From Texas to Beyond

Local, Near and Far: Our journey of exploring the world.

Page 10 of 31

Beth Marie’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream

Over Valentine’s Day, David and I decided to celebrate with a shared experience together as opposed to the traditional flowers for me and chocolate for David.  We spent the day in Denton, TX. To read more about how we ended up there, check out our Denton Overview post.

After a day of hiking at Ray Roberts Lake State Park, I think I had earned at least one scoop of ice cream.  Ice cream is a sign of love and affection.  I had remembered that on the Denton County Courthouse Square, there was an ice cream shop, Beth Marie’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream.  I couldn’t quite recall the name at the time, but I knew if we went, we would find it.  David and I had actually visited once before several months prior; we met some friends who were staying with family in Pilot Point, TX.

Beth Marie's Ice Cream 2 Continue reading

J&J’s Pizza on the Square

David and I celebrated Valentine’s with a day trip to Denton.  After spending the day hiking on the Ray Roberts Lake State Park greenbelt, we decided to head to the Denton County Courthouse Square for some ice cream at Beth Marie’s.  While walking there, we were lured by the scent of freshly baked pizzas at J&J’s Pizza on the Square.  We often make decisions through our stomachs, and being true to ourselves, we decided to make a stop at the pizzeria.  It proved to be a very wise decision!

J&J's Pizza 4The establishment is a narrow, eclectically decorated room with a basement downstairs that features live music.  You can enjoy your pizza indoors at a table, at the bar or at a few tables outside.  We originally thought about ordering a pizza, but the price was a little higher than we wanted and we were not that hungry.   We moved on to ordering pizza by the slice, but then saw a calzone being delivered to a table and that sealed the deal.  A calzone it would be.  We ordered one and split it.  For $10, you can build your own calzone with as many toppings as you want.  Our master plan included cheese, sauce, pepperoni, basil, jalapeños, and sausage.  The staff at J&J’s Pizza was really friendly, helpful, and shared with pride that their sauce and sausage is made in-house!  All homemade! Continue reading

An Evening at the Denton Square

Rebekah and I spent Valentine’s Day night with countless other people, young and old, both couples and friends at the Denton County Courthouse Square. Even though Denton is a city, the small town Texas atmosphere of The Square was perfect for a romantic night, complete with festive white lights strung in the trees around the old Courthouse.

This year, we celebrated the Day of Love with a short Denton day trip. Rebekah and I had just finished a beautiful hike at Ray Roberts Lake State Park. We were getting hungry, and knew we would find some unique places to eat on the Denton Square.

J&J's Pizza on The Square

J&J’s Pizza on The Square

Simply referred to as “The Square,” the old center of Denton includes fun for all ages! Food options abound, from pizza to Thai, and coffee to ice cream. The shopping is amusing, and a bit quirky. There is also a massive used music and book store, Recycled Books that I visited on a previous trip to The Square.

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In Case You Missed It…South Bend

Every couple weeks we’ll be collecting links from past posts grouped together by location; we thought it handy to have everything in on
e convenient location as you plan your upcoming travels. We just finished a short series on South Bend, so here’s your recap:

Studebaker2

Studebaker National Museum: The Studebaker National Museum boasts an impressive collection of cars, traveling exhibits (that includes other automakers), and the largest Presidential Carriage Collection anywhere.

NotreDame3Notre Dame & The Snite Museum of Art: Notre Dame boasts a beautiful campus with majestic architecture in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and Golden Dome on top of the Main Building and the Snite Museum of Art for the art lover.

Fiddler’s Hearth Public House: Based on a recommendation in South Bend, IN we happily enjoyed the fish & chips, Beef Wellington, and cozy atmosphere at The Fiddler’s Hearth.

The College Football Hall of Fame: The College Football Hall of Fame is a fun way to spend a morning or afternoon and is family friendly, educational, and entertaining. It is also great for the football lover and the historian.College Football HOF

J.W. Chen’s Chinese Cuisine: If you’re in South Bend and looking for a delightful Asian restaurant with excellent customer service, we highly recommend J.W. Chen’s Chinese Cuisine.

State of the Blog for July

Five months down and many more to go! In an effort to give you a peek behind the curtain, we are back to share with you something very near and dear to our hearts:  The State of the Blog Report.

Just as a reminder from the first report, we intentionally make our status reports known as a way to share with you and the blogging community what we have found to work and what doesn’t. It is a way for us to see what our baseline is and how we need to improve. We do not claim to know it all, we simply and humbly share with you our results saying this is where we have come from, this is what we are building on, and where we hope to keep growing.

Let’s look at the numbers and see how this blog is doing.

Numbers

This past month was our strongest one yet as we have been blessed with tremendous support from our audience and other sites. We introduced a series on South Bend, IN and then brought the story back to the DFW area to focus on some of our favorite local spots.

fttb - july pageviewsAs you can see from the numbers, we had several really good days that were a result of a spike from some of our articles getting “stumbled” from StumbleUpon. The sessions, users, and pageviews jumped 65%, 69%, and 61% respectively. The pages per session and average session duration both decreased while the bounce rate also decreased. The percentage of new users increased but that was mainly a result of new users finding us from StumbleUpon.

fttb - july sourcesAs for where the readers came from, you will see that StumbleUpon brought in the most with Reddit following closely behind it. We did have a major increase in spam last month which is a downside. Facebook continues to hold steady for us bringing in new and regular viewers.

What Worked…and What Didn’t

This past month was obviously our strongest numbers wise with the extra traffic from Reddit and StumbleUpon.  With some of our articles making it on there, that has helped out a lot. But as you can see, once those sites “dried up”, our traffic decreased back to normal. If we were to take out the rise in traffic from those few days, we would have still had our best month as we have garnered a nice steady flow of traffic which is very encouraging to us all. The Facebook groups continue to be an amazing ally for us in getting pageviews, comments and likes. This is still a highly recommended thing to do for all bloggers looking to gain more followers.

For a more detailed look at StumbleUpon and Reddit, David has provided a brief summary:

This month, two new forms of social media provided many pageviews and new users for our site. Taking over the #1 spot from Facebook is StumbleUpon, with second place going to Reddit. While these venues provided a good boost in our statistics, there are also many rules associated with submitting links to each. Make sure you follow these guidelines, so you are not classified as a spammer.

Taking a look at Reddit, if you only link to your personal blog, you will be flagged as spam. It does NOT matter if you have amazing content. They do not want you promoting your blog/website too much. If you do not play by the rules, they can remove your content, or even completely block your URL address for multiple offenses. In addition, be aware that each subReddit’s has its own rules as well. These guidelines can be even more stringent such as content, format and age of the article. In general, the larger the subReddit, the stricter the rules. Reddit’s definition of spamming may be very different than mine, but when using their service, it is always best to follow the general guidelines. While these sites can be great, there is much to learn before you start posting your content.

Summary

We continue to be humbled and thankful for all of the support we have seen. The Facebook groups have been amazing to us and have seen some growth from Reddit and StumbleUpon. It is great to see how this little blog is picking up momentum and growing. We realize that it is beyond us and our efforts and is due to something greater than us. We do not know what the future holds, but we hope that you enjoy our upcoming series on different cities both local, near, and far.

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