30Smoke: "It is fun reading your reports. I am at a crossroads with my health and need to make good decisions or things could go bad. The thought of not being able to go to Yellowstone or the BWCAW have been motivating me to eat better and exercise hoping to keep doing the things I enjoy, but enough about me.
I am impressed that you keep track not only of meals, but time in your log. I try to jot notes at the end of each day if I can stay awake long enough. However, recording breakfast for me would be quite easy - "pancakes today!" - but only while tripping.
I hope you can keep catching up on your reports as they will be a permanent record for your family - maybe consider printing them out and at least a three ring binder, if not binding in a book. It is great to look back at our memories, but you are still making memories with your trips and the biggest thing is to keep finding something to keep going.
so please Keep on Keepin on and sharing your trips. What I have found great is your grit and keepin on!
Take care and may God bless you.
Smoke"
Thank you 30Smoke. I read your reports, too, and I enjoy them. Keep doing them, please. And keep up with your health efforts, too. :-)
As to the journaling: I had a small waist pack always with me. (after my first trip when I found I had forgotten things so quickly.) At a portage, as soon as we would arrive at a campsite, right after breakfast, etc. I would pull out my little 3x4 spiral notebook and my pen and make very short notes. Sometimes, as in the trip report I am working on now, I would actually sit on my camp stool or on a rock and write more philosophical things. But mainly I wanted, for some reason, to remember what we ate (always planning for another trip), what we did, and what the weather was like. This evolved and changed: there are a few trips that I didn't make much note of the food, but noting the time and the temp became a habit. It just took a minute. Spartan1 carried the thermometer and he would usually announce the temp at some point if I didn't ask. He had the watch, too, as his was more water resistant than mine. When we would push off each morning he would announce the time. At some point I'd just jot it down.
Some of this detail is totally unnecessary, of course, but I enjoyed knowing it. Most people don't remember the days of "Space Food Sticks" and "Tang" and those details sometimes hit a chord with others who do. I am not a person who lives in the past, but sometimes a memory is a fun thing, too.
As to your other comment, there was almost always a "book". The book from our first trip in 1971 (Namakan Loop in Canada) was a small scrapbook that I purchased in Ely after the trip, and it has about 20 photos and a couple pages of notes. Then I didn't do books for the next eight trips. Those are the trips that I am doing now: '73, '74, '77, '78, '80, '82, '85. A couple of years ago I did a trip report on the '85 Basswood Trip. All of our trips after '85 have either a big, bulky photo album with hundreds of photos, or (since 2011) a real book that I made on Snapfish with all of the narrative and photos. Much easier to store than a photo album, less money, and more fun to make. The advent of digital photography helped, and handling prints is a thing of the past, as we all know. But I didn't take a digital SLR until 2004.
As a pandemic project, to keep my mind occupied during this very long year of isolation, I decided that the early trips "needed a book". So far I have made two books called "Going Back In Time". The first one included the '82 and '73 canoe trips, and then Volume 2 had '80, '77, and '74. (The next one will be '78, '85, and '88) Once I had the books I realized how easy it now is to just transcribe the narrative to the Trip Report format and all of the photos (scanned) were now in a folder.
So I started doing the trip reports. Much quicker now than it used to be, as in my early trip reports I had to scan my photos into Photobucket and then transfer them. I was pleased when the site here made it possible to just add the photos to the reports. I am working now on a trip report from 1977's Quetico trip and that one should be online in a day or two. The only part I hate is the scanning, as it is very tedious.
I will never get all of the trip books online. And that is just as well, as it would be overkill. But perhaps once I am done with the early ones that don't have their book I'll try one of two of the favorites from the '90's and '00's.
The next problem is that if we ever have to downsize (again) I will need storage for half a lifetime's vacation books. Books that no one other than us will ever want to read, or to keep. There are also Snapfish books from all of our cruises, and from every one of our annual "grandchild vacations" with each of our two grandchildren, as well as a big group of Spartan Football Bowl Game trips.
Someone told me once that I should have been a photojournalist instead of a music teacher. They probably had a point.
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