Who keeps a journal when they go to the BWCA? I started doing it on my first trip and it is really fun to go back and read what happened on trips. I take some time and either write in it sitting by the fire in the early evening or in the tent just before going to bed. One of these days I will write some trip reports and the journal will prove very valuable!

Mike

I'd like to start! I just added this to my camping wish list on Amazon the other day:

Anyone have experience with Rite in the Rain notebooks?

Write in the rain? My mom had suggested at one time to come in out of the rain and I have been doing that ever since.

Just get a couple $1.99 small spiral notebooks and a couple of black pens.

On my first solo backpacking trip to isle royale they gave me a one page survey to fill out with a teeny tiny pencil. I felt compelled to express myself via the written word and filled both sides with infinitely small writing. Later I transcribed the writing and along with various pics made a scrapbook of sorts. This process continued with other various trips and friends and family were always eager to review what had taken place.

Eventually however, the books began to accumulate and take up to much room plus the entire process was expensive and labor intensive. Now I just do it digitally.......much easier and much better. Plus if someone wants to check it out I don't have to physically hand them a book and then remember to get it back.

What I have found is that the details of trips would be forgotten without the written reference material. I can easily "re-live" a trip I took 20 years ago by journaling and adding the pics. Otherwise I might only remember having gone and that it was "a good time".

Digitally I use blogspot which is certainly easy enough to navigate. Check it out, it might be for you.
Mastertangler

I write a journal nearly every year. The only times I've missed is when I've forgotten a notebook. I simply bring a smaller standard notebook in a zip lock bag and I've never had a problem. I see no reason to spend $6.00 on a notebook when one for 79 cents works fine.

The interesting part of my journaling is that once I get home, I never read what I have written. I guess someday I'll sit back in the recliner, read my journal and take several walks down memory lane.

I have been keeping one. I record the days events when we settle in camp for the evening. I find it excellent for jogging my memory months later.

Hex

My wife does an excellent job of keeping one. She uses the time just before falling asleep to unwind and relive the days events. It's a great tool I use when I finally get around to posting trip reports as well.

Always keep a journal. It might be for the BW or a fishing trip to Canada or how I caught walleyes on the Columbia river. I use a small cheap note book. I do use a pen also, pencils tend to fade with time.

I have a wilderness trip journal (actually a series of them) that go back to 1978 when I was 16. Great for keeping the mind honest, and fun to see how perspectives change with time.

Every trip. It has been enjoyable going back over my notes to see how far I have come and what has changed.

I usually bring a small notebook. Then I start writing a little, the first day or two. And then I sluff off & end up not writing anything the rest of the time. I come home with maybe one page of scribbled notes, & then I don't know if I should just rip out that page and toss it and have a clean notebook, or what.

I've kept a journal on every trip. Dates, routes, who went. I keep track of time for routes for future reference or sharing. Notes about portage's, campsites, fishing spots. Not much fluff in my journal, just meat and potatoe kind of stuff. I do my writing by headlamp right before sleep.

Yes, I do it ever since I started; it makes it much easier to recall details. I write a lot when solo, not so much when not.

Usually when I climb into the hammock and am settled I will make an audio recording about the day's events. The sound of heavy rain and hail hitting the tarp on one trip is just one advantage of the audio recording over writing it down. I have a library of recordings done on various trips that make good listening when on the road.

bri: "I'd like to start! I just added this to my camping wish list on Amazon the other day:

Anyone have experience with Rite in the Rain notebooks? "

Yes, I used to use those for field work. They're great if you use pencil or the rite-in-rain pens. Really do work fine in wet conditions. For the BW though, I just use regular paper and wait until I'm in the tent to make notes if it's raining.

I started an "Adventure Journal" 10 years ago when I made my first trip. It's been on just about every camping outing since and contains lots of inane facts and observations from each day on the trail, water, train, or car. Pretty much never write in it at home. If I ever get the time I might transcribe both books (on Vol. 2 now) to a blog or some other digital form.

Vol. 1 is a hard back journal, regular paper, some pages missing from an earlier life. Vol. 2 is a Rite-in-the-Rain brand field journal & I use a space pen to write in it. It also pretty much never leaves the tent unless I'm about to go write in it sitting in a chair or something. Overkill, yes, but I see this as an expense that only comes up every few years and a couple extra bucks are just crumbs in the great scheme of things.

When solo I keep a journal, there are so many things I forget when I'm on my own that I need to write experiences down. When with people (usually my kids) they take enough pictures, and we talk all day that it hasn't been necessary to write things down. Perhaps as I get older and my mind starts to go I will have to journal all the time :)

I've often kept a journal but it varies a bit from trip to trip.

Rite in the Rain paper and notebooks are very commonly used among geologists. And if our notes get washed away its more than losing some thoughts, the work is simply lost. Good stuff.

One of the best things I started doing six or seven years ago. By the end of the trip I can't remember what happened exactly when or where and it's a big help if a write a trip report for BWCA.com . So to take 5 minutes at the end of the day to record whatever happened and to jot down ideas as they occur has been priceless. It helps to remind me what I need to buy or change for next year's trip.

I also keep the trip menu in the journal and a few other odds and ends that make the trip much smoother. I avoid the spiral bound ones because the metal can get crushed, but only spend a dollar or two on whatever I buy.

I keep one. I enjoy doing it, but it's mostly fun to go back and read about old trips while I'm in.

Also have in there lists of EP's, lakes visited etc and keep a running list of all the trips. Always fun to add stuff to it while on a trip.

I take a micro cassette recorder and each night I do a review of the day next to the fire. Or under a tarp if it is raining. Sometimes you can hear the rain or thunder or the wind blowing or even the loons going off in the background or the fire crackling. Then at the end my partner will chip in with any details I might have missed.

I always kept a journal on every single trip, in a small spiral notebook, in pen. I carried them in my waist pack, and would pull them out when I wanted to make note of something, or later on I would sit on a warm rock or on my camp stool and write. Early in the morning as I had my first cup of coffee and watched the mist rise over the lake, I would be alternating between photographing and writing in the little book! I still have most of the originals tucked away, which is silly, since they have long since been transcribed. Something for the children to throw away once I am gone.

When we got home, the notes from the journal would be fleshed out to make a narrative for the trip, and that would be combined with several hundred photos into a photo album (up until about 2011 when I finally got smart enough to realize that doing a real "book" online with Snapfish made a much better memory book to keep.) Now all of our vacations are memorialized with a book.

Since we take a Grandchild Vacation with each of our two grandchildren every summer (they receive their own copy), and we usually do some sort of vacation on our own as well, plus the many MSU Football Bowl Game trips, etc., the book shelves are now full of that type of photo book as well as the albums.

And yes, we do often take one out and look at it. :-) Just recently we pulled out the book from our "Road Trip" last spring when we visited with Jerry and Gracie Vandiver in Nashville. It was so neat to see the photos and relive the adventures we had then. The books from the canoe trips are the same. Now that we are not doing the wilderness trips anymore, it occasionally makes me sad to see them, but it also sometimes brings back memories that are nothing short of golden.

Did my first journal last trip where I had to launch the search and rescue.
I documented my trip up to that point. When the SAR happened, I documented everything down like I was on one of my regular emergencies.
Then I lost my only pen for the last day of my trip.

I have a journal from every canoe and backpacking trip since 1983. I haven’t seen the old ones as they are packed in an airtight container in our shed. It’s what I use for trip reports.

I do.

Some years are more coherent than others, as am I.

We do. We have a genuine leather journal with parchment that's super cool. I then write a high-level overview of the day, and each person on the trip writes their own memories from each day. We do this in the tent before bed so that we capture all the little details of the trip.

Jackfish: "I write a journal nearly every year. The only times I've missed is when I've forgotten a notebook. I simply bring a smaller standard notebook in a zip lock bag and I've never had a problem. I see no reason to spend $6.00 on a notebook when one for 79 cents works fine.


The interesting part of my journaling is that once I get home, I never read what I have written. I guess someday I'll sit back in the recliner, read my journal and take several walks down memory lane."

This is why we bought a $30 genuine leather journal. It's insanely durable and we bring it every year to write in. It doubles as fantastic reading material to sift through past years during hot afternoons in a hammock.

I love that idea of a real journal! Wish I had thought of that 40 years ago!!