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How do you remember your vacations?

clifffaith

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Worldmark
Up until a couple years ago we (meaning I, and Cliff would read and add to it as needed) wrote a trip report for ourselves that we would also send to a few people or post on Cliff's Motley Fool travel board. That sort of petered out. We buy mugs from places we travel to, and sometimes magnets. And Lord help me, Christmas ornaments. Lots and lots of Christmas ornaments. And I'm a "basket case" with a love for Arizona and New Mexico, so baskets are everywhere. I got irritated with photos when they became things on the computer rather than something I could hold in my hand (and then throw in a box rarely to be seen again). Now with the iPhone they seem more accessible to me, but really I'm out of the photo taking habit by now. We do make it a point to take one or two to add to our Christmas letter.
 

Sugarcubesea

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QH, HBC, VBHC, & Pinestead Reef
I make a Shutterfly Book each time we have a TS vacation and then I have memories for a lifetime
 

linsj

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HGVC
I actually would love to print some pics but I just haven't. I don't know how- my husband does. I am not even sure we have what we need to. He used to print some, but usually had some trouble with it.

I don't print them myself. Usually, I have a bunch of free prints from Shutterfly.com or Snapfish.com and upload and order prints the night before I come home. That's more efficient for me than printing at a store, even if I have to pay postage.
 

linsj

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I used to collect placemats, then bells from all the places I vacationed. Eventually I quit using the placemats, so I gave them away. And after collecting a china hutch full of bells for several decades, I gave away all but the ones from other countries.
 

x3 skier

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Ohio and Colorado
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Steamboat Grand, The West,
Raintree and, formerly, The Allen House
How do I remember vacations? Vaguely, since I’ve been taking 2-3 trips a year for the last 20 or so years. The kids have photos from family vacations but I just recall the highlights (and lowlights) which is ok for me.

Cheers
 

geist1223

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Salem Oregon
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Worldmark 97,000 Credits
DRI Cabo Azul 50,500
Royal Solaris San Jose del Cabo
Yes that trip was 2 weeks. One week in Maui and one in Kauai. So you are correct secret falls and hidden beach are in Kauai. Have you been there?

Several times.
 

artringwald

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DRI: The Point at Poipu, 3 deeded weeks, 1 of which is in The Club.
We both love looking at pictures, so I usually take hundreds for each trip. I use my smartphone, a pocket size camera with 30x zoom, or a large fixed lens camera. The hard part is deleting the ones we don't want to keep. My good friend Arthur the Mothman usually comes with us: https://artringwald.smugmug.com/Travel/Arthur-the-Moth-Man/

I use a spreadsheet for keeping track of the main details of all our cruises and trips to Hawaii. It's nice to see which rooms we've stayed in and who we went.

For those that like to keep track of the reservation info, I'd suggest using the free web site TripIt.com. All you have to do is forward any email with reservation info, and TripIt will add it to your itinerary. I don't often do it, but you can look at the details of past trips.
 

pedro47

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We do not keep any formal track of our timeshare vacations. I do take pictures and one day I will learned how to upload my pictures to TUG liked Doug26345, artringwald, Sugarcubesea, and other TUG Members.

The Commander-in-Chief has started using her IPad to take some photos and they are outstanding.
 

Free2Roam

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Club Wyndham, Quarter House, a handful of East Coast beach resorts
I have a folder on Google drive for Travels... that folder has a sub-folder for each trip with travel plans (reservations for airfare, car rentals, accommodations, confirmations for events/tours etc.) That helps keep track of the dates, locations and costs when we want to know what we paid, where we stayed and some of the things we did.

I do take photos during the trip, but I'm not the best photographer, and I don't always have my phone handy. My travel companions love taking pics and are much better at it. At the end of the trip we create a shared folder in Google photos and each person can add pics they want to share. I eventually copy some of them to the digital photo frame my kids bought me a few years ago (best mother's day present ever!) It sits on the table in the living room and 'wakes up' when someone walks by. I can spend an hour sitting on the sofa watching the slide show of memories (including non-travel pics.)

Like others have admitted, I'm also a collector of refrigerator magnets. I use to get shot glasses for the display case, but that's filled up now, so I stopped buying those.

Edited to add: my family says TUG is my Facebook... I don't use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. I do have Snap Chat (coerced by my daughter) and will do a few pics and short videos to share there. My only snap chat 'friends' are my daughter, my sister, and my 3 nieces.
 
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WinniWoman

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Innseason Pollard Brook
I have a folder on Google drive for Travels... that folder has a sub-folder for each trip with travel plans (reservations for airfare, car rentals, accommodations, confirmations for events/tours etc.) That helps keep track of the dates, locations and costs when we want to know what we paid, where we stayed and some of the things we did.

I do take photos during the trip, but I'm not the best photographer, and I don't always have my phone handy. My travel companions love taking pics and are much better at it. At the end of the trip we create a shared folder in Google photos and each person can add pics they want to share. I eventually copy some of them to the digital photo frame my kids bought me a few years ago (best mother's day present ever!) It sits on the table in the living room and 'wakes up' when someone walks by. I can spend an hour sitting on the sofa watching the slide show of memories (including non-travel pics.)

Like others have admitted, I'm also a collector of refrigerator magnets. I use to get shot glasses for the display case, but that's filled up now, so I stopped buying those.

Edited to add: my family says TUG is my Facebook... I don't use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. I do have Snap Chat (coerced by my daughter) and will do a few pics and short videos to share there. My only snap chat 'friends' are my daughter, my sister, and my 3 nieces.

Love the idea of the digital photo frame! Why didn't I think of that?! Thanks!

Also, another thing I do is sometimes buy a coffee table book of photos of places we have traveled, a calendar engagement book and wall calendar of VT and NH every single year, and like this past year I bought a small stuffed animal -a moose- Moosilauke- to remind me of NH ( and keep me company- lol!).

I used to buy magnets but the fridge I have now will not hold them- only on the side which is mostly built into the cabinet- so I have only 3. A cow ( for VT), a moose ( for NH) and a “ Live Free or Die” one from NH.

My husband has been collecting patches from our trips for many years. He says he is going to sew them on something. Why and what I have no idea. I told him they will go in his - well- you know-with him when the time comes. Lol!
 
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Brett

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I too collected refrigerator magnets but now the fridge is made mostly of aluminum :(
I take a lot of pics and share using FB, google, Flickr, etc
 

amluckau

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Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club fixed week/unit, Marriott Pts, Welk Pts, Diamond Resorts Pts
I use Apple Notes to keep a pseudo journal of each days activities and expenses. I do this for all trips, timeshare or otherwise. It only takes a few minutes every day or two. Then, when home, I update my Travelogue database in TapForms (used to use Bento until Apple killed it off). It includes a paste of the aforementioned Notes as well as dates and locations and room numbers. I might upload pics or PDFs, e.g., cruise itinerary or resort map.
We often try to remember where we went and when, particularly while chatting with random folks on pool lounge chairs that aren’t zip-tied together ;-) so having my Travelogue on the iPhone and iPad is quite handy.
 

donstipp

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Vacation Internationale
I was on another blog....Worldmark. The lady was saying she had checked her log and had been to this many worldmarks. I was amused because I had looked at my vacation history because I couldn't remember how long my now husband and I had been dating. I'm 65, we got married when we were 60 and we dated for 5 years. I kind of keep a log and have pictures logged per trip and dates. I've been retired for about 8 years and the days, months and years go by so fast and get a bit blurry. There are little things that will make a trip extra special. I want to remember and keep things straight.

My question is does anyone out there keep a journal of album or log of some kind and how do you do it?
I always take pictures and then put them in a new file that is dated and placed so I can look them up. I go through the file structure often to reminisce.
I, or my wife, send a postcard to our home on a daily basis. When we get home we have a batch of postcards which we bind together....works great!
 

KACTravels

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We collect a Christmas Ornament from each trip. We like it to have the year on it and will add it with a sharpie if the year isn’t already there. Occasionally we have to use another trinket to make an ornament. I love it, because when we are decorating the tree, we recall memories and tell stories of our travels.
 

MLR

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We (or should I say I) take photos. But it seems that after a number of trips back to the same resort (we like our home resort) they all start to look the same and as I get older, I can't remember which year it was unless I look at the properties of the photo in my phone, ha ha ha. We just enjoy our time and don't worry too much about keeping track of anything. I used to be better organized. Just not anymore :0)
 

Marathoner

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For the last few years, I've used a GoPro to take video clips of my family vacations. When I return home, I create a 3-5 minute video movie of the vacation with a video editor such as Avid Media Composer. Its a great way to remember your vacations and it is a big hit with the family. Once you learn how to use a video editor, it only take a few hours to put together a fun short video which will last a lifetime. My kids have very short attention spans but even they enjoy watching the videos from time to time.

The trick to creating an interesting vacation video is fairly simple:
  • Put a good music track on the video (e.g. don't keep the original sound on the video)
  • Keep the entire video under 5 minutes since nobody (even you) will want to watch anything longer. This also means that you don't need to take a lot of video recordings during the actual vacation.
  • Keep each scene under 10 seconds until the next scene
Here is a vacation video (not mine) that I found on YouTube which illustrates most of my points.

 
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Sea Six

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Marco Island, FL
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Club Regency - Marco Island
Lagunamar - Cancun
Vistana Villages Key West (2) - Orlando
As others have said, I create descriptive file folder names when I upload my pictures. For example, we just got back from Disney, the folder name is 2019-4-2 Disney Flower and Garden (Rick Springfield). We go to Disney often for shows, and I put the artist or group name in the title so I can easily find the pics of the bands.
 

Santanna

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We were Road Trippers for many years and from the very first trip in 1969, we kept a log. It started with a simple small bookkeeping ledger where we kept track of our expenses, day by day and location by location. Our last recorded trip was in 2004 after my husband became ill. We traveled across the country from Vancouver to Cavendish, PEI and back again. I still have the ledger for all those trips and refer to it often.

In 2006 my sister and I took our mother on a 3-week Road Trip and since I was driving, my sister was responsible for keeping the log. For some reason neither of us knows where that has disappeared to but she has a road atlas with the places and dates marked so at least we have that.

My husband passed away 12 years ago and since then my sister and I have been cruising which is all recorded in photos which are semi organized.

Two years ago we did another road trip with a friend and logged over 5,000 miles. I purchased a small bookkeeping ledger for the trip which brought back a lot of memories. On that trip we stayed at a timeshare in Cave Creek, AZ for a week and it was great.

My sister and I are planning another Road Trip with our granddaughters (15 & 13) for July/Aug this year so we can add to the ledger we created 2 years ago. (I've already told the girls that we will not have any teenage grumps on board because there's only room for one aulde pharte grump).

I'm hooked on cruising but I love Road Trips as well but I don't know how much longer I can do them. I think I'll be cruising long after I can't do Road Trips.
 

AnnaS

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I had bought a decent digital camera a few years ago. I kept trying to take pictures with my iPhone and camera. It was so much easier to post pictures on FB from the phone. The pictures from the iPhone are not as nice as the ones from the camera.

Over time, I gave up on carrying both. Since I need my phone more than my camera, I only take pictures now with my camera. Every few months, I go to CVS or Costco (least expensive) and print them out. I try not to wait too long because then it becomes work..........
 

Caligirlfrtx

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HICV, SHERATON BROADWAY PLANTATION, GRAND PACIFIC PALISADES, SHERATON DESERT OASIS, HYATT COCONUT PLANTATION, RIVERVIEW RESORT
Im starting to make video memories...
just some snippets from our trip last week. And a way I am storing memories from our travels

 

Fala707

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I use shutterfly to print my pictures. I also have the shutterfly app so I get a free photo book a month, only have to pay shipping which is under $10. Each trip gets its own book.
 
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