A Thanksgiving Trip to Who-ville

Dr. Seuss, the beloved children’s author, who gave life to

The Cat in the Hat, Horton and the Grinch,

also created the place known as Whoville, or Who-ville.

In one of his books, Whoville 

is a floating speck of dust placed inside a clover flower                                                              

in another it is located inside a snowflake.

With all due respect to Dr. Seuss, today we’d like to take you on a Thanksgiving trip to our “Who-ville” ~ a place we’ve been exploring since beginning this travel blog five years ago. 

The idea for this Thanksgiving trip to our Who-ville began a few weeks ago when a friend asked of the blog, “How many readers do you have now?” 

I started to answer with the statistical explanations that we bloggers fall victim to every now and then and realized I sounded like a Dr. Seuss character as I tried to explain the blog’s varying numbers:  page views verse readers verse followers verse subscribers . . .

“Think left and think right and think low and think high.

Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!”

- Dr. Seuss

Instead of looking at just numbers, it seemed a trip to Who-ville might be a more interesting way to answer my friend’s question.

To get there we start at the small box on the TravelnWrite home page called, Clustrmaps.  I signed up for this free feature a few months after starting the blog back in 2009.  It shows the location of people who are reading the blog – in real time, in fact,  if you care to look closely enough.

This map leads to our somewhat enchanting Who-ville. . . where we don’t know exactly the ‘who’ of you are visiting the blog, but we do know your ‘ville’. 

“Today you are You, that is truer than true.

There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

- Dr. Seuss

While statistically speaking the ‘who’s’ total 41,524 visits in the last five years, what is the most fun about our Who-ville is that they’ve come  from every corner of  the United States and 170 countries!  (I remember when I first added the map I kept hoping that someday I would have a visit from Canada – it now ranks third in number of visits in our ‘Who-ville’!)

What is simply amazing are some of the locations from where our visitors have come. Some places on our ‘Who-ville’ map were so far off our radar that I’ve had to research them because I flat out didn’t know where they were. . .

“The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

-Dr. Seuss

. . .places like Aland Islands, a chain of 6,757 islands  between Sweden and Finland or Reunion Island, a French Island with a population of 840,974 just east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

Some visits have come from ambiguous places listed as  “Armed Forces, Europe, Middle East and Canada”.  While headlines scream  strife and war in places like Israel, Iraq and Iran, we are gratified to find visitors from each of those places have found the time to visit the blog.

Many of you in ‘Who-ville’ have become friends over the years – and many old friendships rediscovered in Who-ville have taken up right where they left off. . .

“You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

You're on your own. And you know what you know.

And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”

- Dr. Seuss

To all of you in our ‘Who-ville’ we thank you for joining us on our journeys and for the time you spend with us. You’ve enriched our lives.  Happy Thanksgiving to those of you celebrating the day today and Happy Travels to all~ (And if you’ve just discovered us, please come back again!)


Linking up this week:
Travel Photo Thursday – Budget Traveler’s Sandbox 
Travel Inspiration – Reflections En Route 
Mosaic Monday – Lavender Cottage Gardening