site hosted on a blockchain, and is more impervious to censorship. I plan on flying high and keeping the adventure going into Summer 2022. I have some good trips in the works for June. Stay hungry.

In pursuit of the truth

I posted this to my personal Instagram story yesterday and got mostly affirming comments. The coverage of COVID-19, the current president, and former president, have solidified my position that very few prominent journalists are in pursuit of the truth. Most media is heavily editorialized on the right and the left. Turn off the TV!

Published
Categorized as General

Blog SEO and Keene travel guide

Oh the art of search engine optimization! It’s taking me well over two months to get listed on Bing, which will also get me cross listed on DuckDuckGo, one of my favorite search engines for privacy purposes. It would be nice for people to find this website in more places than just Google.

I wonder how useful this site will be for people in the future. Ironically, one of my coworkers asked me recently for travel recommendations for Keene, NH. I used a lot of the same info that I used in my post about Walpole.

Other highlights about the Keene area:

Destination: Walpole

White Chocolate Beehive at Burdick's in Walpole, NH

The longer I have lived in New Jersey, by far the most densely populated state, the more I have appreciated under-the-radar destinations over crowded Instagram hot spots.

In a region with destinations like Acadia, Provincetown, and Newport, it’s easy for plenty of fantastic places to get drowned out by the big players. I’d even argue that the whole state of New Hampshire is the unsung hero of New England. The reality is that Americans in other parts of the country have trouble pointing to NH on a map. “Oh it’s one of those little states up there”, they say.

Walpole, NH, population 3,734, fits the bill of the path less traveled even for New Hampshire. You could probably count all of the shops in the center of town on one hand. However, the crown jewel of Walpole is the flagship location of L.A. Burdick Chocolate, home of the best hot chocolate in the entire world. Burdick’s annex locations in Manhattan’s trendy SoHo and Boston’s Back Bay have become famed cafés.

Every summer as a teenager, I would make a point to drive my grandmother down to Burdick’s in Walpole for lunch. The restaurant is home to some of the best Franco-Swiss food for miles. In a state where the largest ethnic group is French/French Canadian, it is deceivingly hard to find many French dining options, but Burdick’s will not disappoint. My drink of choice is the dark hot chocolate, which can also be served iced, perfect for Burdick’s Bastille Day lunch on a hot July day. The croque-madame, an open-faced French grilled cheese and fried egg sandwich, has gone on and off the menu through the years and is one of my favorites.

After the pursuing the two other stores in town, a trip to Walpole is not complete without a scenic drive around the hillside farmland, which provides excellent views of the Connecticut River Valley. Great stopping points include: Alysons Orchard and Walpole Valley Farms.

Destination: Amish Country

View from train on the Strasburg Railroad

Took a quick trip out to Amish country this past weekend. I had to keep reminding myself that they weren’t paid actors.

  • Amish Village – It’s like a visitor center, and I didn’t do the bus tour. Learned quite a bit from the short house tour. I didn’t realize that Amish were OK with electricity for certain off grid uses, such as LED headlamps.
  • Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania – Very nicely preserved trains from the early steam era up through the diesel era. There is a replica of the first American steam locomotive
  • Strasburg Railroad – oldest continually operated rail line. Very pretty views of Amish Farms (photo above)
  • Town of Strasburg
  • Town of Intercourse – pedestrian village area (closed Sundays)

Everything Amish-related is closed on Sundays, including the town of Intercourse, however it’s great to drive around on Sunday because the Amish were walking around enjoying their day of rest. Don’t bother driving through the city of Lancaster, stay in the countryside.

First post

The original intent when I got this domain was to have a companion site for my drone videos and landscape photos. And although I intend to feature more artistic and travel posts, this blog will be a potpourri of my thoughts, including technical articles and maybe some (light?) social commentary. As they say, if your grandmother wouldn’t approve of it, you probably shouldn’t post it on the internet, so I’ll tread lightly. Though I may share some of the mass emails my grandmother sends me frequently, most of which probably shouldn’t be re-posted on the open internet.

Keeping with the kitchen-sink, anything-goes format, posts will vary in length and subject, so I’ll attempt to categorize posts so that you can skip around.

I don’t intend for this site to get many viewers and I see this as an internet home for the highlights of my internal monologue.

Published
Categorized as General