I just finished a travel journal, ran out of pages, and stacked it up with ten others. A person who writes for fun cannot just do it a little bit..........it is a compulsion.
My travel journaling began when I married Randy, ten years ago, and got a mate with my same itchy feet and love of history. We were off and away, any time school was out. No historical location, beach, winery, or oddity goes unvisited when we're "on the road." We've spent afternoons traipsing through cemeteries, battlefields, hiked city streets, walked beaches, and climbed lighthouse steps. As we go along, for sure, I don't want to forget where we've been or what we've seen!
I collect ticket stubs, post cards and brochures, paste them into journals, and write about what we see, in between the pasted-on items. Once I began this, I couldn't control my need to tell MORE about what we'd seen, details of each event, people we'd met, food we'd enjoyed, places we'd stayed, and interesting facts we'd learned about the sights we'd visited.
Randy and I travel hit or miss. We used to get in the car and let the driver choose the direction. That worked for awhile, but we drove all over Alabama once: north, south, north, south, and wasted some gas, before we decided that a better plan was to AIM in one direction, and then stop along the way to see what we could see. Getting off the major highways is what we do best. There are all kinds of fun things to see off the interstates! Choose an exit, get off, and just see what I mean!
For ten years, that is what we've done. We have a wall map of the United States on which we've marked the routes we've covered. Colored lines with dates cover most of this map. Dotted lines mark cruise routes. Anything unmarked is saved for retirement. We've gone east, west, north and south. We've retraced routes to beaches many times, revisited cities and sites we didn't get enough of the first time, and gotten off the beaten path to discover little-known (but oughta-be) places. (Who ELSE liked the "World's Largest Frying Pan" in North Carolina enough to go back a second time?)
This is not to tell of the places we've been, but to explain my travel journals. Once I started writing about each day's events, I was hooked on keeping notes for posterity. The books piled up, one upon the other. Sometimes we get one out to look up the name of a restaurant or town that we've forgotten. On a quiet day I will open one and relive a special vacation or short jaunt, and enjoy reading what we did and what I thought about a particular day.
Randy and I pack lightly for our trips, but I carry my "journal bag" on the back seat. It's a small gray sack holding markers, scissors, glue stick, pencils and pens. I gather things to put into my journal as we go along. I used to write the text out, longhand, but recently I've taken to recording the days by blog each night. I began to share my travel blog with friends and relatives.
When a trip is over, I print the blog, paste the writings and memorabilia into a blank book, and that journey is "saved" for us to enjoy again later.
We take joy in having our travel history written for perpetuity. We know that as long as one of us is alive, the remaining one will keep reading them, re-enjoying trips by heart. Then they will be handed-down to my adult children.
Today I played catch-up: I was months behind in the pasting process. I glued in two trips this afternoon, filled a trash basket with leftover brochure scraps, and still have a weekend and another vacation to finish up before we start out on our next trip.
Is this a chore? Not on a bet. Today I RE-travelled to Nashville, attended, by memory, the Grand Ol Opry at the Ryman Auditorium, and recalled a lovely dinner and people we'd met. It was all vivid in my mind as I pasted my writings, post cards and photos on those pages.
Travel Journaling is joyous writing. While personal journals are generally meant for only the writer's eyes, I share my travel journal because I've always been the kind of person who wants to SHARE with others when I've found something grand. Frankly, I wish I could do travel writing for a living. What a combination of my two favorite activities that would be!
My minimalist children might want to dispose of my journals some day. Before they do that, I would hope that they'd look at that map of the United States, figure out the colored lines criss-crossing our marvelous country, read them, picture the places in their minds, and set out on their own journies and adventures.
The passion for travel might be the best inheritance I leave to them, and while it takes no space in a suitcase, it's the most important thing to take along!
copyright: KP Gillenwater
