Too Good to Last, the New Savanna Hit Streak is Over

Back at the end of January 2017 I’d noticed that traffic was up, with some days topping 3K or 4K. On August 11 New Savanna got 11,109 hits and on August 20 hits seemed to be averaging well over 4K per day since then. And then there was a drop. 
Was it an end of summer slump or more permanent?
It appears to be more permanent. I’ve been logging daily hits for the last month. We’ve averaged 834 hits per day over the last 30 days, with only five days over 1000; the highest was 1369. This is how traffic looks over the life of the blog:

The six-month high period is obvious and over there at the right you can see the drop. I expect there will be a visible leveling-off in the graph in a couple of month.
But what was that six-month run about?