Camp Creek Press

 
When we travel, the boys each get

• a fresh, new, smallish journal (one we expect they will nearly fill by the end of the trip)
• a pencil holder, preferably large with a zipper
• two regular pencils, a pencil sharpener (that keeps the shavings inside!), and soft white eraser
• a set of colored pencils
  
• pens (Pilot or Sharpie, in different colors)
• safety scissors
  
• glue stick
  

We have experimented with bringing rolls of tape, but it gets all linty and the boys end up using it to tape their entire heads or their arms or the car windows. Or all three. We've also experimented with bringing mini-staplers, but they jam so often that I spend all my time digging at them and we end up with little colored staples stuck in the floor.

The white erasers are far superior to pink or yellow rubber erasers at erasing thoroughly without making a mess. The boys are also fond of the traditional pencil-top erasers; if those are soft and new, they work well.

The trip journal serves many purposes.

It's the best, cheapest souvenir of any vacation. You can't look at that plastic back-scratcher and remember when your brother accidentally pulled the curtain rod off the wall at the Holiday Inn while your mother was changing into her bathing suit, but your childish HA HA scratching out of the story (complete with line drawing of mom's face) will forever dredge up that pearl of a memory, whole and complete.

It's something to do, either in the car or in the tent/camper/hotel room. When you're booorrrrrred, Mom can suggest you work on your journal. Every place we go, the boys are alert for free brochures and newspapers that they can cut up and glue into their journals later. This keeps their reflexes sharp. Sometimes they are barely in the front door before they are fighting each other to snatch up the free brochure on the counter, causing the sleepy person behind the desk to startle and shrink back in .. admiration for their enthusiasm, I'm sure.

They write and draw in their journals, paste in postcards and stickers, copy maps, play games, etc. For this latest trip, I sprang for Moleskine journals for each boy. The Moleskines are great for trip journals because they have a pocket in the back to hold random ticket stubs, postcards, etc. You can also just glue an envelope onto the last page of any old journal to provide a catch-all.

There are always blank pages at the end of their journals when the trip is over. I print out their favorite photos from the trip and they glue those in the back, usually adding their own captions.

The journals end up being a very truthful representation of their trip -- with a focus on what was important to them (meals) and not what was important to me (once-in-a-lifetime shared experiences). At one point during this trip I walked out of the laundromat at Yellowstone National Park wearing our hamper on my head, to the great amusement of the boys, who ran ahead of me to take pictures of this momentous event. An amused woman passing by said, "Ah, special vacation memories!" That's right. The things the boys will remember most about this trip were the pancakes we had at the Old Mill Inn and when I wore the hamper on my head. And both of those memories are in their journals.