Journaling Journeys: Capturing Family Vacation Memories

By Audry Fryer

It was late 1980-something and I was a miserable teen being dragged along the longest car trip of my life. We lived in Pennsylvania, about an hour outside Philadelphia, and we were heading due South on a family vacation to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Every vacation prior to this trip had been spent at the Jersey Shore and that trip of two hours or more with traffic felt long enough. Making everything worse, I was wedged in the middle seat between my two younger brothers to prevent anymore elbowing fights. My parents had mapped out a route (Yes, with a trip ticket from AAA. No GPS back then.) which meandered on and off Interstate 95 tripling our travel time. Despite it all, my mother came prepared with snacks, games and most significantly, a blank journal to record our adventures.

That journal and the ones that followed of trips to Florida, Hawaii and New England have become more than simply pages, but treasure troves of memories. Sure, there’s three ring bound albums of faded pictures of our travels and my youth. And, they do a very nice job of helping me to remember the good times. But they don’t depict everything that happened in between and the people we were at the time of the trip. That’s the beauty of the travel journal, to capture and to record a slice of your life. In it, we’d top each page with the date, jot down the time and then, add our thoughts and stories. Sometimes we’d draw a picture or record the price of gas because my Dad thought it was important.

The tradition of keeping a travel journal continues with my own family as I share the joys of capturing these treasured memories with my three children. Two summers ago, we took an extended family vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with my parents and my two brothers’ and their families. I can tell you that it was a lively trip with seven children under the age of ten and one very pregnant sister-in-law. This morning, I looked over the journal I kept from that trip and relived it all again. My children added pictures and short blurbs. They’ve grown since so it was so cute to see their misspellings and simple drawings. From the highs to the troubles we encountered to some details I had forgotten, it was all there as a reference if we should return and, best of all, as a way to connect us to our past adventures.

Tips for keeping a family travel journal:

• Choose a journal that’s light and compact enough to tote along with you wherever you wander on your trip. Plus, a choose one with a cover you like so you’ll want to write in it.
• Pack several pens because they get lost easily. (Colorful pens are a fun way to add flair!) 
• Remember to encourage everyone in your family to add entries in all forms, written or drawn.
• When the trip is over, store it where you can find it again to relive all your memories.

About Audry Fryer:

Audry Fryer is a novelist, blogger, domestic diva and official keeper of her family’s travel journals.  She wrote her first novel, Going Barefoot in Greener Grass, while her twins were napping and her oldest was at pre-school. Audry has a second novel, Secrets, Lies and Apple Pies available for Kindle and Nook. And, she is feverishly working to complete her third novel before her children have off for summer vacation. Audry lives on a quiet, country road overlooking a pond with her John Deere fanatic husband, her Lego-maniac son, her Southern Belle at heart twin daughter, her “scientist” twin son, a very furry dog and two tree frogs. Aside from writing, her typical day consists of bucket-loads of coffee, living the domestic diva lifestyle (also known as cleaning, mountains of laundry, etc.), pretending to exercise by wearing yoga pants and “Mom’s Mini Van Shuttle”.

Website: Audry Fryer Novels www.audryfryer.com  “Novels with Humor and Heart”

Blog: All Things Audry  http://allthingsaudry.blogspot.com/ “Entertaining Feel-Good Posts and Fascinating Guest Authors”

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