I know it doesn’t quite feel like summer here, but our annual Road Trip is on the horizon.  Though we have some fun to look forward to when Mary, Diana and Kim arrive next week for a few days and another little European jaunt the following weekend as well, I’m thinking it’s time I started getting my road trip journal together.

In preparation and to provide a little motivation, I pulled my travel journals from the shelf and stuffed them into a wicker hamper, with the intention of looking through them in the next few days to recall what works and what doesn’t.

I used to buy a sketchbook and use it as is, so many of my journals have black covers.  Some are covered with stickers and many have tags tied to the coil binding so that I can easily identify them.  These days I create my own journals using a variety of paper and “stuff” which I bind using my cinch binder, so I can a bit more flexible about the size and format.

I like to use a spring binding so that I can attach a souvenir or two;  in this case a tin of “holy dirt” from a shrine in New Mexico.

In some places it’s easy to find “journal bling” in the form of trashy trinkets and little charms to tie on the spring.  Other places, it’s harder to find these things.

So beer has to be drunk…

unless the wine is good, of course!

Sometimes, the perfect cover is found, as happened in Quebec a couple of years ago, but usually, I am content with stickers.

I always use our baggage tags as “bookmarks”, sticking them in to mark the landing spots.

This year’s road trip will involve four such landings and looks like it’s going to be a whole lot of fun.  I’d better prepare plenty of pages.