WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN TRAVEL ISN’T AN OPTION? EASY! TRACK WHERE YOU’VE ALREADY BEEN!
Even before Coronavirus, Ryan and I were borderline obsessed (OK, really obsessed) with tracking our travels. If anyone were to ever study us, they would have no problem determining where we’ve been or what we did. You won’t find many souvenirs in our home but all over you’ll find evidence of travels.
And now that travel, especially internationally (and especially for U.S. citizens), has become heavily restricted or in some cases nearly impossible, we find fun and unique ways to track our travels – even from home.
Here’s some of our favorite ways to document your trips and track our travels!
7 FUN WAYS TO TRACK YOUR TRAVELS
NEWVEREST MAP
If you like scratching lottery tickets … then Newverest is FOR YOU! Newverest has all kinds of maps – the United States, the World, National Parks… You name it and they’ve got a map for you. Sure, a map is a map, so what’s so special you ask? Newverest specializes in SCRATCH. OFF. MAPS! There is nothing more satisfying than scratching off a location you’ve just visited. And getting to see the geographic evidence of what ground you’ve covered. I won’t divulge how many of these we own, but just know that it is more than a regular person should have.
Ours is hanging over our bed as a true badge of honor and not just a reminder of where we’ve been, but also all the amazing places we have left to go.
You can find yours here!
TRAVELLER COLLECTIVE RINGS
The most innovative way to track your travels has to be from Traveller Collective. While we love having maps at home, how many people does one really have over that can basque in the glory of your expansive travel? Not nearly enough. With Traveller Collective, you can take those bragging rights with you everywhere you go. You can put them on a key ring or a necklace and have an instant conversation-starter to be able to share your stories.
They’ve got United States State rings and they’ve got country rings. They’ve got national park rings and they’ve got customizable rings. You can even include the date of your visit! It’s entirely possible that you may collect so many that the weight gets to be a bit much. But is that really a problem you mind having? We didn’t think so.
Start your collection here! (You can contact us to receive 10% off your order!)
NATIONAL PARK PASSPORT BOOK
Don’t even get us started on National Parks! We’ve got patches, stickers, hats, t-shirts — we basically look like the National Park system threw up on us. (Thanks dad for that quote.) But our absolute favorite way to track our travels to National Parks is with our National Parks Passport book.
This handy-dandy little book has an all-inclusive list of every National Park, National Monument, National Preserve (you get the point) in the United States. It’s broken out by regions with open spaces for stamps. What stamps? WE ARE SO GLAD YOU ASKED.
Every single National Park has what is called a ‘cancellation stamp.’ This stamp includes the name of the park and the date of the visit and is available at every visitor center at each park. You stop in at any visitor center and stamp your passport! Clearly the goal is to get every single stamp and fill up your passport, just like a real passport. Luckily, this one doesn’t involve an immigration line.
Take our advice, and buy some of these corresponding travel stamps. You can sometimes find them at the visitor centers of the National Parks. we’ve found that to be hit more miss though. Or if you’re lucky you can find them at some of part visitor centers. So we’d recommend purchasing on the website prior to your trips so you have them with you to add at the same time as your cancellation stamp!
The passport books are available at most visitor centers, or you can order ahead here.
JOURNEY JOURNAL
For those long trips that cover a lot of miles, a journey journal is a MUST. These come in many forms from many places, but the overall theme is that it allows you to make a daily entry along your journey. And the types of journals we use have space for “Plans for the Day” and “What Actually Happened”, because, if we are all honest, those two hardly ever match up.
“Today went just as planned.” – Said no traveller ever. That’s what makes this tracker so fun! When you get home you’ll remember the highlights, but this allows you to remember the small moments and the details of each place and each day. Ours even came with pins and a string to plot our course on the cover! How cool is that?! It is something we will cherish forever and always be able to look back on.
Check out the journal we used here!
FLATTENED PENNIES
A penny is only worth one cent. Until you pay fifty cents to flatten it, then it becomes priceless. This travel-tracker isn’t the easiest as you are at the mercy of where you can actually find a penny machine. You mostly find them at museums, zoos, or major tourist destination cities. It is often an unassuming stand-alone machine in the corner with a hand-crank. Upon closer inspection, you realize you can insert $0.51 to choose a design unique to the location to be imprinted upon a flattened penny.
Half of the fun of this travel-tracker is watching the person actually crank the penny through the machine – harder than it looks, my friend. But the result is a copper engraving that lasts forever. And in our humble opinion, is worth way more than one cent.
While there’s no way to order the pennies, there is a website dedicated to helping you locate the machines. And you can find a Penny Passport Holder here.
CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS
This one will likely only apply to those of you who celebrate Christmas as a holiday and decorate a Christmas tree each year. Remember when we said you won’t find many souvenirs in our home? Well, Christmastime is the exception to that rule. Our tree is a hodge-podge combo of childhood ornaments, our favorite sports teams (Chicago & San Francisco ALWAYS), and our travels.
When we travel, we try not to be obvious tourists, but that goes out the window when we find a gift shop. We stop in every single one to see if there’s a Christmas ornament worth packing up and taking home to adorn our tree forevermore. It’s special to track travels this way because oftentimes the ornaments are locally made and unique to that part of the world.
BEEN APP
Looking for a way to track your travels that you don’t have to carry with you? We hear you. Travelling light becomes more challenging when you have to bring extra items along with you. So, in that case, a travel-tracking app is the answer for you!
We have a couple of different apps, but “been” has been our top choice. You can check-off every destination you’ve visited and it shows you a color-coded map. You have the option of states within the U.S. or countries of the world. This mobile option makes tracking your travels super-simple and easily-sharable!
You can download the app here: iPhone | Android
Hands down the best part of travel is the experience you have and the memories you make along the journey. There’s no one way to truly capture the gift that travel gives. This list is some fun ways to track your travels and keep the memories alive for you. If you have any suggestions to add to this list, please let us know in the comments!
Many of these items are small and compact, and wouldn’t take up much space. But if you’re trying to live a more minimalist lifestyle, or know someone who is, check out our GIVE STUFF, NOT STORIES post!
