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The Vine

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Home » The Vine

The Vine: January 26, 2011

Submitted by on January 26, 2011 – 10:43 AM19 Comments

Dear Sarah and Tomato Nation,

It’s Green here, saying a big thank-you to all of you for your fantastic suggestions and very kind invitations for our U.S. road (and air) trip. I had the most amazing time and I can’t thank you enough for the great mood you put me in before we even started out on the U.S. leg of my trip. Given how cool every single person was that we met, I can only presume the TN readership is…big. Like, the-whole-of-America big.

So I’m home now and kind of settling back into real life, but I still haven’t really done anything with my photos or my travel diary given there was just no time to compile something electronic as we went. So I am wondering, given the magnitude of wonderful comments you all shared before the trip, if some of you might be interested in seeing what we did, and have any suggestions on how to share it? I don’t have Facebook and am not overly great with computers but could maybe manage a simple blog or something. I guess it’s so far after the fact now that I wondered if you’d still want to see it “day by day,” or if photos with some comments are of more interest, or what?

I hope it doesn’t sound hideously self-involved, this question, but I was just so staggered by your kindness and generosity in making such heartfelt suggestions that I thought letting you know what we did and what we loved might be a small way of saying thanks to you all.

You guys are awesome!

Green

Dear Green,

So glad to hear from you, and that the States treated you right.

A Tumblr would work well for a travel memoir; it’s super-easy to use, and you could scan things in and make as many or as few notes as you want. It’s probably worth doing anyway, just so you have everything in one place and can point people to it easily.

As for how to lay it out and what to include, I come from the “huck it all in a box” school of “organization,” so I’ll let the readers share their experiences with putting scrapbooks and online albums together. Readers?

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19 Comments »

  • Courtney says:

    I don’t have anything to add to Sars’s advice, but I wanted to pipe up to say that I would LOVE to see a travelogue of a cross-country road trip, particularly one from the perspective of someone not originally from the USA.

  • jennie says:

    I used travelpod.com to do a trip report/travel blog after my trip to Europe. The nice part about that is it can potentially help strangers with ideas and tips because they might be more likely to search there than find a random blog by googling.

  • Jenn says:

    Tumblr makes the most sense. WordPress also has some themes that are specifically for blogs with lots of photos.

  • Dona says:

    Flickr is also a super-easy way to do a travelogue–you can upload all of the photos in one fell swoop, and then go back and label and caption and tag them a few at a time.

  • Karen says:

    Yes yes yes! I would love to see that. I’m a road trip junkie and love hearing about people’s experience. I second a Tumblr, so that you can do a little bit at a time, rather then trying to get everything together all at once.

    Shutterfly also has some really great options for taking your photos and making them into a printed book. Very cool stuff.

  • Kari says:

    Yes, we would love to see your pictures, so please share! If you have enough to share day by day, that would be a good way to organize it, but it depends on what you were doing each day, how many pictures you took, etc. It probably depends on the material itself!

  • Sharon says:

    I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see photos! I’m so happy you had a great time here! I am a technophobe, so no help here with the sharing part of it!

  • Jen S 1.0 says:

    So glad you had such a good time!

    I’d suggest a rough “day by day” layout, as in “we started here, and here’s pictures of that, and then went here, and here’s pics of that” just so you can keep track of what you’ve covered or not. And I’m with Courtney in looking forward to an “outside” perspective of our land. As one who’s still hacking her way through People’s History, I could use some cheering up, God knows.

  • Beth says:

    I haven’t used this site myself, but I recently followed a friend’s trip though her blog here. It seems that you can intermingle blog posts with photos fairly easily.

    http://www.travelpod.com/

  • Valerie says:

    Yes yes yes!! would love to hear about your trip.

  • Tyler says:

    Tumblr is an amazing way to post it. I would love to follow your blog if you happen to put it up!

  • Bria says:

    I’d love to hear about your trip! One request – in addition to breaking out your trip over several posts by day/week/area/whatever, could you also do a summary post that just shows your itinerary? I’m interested in seeing the big picture of your trip as well as the details.

  • Amy says:

    I am more of a scrap book girl, but I like to organize my photos around themes rather than day by day. I will have a section for all of the museums, a section for restaurants, interesting shops, etc. I think it makes it more fun for other people to look at my vacation pics.

  • Jo says:

    If you want to do a simple blog, blogger (blogspot.com) is pretty easy to use and you can upload photos.

    If you just want to post photos, try a flickr account. You can write pretty long captions under each photo and it’s easy to click through in order and see all of them. My boyfriend is a photographer and he puts a lot of his stuff on there.

  • JK says:

    Another vote for YES–pleas do share, we’d love to see it! I’ve often wondered how your trip went, as it sounded like such a great opportunity.

    There are many easy (free) options, as people have enumerated above, and here’s another vote for captions–even simple ones–that’ll let us know who’s/what’s in the picture.

    Thank you for checking back in, and come back and see us again!

  • Robin in Philly says:

    I can’t speak to the various websites – I have the same organizational philosophy as Sars – but wherever you put them, I look forward to seeing them! You got some great suggestions on that thread, and I’m so glad to hear you had a wonderful trip (and that we steered you right).

  • Kim says:

    The best way to do photos of a trip is to:
    a) don’t post a whole bunch that are essentially the same. Pick the best or most representative and post just them. Otherwise the great photos get lost in the crowd.
    b) tell a story to give the photos context and depth. Unless a photo is stand-on-its-own beautiful, they all benefit from the extra info about the situation that is in your head, not the photo.
    c) post them one or a few at a time so people can follow along without losing interest, and to draw out the enjoyment.

    If you want to do it with a focus on words with supporting photos – eg a story of each day with a bunch of photos interspersed to illustrate it, I recommend a blog. WordPress and Blogspot are both super easy to use.

    If you want to focus on the pics individually with a caption for each, I recommend flickr.

    It sounds like it’ll be worth seeing whichever way you go. I look forward to seeing it.

  • --Lisa says:

    Yes, as someone who wrote in for your original post, I would LOVE to see where you went and what you thought. Thank you so much for offering – it isn’t self involved at all!

  • Fiona's Mum says:

    Ok, I realize I’m late to the party, but I just wanna say my in-laws live IN Darwin, MN, home of the World’s Largest Ball of Twine (Made By One Man) and that I’ve totally eaten at the Twine Ball Inn, whose sign is pictured above! Also, Twine Ball Days is always the second Saturday in August. (Yes, _I_ know Saturday = one day, but I’m not in charge of the name.)

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