This is the trip of a lifetime, it deserves to be cataloged, documented, and remembered.
I love to document – professionally and creatively
During the planning stages of this 3 month road trip, Kyle often times asked me what I was most excited for. Of course there were family, friends, cities, and National Parks on my list, something else that really, really excited me was the creative freedom and endless possibilities to share and preserve these memories
NOW – these are the ways I’ve been capturing and recording memories so far during the first 2 weeks of our trip!
1 | Daily Journal
This is the place where I jot down our daily itinerary and whatever highlights, thoughts, feelings, and memories I might want to refer to later. While I would love this to be a beautiful, Instagrammable bullet journal, for now, it really is just chicken scratch, imperfect, and sloppy, but it gets the job done
I have started to include different lists here and there to expand on and revisit throughout our trip e.g. list of favorites and list of essentials
Blue Possibility Journal by Artist’s Loft linked here
2 | Instagram
Sharing life day to day while on the road, from our most recent brewery stop to our current National Park. I’ve been sharing both in my stories and on my feed in my personal Instagram and have made occasional posts about my current ebook read on my Bookstagram account
3 | Tik Tok
I’m still very much trying to figure this platform out. I don’t know that short form video is for me, but I’m giving it a go. Haven’t gone viral yet, but it could happen
4 | Passport To Your National Parks®
A classic for any lover of the National Parks. A handy travel companion that is functional and educational with color-coded regional maps and space for cancellations and commemorative stamps. The website description says it all, “The Passport Classic Edition is an ideal, economical, and portable way to preserve your fondest memories of America’s national parks.”
Passport can be found here
5 | Meryn Made Blogs
I did a fair amount of sharing while preparing for this trip including updates to our itinerary (most recent linked here) as well as my Road Trip TBR (linked here) and my personal To Buy List (here)
My plan is to share updates on the blog every 1 to 2 weeks that are a quick, basic overview of our itinerary with a handful of pictures – primarily to share on Facebook. GART update 1 can be found here
LATER – ideas or products I want to explore to commemorate this epic road trip!
6 | Postcards
While we plan to send out postcards to friends and family throughout the trip, I am also collecting a ton of postcards for future projects. One of my ideas is to bind them with binder rings (see below). Given the ring system, we could add in our own photos and journaling cards to further personalize the keepsake!
I’ve made a point to collect both cheap gas station postcards as well as really nice, and honestly expensive, postcards that are like mini pieces of art that could one day make a epic gallery wall installation – see pinterest inspo below
7 | Photo Books
To commemorate a 10 day, European vacation, I made a customizable photo book from Mixbook – exact style linked here, see below. Tip: you can almost always find a 50% coupon somewhere on the internet
I’m highly considering starting on a very simple, photo only book near the end of our trip so that we have it to share with friends and family right when we get home
After our trip, I’ll start in on a more in depth and comprehensive photo book which I hope will be both beautiful and a keepsake for our memories, but also semi-educational with facts about each National Park we visited
8 | Still Novel Art Prints
I stumbled upon Still Novel on, where else, but Instagram and love the idea of combining both an image with text highlighting facts about one specific city or state
According to their website, Still Novel prints “celebrate the destination and the journey. Our 16×20 Signature Travel Print tells the story of a trip and details that made it memorable”
9 | National Park Explorer’s Map
I have Tik Tok to thank for exposing me to this product and the husband and wife duo that run this business! The National Park Explorer’s Map is a magnetic map to display tokens of the parks you’ve visited. I like this as an alterative to the mass marketed scratch off maps as this system allows flexibility as new parks as added or upgraded to National Park status
10 | Mixed Media Scrapbook
I am the proud owner of this vintage, 1980s America’s Wonderlands full color book that I bought second hand for less than $30. My edition definitely has some wear and tear, but I think that gives it charm. Initially when I bought it, I thought I would be taking it into each park and stamping the corresponding pages, similar to that of our National Park Passports. What I didn’t realize when I bought the book was that the pages were glossy, which had me worried about smudging, so I scrapped the stamping idea for fear of ruining the book
What I think I’ll do instead is add in our photos and memorabilia directly into the book with adhesive photo corners and journaling cards. I’ll display the book on our coffee table and hope curious minds will open to find a surprise!
Until next time, Meryn
MERYN MADE 
You have some good ideas here. Thank you.
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