Preserving Memorable Trips by Burton Jones

If you get hooked on traveling, you are going to want to keep a record of your trips. Trust me, the passage of time eventually results in memories fading away or getting very fuzzy.

Preserving Memorable Trips

You might go an entire work week without much of anything significant happening to you. When traveling, the exact opposite is true. Time tends to crunch down. There is something going on practically each and every day whether funny, interesting or troubling. This condensing of experiences is arguably what makes traveling so great, but it lends itself to long-term problems.The primary one is that you tend to forget things over theyears.

I have traveled much of my life and enjoy it to no end. At one point in time, I had a philosophy of saving every penny I could for two years. I would then quit my job, sell all non-essentials and go travel for as long as I possibly could. I got so hooked on this approach that I would rent the cheapest dump I could find, never go out, eat tons of rice and so on all in an attempt to save more money and take a longer trip. While I have subsequently had to grow up a bit and can't travel as much, I can still relive my trips because I did one smart thing during that period. I kept journals of my trips.

On every trip I took, I would drag along a journal with me. At first, the "journal" was a notepad, which took a beating. I soon graduated to a notepad stuck in two big food baggies to protect it from water and whatever else I stuck into my bag. Eventually, I found the perfect answer in Nomad Travel Journals, which come in a protective case. During a lull in my daily travels, I would take a few minutes to jot down what I had been doing. I would put narratives of where I had been, what I had seen and my impressions. Looking back, I can tell you I also worked hard on my artistic doodling career, but only now realize I had no talent. Regardless, I also used journal to convert various scraps of paper with names, phone numbers and emails into one location. Because I had half a brain in this regard, I know correspond with friends by email every week regardless of the fact they are in Denmark, Thailand, Cambodia, Holland, Sweden, Costa Rica and Brazil.

Perhaps the greatest thing about maintaining a travel journal is you really preserve the experience. Yes, videos and photos are nice, but they don't tell you what you were thinking, your state of mind and so on. I love to read books, but no writer has been able to come up with a masterpiece that beats my travel journals. If you are going to be traveling, I highly recommend you take along a travel journal of some sort. Get one in a case to protect it from the elements. It will make for great reading later on and you will not lose the contact information for all those cool people you met on the road.

About the author: Burton Jones is with TravelYeti.com