Thanks all. It appears part of the reason was that my first post had not yet been "approved" so that could explain some of it. I am now taken to near the end of a thread when I click on the "comments" link at the top of a thread I'm following.
I still have a question about going to the newest comments on an old long thread -- if I'm not already following it, how can I skip to near the end of the thread without 'paging' through and clicking on "show next 20 replies" over and over? It takes quite a while on some of these topics!