My family have never been big travelers. While we have had a few joyful travel experiences, our time and money necessarily focused on road trips to visit distant family. Those 1,400 miles of round-trip interstate freeway did not have much to offer in the way of fun. Yet we always found some small new attraction to explore each trip to make it feel like vacation. After years of those same mundane highway miles, I was feeling so very ready for more. In 2019, with our kids at or nearing official adulthood we were just starting to feel options opening up. Then came Covid. Our world shrank back down to finding small attractions to fill our time.
With the topic of travel coming to the blog this month, I had to admit I was struggling. We still aren’t going anywhere due to the new more-contagious Covid variants and the chance of long-covid. Even if Covid isn’t the reason to stay home, inflation is playing its own role in scaling back travel plans. So I’ve been watching—on social media—everyone making up for lost time in the travel department. And jealousy sets in. Maybe you are right there with me?? So what are we to do?
I realized as I was pondering this topic that my ability to find small adventures during all these past years was a skill and a mindset that I had built up over time. I acknowledge my feelings of jealousy, but I’m trying not to let it bog me down. Instead, I’m attempting to shift my perspective in order to find peace.
So let’s change our mindsets together from “travel” to ADVENTURE. You can adventure anywhere and that is just what my family has been doing right in our own home region. It is like a stay-cation, but smaller and more frequent. Think weekly little bursts of adventure.
To get started we pulled up a map and started browsing. What parks haven’t we seen yet? What walking trails are there? What area’s could we drive just to see the trees? We sought out the small things. And you know what? Despite having lived in this area for 20 years we found a lot of little surprising adventures! Let me take you through some of the layouts that have come from these adventures.
For this first layout we simply took a walk on a portion of a nature trail that we’d never been before. It is a very long trail and we’ve only seen some of it. We are now inspired to visit other portions. Yay for future adventure! And speaking of future travels, Nikki talks all about that topic in her post this month. Be sure to check it out.
Adventure tip: Pull up that map and zoom around it. Do you notice anything new? Something you haven’t noticed before? Go there and see what there is to see.
Documenting tip: Take detail photos. When you focus in on the smaller things about an adventure it gives your mind more to soak up and find joy in! And it will make the adventure take a bit longer so you won’t feel like it is over already. Then you’ll have more variety to your photos and journaling for documenting later.
For this one we used our map again, but zoomed out farther. Where could we drive in about an hour to find adventure? This mile limit also helps with those wild gas prices currently!
Adventure tip: Zoom your map out. What else can you find?
Documenting tip: Have you ever taken a shadow photo? It is just a really different option when capturing the moments.
Bonus tip: This layout was created using the ScrapHappy July Sketch as part of our membership. If you aren’t a member of ScrapHappy, you are missing out on some great fun member benefits! Check out what a membership can offer you.
We are a nature loving family, but maybe that isn’t your thing. An indoor venue may be right for you. Here we found a brand new local tea shop. I must say that my non-coffee drinking kids were happy that it wasn’t another new coffee shop!!
Adventure tip: Is there a museum you haven’t been to yet? Or perhaps a new restaurant you haven’t tried. Maybe some cool nightlife spot?
Documenting tip: Does the venue have any interesting nooks and crannies? You could pose a photo in a fascinating area. Second tip—have you ever tried cutting just portions of a pattern of paper to tuck over other layers? Notice the flowers around the border. Some are over and some are under other layers. A craft knife helped me achieve this look. Plus I learned this technique from Alice Boll, our trusty ScrapHappy leader. That is another fun benefit of membership. Just saying.
Have you always heard of a place, but never actually been there? Go to that popular spot. We’d always heard of this park but never really knew anything about it.
Adventure tip: Go to the popular place. Perhaps it is new to you, but perhaps not. Not all adventure has to be brand new. While your there though, find small things that are interesting about the place.
Documenting tip: Find a flowing pattern paper print and fussy cut an undulating edge around the print. This highlights—in a visual way—the meandering nature that travel/adventure can have.
Sometimes you may feel like you’ve done all the things already. I invite you to explore the seasonality of places you have already been. Here we are at a walking trail after record breaking months of rain. The last time we were here it was dry, dry, dry. Same place, different adventure.
Adventure tip: Visit the same place in different seasons. You may be surprised.
Documentation tip: Large print background papers are something that I hear a lot of scrappers struggle with. I have figured out some helpful tips to using these papers. Print your photos much smaller. Here I have a 3×4 and 2, 2×3 photos. I could have gone even smaller! Next, keep embellishments tight. I’ve kept mine all directly touching my photo cluster. Finally, his particular paper posed an additional challenge as it is all words. How was I going to make my title stand out? I used a high contrast font, “underlined” it with a banner, AND kept it clustered with my photos to make it part of one much larger visual group.
Bonus tip: When you are adventuring, don’t take yourself too seriously. We know this isn’t going to replace that epic Hawaiian travel experience. If you are like me and feeling down about not being able to travel, keeping a sense of humor can really help. In this layout there was a tree down on the walking trail. It wasn’t any big deal, but we really hammed it up when we were there. We pretended it was the most harrowing journey we’d ever been on. I continued that playful feeling with the tongue in cheek embellishments on my layout. (See closeups below.)
I hope this post helps bring ideas your your adventure documenting whether it is full on travel experiences or not! Leave us a comment if you have adventuring ideas to share.