(Perilous) Pauline Baird Jones Explains her Scenic Route

Guess why we call him Wyoming Jones — or WyoJones for short.

If you’re coming to my blog via a link for a blog post, you might be missing my landing page. There are some good reasons not to miss my landing page (there’s a bio I worked really hard on) but the main reason for not missing my landing page are the wonderful photos the hubs let me use to highlight my shiny new blog theme: Taking the Scenic Route. 

When I decided to move my blog away from “all-about-me” book promotion last January (2012 if you’re reading this in the future), I knew what it wasn’t going to be about, but wasn’t sure what it should focus on. I took an awesome blogging class from Social Media Jedi, Kristen Lamb, and through the course, I’m moving closer to answering that basic question. I won’t say it’s not still a work in progress, but for the first time since I started blogging (so long ago it makes me wince to think about it), I’m really enjoying it. I go through my life thinking, could I turn this into a blog post? Or is it just a tweet? <—-picture me with empty thought bubble over my head everywhere I go.

What I hope this blog is (besides fun to read – insert hopeful look here), or what I hope it will become as it “grows up,” is a conversation among friends as I take the scenic route through days that are often weird, wonderful, and occasionally (hopefully) inspiring. And I’m hoping ya’ll will sometimes ride along and maybe say, “Girl. Seriously?”

One of the reasons the tagline “Taking the Scenic Route” resonated so quickly with me, is that is almost a metaphor for my life with the hubs. We met last century and have been taking the scenic route together for thirty-seven+ years. And during those thirty-seven years he’s been honing his skills as a photographer.

His Flickr page is just a sampling of the millions of images he’s captured over the years. We’ve gone over, under, around and through to get to places he wants to photograph. He’s dodged buffalos, bears and my wrath to get ‘er done. He’s taken this Wyoming girl to places strange and interesting and at times, even managed to make her think it was her idea. He’s always, always, always about the scenic route. Our marriage has been as much as an adventure (though without the explosions) as my fiction.

He’s not just about the pictures, though. He’s been a great dad, a wonderful husband, and he’s supported my writing and encouraged me to keep going, even when I didn’t believe I could do it and wanted to give up. The photographs are awesome and amazing and I’m so grateful he’s letting me highlight them on my blog, but if you notice my Amazon widget, that’s not just an advertisement of my books. That’s a testament to his belief in me for many long years. None of them would have happened without him.

So, if you have a minute, click over to the landing page and check out the photographs. And if you feel like it, leave a comment either here or there for the hubs. Cause you know they are awesome. It doesn’t all have to be for him, though, because there’s a $10 AnaBanana Gift Card on the line for some lucky commenter this month. I post the winner the first blog post of the new month.

Some day I will write the amazing tales of Perilous P and WyoJones, but for now I’m just happy we’re still taking the scenic route together.

Perilously,

Pauline