Quiet Day @ Trinidad Lake SP … and the Research Continues

Saturday, 6 June 2015
Carpios Ridge Campground — Trinidad Lake State Park, Colorado
Temps: Hi 83F (28C) / Lo 52F (11C)

First Let’s Have Some Fun.

A pitch dark site; quiet too … after our late-arriving neighbors finished setting up in the dark; only the occasional strong gust rocking the Phaeton; no thunderstorms … no weather alerts … a tiny bit of rain pitter-pattering on the roof.  Yup, had a good night’s rest at Trinidad Lake State Park.

Wake up came with the reminder that I needed to deal with the plagiarism/copyright infringement issue.  Sigh!  Shelving plans to go hiking, I sat down at the computer to get started with researching what actions I needed to take, and solutions that would keep me blogging.  At least it was still quite chilly outside, so I didn’t feel too bad about being at my desk.

Fisher's Peak, a basalt-capped mesa, is thought to have been formed by horizontal lava
flows over a million years ago.  The 9,600-foot high (2,925m) mesa looms over the reservoir.

Around 10:00a, to give my brain a break and walk off some of my frustration, Mui and I set off to stroll the Park View Trail.  Designed to be ADA compliant, the paved trail circles the perimeter of the campground — about .6 miles (~ 1 km).  It was an easy stroll amongst piñon and juniper trees, with lake views and some native artifacts to entertain us.

Overlooks like this one provide information about the area and lake views as well.

Wagon Train on the Santa Fe Trail.
A portion of the trail — an international route of commerce between
New Mexico and Missouri from 1821 to 1880 — crossed the Purgatoire Valley …

… seen from the ridge where we get another look at Lake Trinidad, and the dam in the distance.

I like that instead of a straight wall, there is an undulating one that sort of mimics the ridgeline.

Mui, Where’s the choir you’re preaching to?
interpretive programs on topics such as wildlife, Native Americans, and the history of
the area are presented here periodically; but no programs are schedule while we are here.

A horno is an outdoor oven.  They were introduced to the area by Spanish settlers.
I read that this horno is functional; I wonder if they use it for demonstrations?

The horno was an important part of Southwestern traditions and culture.
A fire built inside it in the morning would be used to cook all day long.  And because
it was outside, the interior of the house stayed cool during the hot summer months.

Mysterious rock rings like the one above have puzzled archeologists since the first one was
discovered.  thought to have been used to hold down the hide of a teepee, it is now believed
that they may actually be the foundations of rock and brush structures over 1,000 years old.
Perhaps the structures at the Carpios Ridge site were constructed on a traditional…

… American Indian trade route.  The Santa Fe Trail, which encouraged westward
expansion, passed within a mile of this site and likely followed an ancient route.

At one point, we detoured off the path to take another trail — Carpios Cove; .5 miles (.8 km).  This trail led us down to the lake level.  Not a difficult walk at all, but it did have a slight grade to it and we had to watch our steps to make sure we didn’t trip over rocks and tree roots.  To be honest, the views were more impressive from the ridgeline, so we didn’t dally long.

Nice, but the view is more impressive from the ridgeline.  Still …

Penstemon	Wild Buckwheat

Scarlet Globe Mallow	Yellow Salsify	Claret Cup

… we enjoy all the colorful flora along the Carpios Cove Trail,
including this Prickly Pear with the blooms yet to open.

Back up on the ridgeline, we returned to the coach.  The cool temps were gone; replaced by the mid-day heat.  Sure, there was no humidity (yay), but it was hot nonetheless.  Mui fixed us a quick lunch, and then I was back to my desk to keep working on the blog theft issue.

Working the Theft!

Because that’s what it is no matter what fancy words are used to describe the re-posting of my blog posts without my permission.

I’m still not sure what I am going to do with the blogs going forward.  I changed some settings this morning, including making the blogs private.  Next I went to the offending blog.  I hated to have to click around — after all, that’s what the thief is after … clicks.  Unfortunately, I had no choice if I wanted to collect proof.  Just looking through some of the archives in the thief’s blog, in five minutes I found at least 10 of my posts.  I’m sure there are more, but I was so disgusted that I stopped … I had enough proof for Google. 

After collecting a bunch of URLs from the offending blog, I matched them up with URLs for the same posts in the Phaeton Journeys blog, and completed the DMCA violation form and submitted it to Google.  In the meantime, I heard back from an expert on Google’s Blogger forum that I probably needed to keep the blogs active so Google could find them to verify my claim.  Which is why I am back to posting on the blog.  If I have to keep them public for now, I might as well keep posting.

Since all of the stolen posts were from Phaeton’s Journeys, I was happy I didn’t have to worry about Two to Travel.  Hah!  My happiness was short-lived.

Corresponding with Steve (of Gone By RV fame), he mentioned he’d come across a blog with some of my posts.  Turns out it was a different blog entirely — thanks Steve, for sending me the link.  A little digging uncovered numerous posts — once again lifted in their entirety … text and pictures and all.  They were all from Two to Travel.

This time I noticed that the links in the posts were all dead.  Checking the first blog, I found the links in those posts were also inactive.  Makes sense — the thieves are not out to promote me, but rather their own blogs for whatever stupid reasons that are important to them.

Anyway, I went through the tedious process of checking the blog archives, and collected links for another DMCA violation report.  I even notified another blog owner — easily found through his photo watermark and blog title — that his posts were also stolen.  Haven’t filed the second DMCA violation report yet.  I was too disgusted to keep working on it.  Once we’re settled at the next campground, I’ll revisit the whole fiasco.

The sad thing is that there is no surefire way of stopping these thefts if I want to blog publicly.  At one time, nefarious bloggers used to copy and paste content from a blog to their own — try it, and you will see how easy it is to do.  But now they have technology on their side — something referred to as scraping.  Search the web and you’ll find a ton of information on this.  And what makes it worse is that there are bloggers out there writing about how to scrape efficiently.  It’s an industry in and of itself.  IDIOTS!

Tomorrow I plan to take the entire day off and enjoy some sightseeing in the area.

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