Searching for travel commemoration ideas

[InterBlog]

Newbie here, looking for creative but simple ideas on how to commemorate the places we have traveled to, and the future places we will go. I'm thinking of maybe a two-dimensional... something... to keep within our Airstream, perhaps on a wall, to add place names to in real time as we travel.

Attached is an example of something analogous I did with one of my tents (I used to camp a lot years ago before we bought our Interstate). Each trip garnered a new Sharpie inscription on the rain fly - not fancy, but totally authentic. Now that this tent is worn out, more than a decade old and soon headed for the recycle bin, I can cut out that section of nylon and frame it as a memento, because those trips were very special, full of incredible memories. But I can't take a Sharpie to the wall of the Airstream, so now I need something else.


Has anyone done anything along these lines?? Thanks!!

[paiceman]

We do it for special places with a local piece of artwork. Each piece is small, can be a photo and they are all in our living room at home. in our AS we have two pictures of our adult children

[Lily&Me]

Our Interstate is decorated with small prints and other mementos from beloved places.

We always enjoyed looking around and seeing memories from our trips, just like we do at home.

A few tiny nails have been hammered in to the wood, but we have mostly used double stick tape.

Some camping friends in a BigFoot collect pins from various places, which would work in the Interstate on a mounted surface of some sort.



Maggie

[AldeanFan]

We replaced the panel on the fridge door with white hardboard from Home Depot. Everywhere we go we try to buy a sticker for the fridge. when it gets full we can put in a new panel and start again and hang the old panel in the house.

[Protagonist]

What you need is an album. Remember photo albums? Like people used to use before digital photography? Each two-page spread in the album can have pictures on one side, and a write-up on the other. Plenty of laser printers will print on photo paper. Also, the album could hold postcards from the places you've been, if that's more your thing.

Being portable, you can haul out the album to pass around the campfire as you tell the stories of the places you've been.

Then all you need is a document holder on the wall as a place to keep the album in between trips.

As with your tent, once you outgrow your Airstream Interstate, the album can be transferred to your new vehicle. Or you could start a new album for the new vehicle.

[InterBlog]

Thus far, I am leaning toward something more list-y than album-y. When I look at that tent fly, I realize how many trips I forgot to put on there - entire states are missing. If I start early in Airstream ownership, I should be able to capture every overnight with no accidental omissions (and some of those overnights have already been in places too remote to offer pins or stickers, although both are good collecting ideas).

As for albums, about eight years ago, I started making individual trip travelogues in Powerpoint, converting to PDF for easier distribution to friends and family. I've attached an example excerpt although I'm not sure how good the resolution will be once uploaded. I chose this page because there was an amusing exchange recently on another thread about someone hauling an Airstream all the way to Meat Cove, which is literally at the end of that part of the earth. In Cod We Trust.

[TCwheels]

Great thread! I've thought about this a lot as we are about to embark on our extended Airstream adventures.

First I thought about collecting very large rocks and stashing them everywhere in the trailer - see the Long-Long Trailer - but I did ALL of the weight calculations provided on this forum and realized that was out of the question as I'm already endangering orphans in buses with my current AS/TV combination with NO rocks on board!

Sarcasm aside...I've decided to go digital, as a few posters have talked about. Our memorabilia will be short, "clever" videos of each adventure telling the story. Some trips will have multiple videos. I was hugely entertained and influenced as a kid by the late Stan Midgely who made these types of travel videos in the 1960s and traveled around the country doing very unique and funny travelogue presentations. My parents dragged me to the first one and then I begged them to take me every time Stan came to the Detroit area. I THINK all of these videos have been lost - I've looked for them - which is a shame.

We do love the National Park "passport" and will continue to have fun with that.

The making, editing, and sharing of our videos will keep us connected to our trips and to our friends and family. Plus this approach means I HAD to get a Gopro, all the cool attachments, and a new laptop, and the DW got a new DSLR camera. Retirement preparation toys! ye-ha!


WBCCI #7246 Michigan Unit,Texas Hill Country Unit (associate member), AIR #91367

[AldeanFan]

I've kept a mileage log since we bought the trailer, just a simple little book where I write down the trip dates, number of nights and distance travelled. It's great to get the book out and reminisce about what happened on each trip. It also helps with maintenance.

[64airstream]

We use a felt hat (kind of an Indiana Jones style) and buy hat or lapel pins from the National Parks, etc.

Roy and Marie

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by TCwheels

...I've decided to go digital, as a few posters have talked about. Our memorabilia will be short, "clever" videos of each adventure telling the story. Some trips will have multiple videos. I was hugely entertained and influenced as a kid by the late Stan Midgely who made these types of travel videos in the 1960s .....

I went digital starting about ten years ago, right around the time when the term "flashpacking" was born. The original definition has now evolved out of Wikipedia, but the "flash" component of the term referenced both the higher disposable income associated with the experience (from the British reference to wealth or fanciness; the value of the tech we were carrying into the woods in those years was unprecedented in the history of backpacking!) and of course it was a reference to the camera flash itself.

I took it one step further and defined what I was doing as "hyperflashpacking" because my favorite art style is magic realism and I was striving for a hyper-real component to what I was producing. As part of that, I was "theme-ing" some of our trips, showing how our experiences directly intersected with certain social and political realities (example attached; page sixty-one (!) of that particular travelogue, featuring my daughter juxtaposed with a 21st century cultural predicament, a presentation which the quoted author enjoyed (I heard from him)).

I'm not a fan of passive entertainment - it's a one-dimensional experience and I'm way too old for that. If I cannot bring some small bit of value-add from my experiences to someone else... ANYONE else... then I'm not interested in engaging in those experiences. That's why my husband and I started blogging - what's the point of tweaking, repairing, and customizing an Airstream if nobody else is given the opportunity to contemplate what we learn along the way? It's also why I started hyperflashpacking years ago. I've yet to move from still narratives to video, but I may make the leap eventually.

[BASE729]

I'm having "nose art" done on the front stainless stone guard of my trailer (similar to a B17 bomber). I'm taking a year long BASE jumping and skydiving trip so I'll be adding "bombs" to commentate jumps, etc. when I'm all done with the trip and/or trailer I'll be able to keep the stone guard and it'll make s nice wall mount piece of art.

[InterBlog]

After I pressed "Submit Reply" for my entry above, the one with the reference to magic realism, I did a search combining the terms "Alex Colville" and "Airstream" (Colville was arguably one of the most accomplished magic realists the world has ever produced).

I thought to myself, "Surely Airstreamers know about Alex - they're all in the same groove." And sure enough, he's referenced in the Welcome to the Breakfast Show thread, where Rivet Master "Fly At Night" notes, "Colville would have probably enjoyed being a solo Streamer. That road would have cut right into his metaphorical landscape."

Amen to that.

[InterBlog]

I settled on a travel commemorative idea using small aluminum trophy plates engraved with the names of each city, town, and village in which I / we stay overnight. Pics and sourcing info here FYI:

THE INTERSTATE BLOG: TRAVEL COMMEMORATIVE IDEA FOR THE AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE

[Lily&Me]

Pretty clever, IB.

I envision your aluminum walls eventually covered with these little aluminum plates.


Maggie

[Fly at Night]

Remember the roaming Travelocity garden gnome?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odir7hHG9lc

You could find a funky mascot, then take pictures of it at the places you wish to commemorate.

This is the FaN's mascot.....