Barefoot Movie Giveaway Winner; Random Shots of Beauty (Extended Audience Participation Edition!)

Our main order of business is to give a barefoot video away – but first we’ll get through some end-of-weekend randomness.

For our Random Shot of Beauty, I could have very easily gone with a glimpse of another 80-degree November weekend that we enjoyed today … but doing that for two weeks in a row kind of seems like rubbing it in.  Instead, I’ll reach back a few weeks to our family’s road trip to Zion National Park.  Since I couldn’t pick just one to choose from, you’re getting an extended edition of RSOB – starting with this one:

(click to enlarge any of these)

A stately Joshua tree, as seen in the Mojave desert of southern California.  Would you believe me if I said I used to live right down the road from here?  Sometimes I can hardly believe it myself.

Driving through the desert, it often seems like you’re in the middle of nowhere – but that’s not entirely true.  In fact, sometimes if you wonder where you are, you only need to look down at the road you’re on:

And you’ll find that you’re right here, of course.

This next one is more of a Random Shot of Randomness … and it’s also a chance for some audience participation.  Approximately 20 miles outside of Zion National Park is an odd structure that will catch your eye:

It looks somewhat strange - and if you pull up closer, the scene becomes even more bizarre:

Basically what you’ve got here is an old telephone pole leaning into a dead tree stump … and the entire structure is covered top to bottom with discarded shoes.  Running shoes, work shoes, women’s boots, dress shoes, kids shoes – pretty much every kind of footwear you can think of is represented.

I wish I could tell you more about it, but I honestly have no idea what the explanation is here.  But it HAS to have a cool story behind it, wouldn’t you think? 

So let’s see if I can harness the power of the Internet for something tangible: if any readers happen to know the story of this community shoe mural, I’d love to hear it, and I might even publish it to share with everyone else.  The challenge has been issued!   Somebody impress me, please – and who knows, maybe there’s a little something in it for you if you do.

[*UPDATED: Wow, that was fast!  This post was up for less than 2 hours before someone sent an answer - see the comments section for details.]

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OK then – it’s time to announce the winner of the Barefoot Running Movie giveaway contest.  Louisiana Leah, e-mail me your contact info – you’ve won!  Thanks very much to everybody else who entered!

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