After many years of traveling I have countless travel journals to transcribe.

The cover of my first travel diary, sent to me by my aunt in honour of my first overseas trip in 1965.
I see I was fascinated with the buttons on the jet – it was my first time flying. I also did a sketch of the coast of Holland – my first views of the world from the sky!
A much later diary where I see I was still fascinated by buttons, these ones on a Japanese toilet. This was in 2003 before I had a digital camera. Back then you didn’t waste precious film on photos of toilets!In 2005, another aerial, this time flying over northern Mexico. By then I had switched to the lightweight kid’s exercise books that were half lined and half blank. I had also acquired a travelling set of watercolours that I adore.By 2006 I purchased my first digital camera with Airmile points. I never had so much fun with a camera but I found that I often just took photos and videos, as opposed to drawing or describing events in great detail. In 2008 the poor little camera was stolen in Buenos Aires and I went back to journalling and painting with a vengeance. In 2012 I was still using the kid’s exercise books but by now they were so cheaply made that they fell apart during the trip. Of course, this particular journal had a ‘beer’ review section at the back – it got added when I was trying to keep track of all the fabulous Belgian beers we tasted. The entire journal got passed around a pub more than once as people applauded or booed our beer reviews – a great conversation starter but hard on the poor journal which is now held together by a lot of clear packing tape.
In 2013 I retired, and we went on a two month journey through Myanmar and Vietnam. To keep up my blogging I bought an iPad mini with a plain black keyboard case. Worried that it might be stolen I added duct tape along the spine, painted ‘Diary’ in white paint on the front and added an elastic band to make it look like a paper journal. I also took along both a lined and unlined journal that were almost the same size and shape as the iPad. I still hadn’t learned my lesson about buying cheap books – these fell apart the first time I opened them. The elastic wasn’t there for looks but to keep them in one piece!
Last year I finally went and spent some money on some decent journals, one with lines that I used for Ireland, and this one without lines that was used for Wales. I love the way I can freeform the text when there aren’t any lines to inhibit me. You certainly can’t do this on an iPad!
More of Jennifer Nichole Wells’ One Word Challenge: Diary.