Thank you for making my FREE Kindle days a success!!

Thank you all for making my FREE Kindle days a smashing success!  During the three days Black Diamonds was offered for FREE there were 7,705 downloads.  That means I was able to introduce my books and writing to almost 8,000 readers.  And what is even more amazing is that in the 12 hours after the book went back to $2.99, I sold 40 copies of Black Diamonds.

Last week I shared with you some pictures on Facebook and said I would tell you where and what they are in this blog.

This picture was posted March 5th.  Larry French got it right, this is Alaska.  We are inside Denali National Park with Denali, or Mt. McKinley, behind us.  Denali is the highest mountain peak in the US with an elevation of 20,320 feet.

 This picture was posted March 5th.  Lyn Ynaz guessed it to be "a frozen statue commemorating the magnificence of an ice cold martini".  Pretty close, Lyn.  This is a martini glass made from ice.  It was taken inside the Ice House at Chena Hot Springs outside Fairbanks.  Once the martini glass is formed it is broken off the hunk of ice at the base.  They actually serve martinis in these glasses.  Obviously you can't take them home as a souvenir!

This picture was posted March 6th.  Cathy Wheeler was the first to respond and I know she knew, she just didn't want to spoil it for others.  Kim Sieckmann guessed correctly, they are sorghum stalks and we are at the Sorghum Festival in Blairsville, GA.

 This picture was posted March 7th.  John Ben "Benny" Benson Jr. was the Aleut boy who designed the flag of Alaska.  Benny was 13 when he won a contest in 1927 to design the flag for the territory of Alaska that became a state in 1959.

This picture was posted March 8th.  Alysia Hargus guessed correctly.  Commonly called the Alaska pipeline, a term that technically applies only to the 800 miles of pipeline with the diameter of 48 inches that conveys oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez.  The pipeline was built between 1974 and 1977 after the 1973 oil crisis.  Building the pipeline had to address a wide range of difficulties, mainly from the extreme cold and the difficult and isolated terrain.  The construction of the pipeline was one of the first large-scale projects to deal with problems caused by permafrost and special construction techniques had to be developed to cope with the frozen ground.  The first barrel of oil traveled through the pipeline in 1977 and full-scale production began by the end of the year.

This picture was posted March 8th.  Daniel Kerr guessed correctly.  This is called a pig, an acronym for "pipeline inspection gauges".  They are periodically inserted into pipelines by operators to perform numerous and increasingly sophisticated tasks.  There are two basic types, mechanical and instrument.  This is a mechanical pig and the most frequently used.  It does everything from sweep trash out of the pipeline to scrape waxy buildup off its walls.