New Project -- A Retrospective Trip Journal

When I recently became inspired to learn to draw better and create travel journals like the wonderful ones I've seen by other artists, I wistfully thought, "Gee, it's too bad I didn't keep a watercolor travel journal on all my past trips."  Then I thought, "Well, why not do it now?"  Why don't I use this wintertime of "hibernation" to look back onto all my past trips that Mark and I have taken together, and create a Retrospective Trip Journal.  It'd be a great way to get some sketching practice in (albeit from photos rather than life), I'd get to relive some great memories, and maybe have a nice trip journal to look through to relive those trips again and again.

So I made a list of all the trips Mark and I have taken since we've been together (since 1983!).  The list is long!  Too long to draw everything, actually, so I will keep it to the highlights for this journal.  Our first trip together was the summer of 1984 when we drove Mark's Chevy Monza (he had just rebuilt the engine) from Flagstaff, Arizona (where we were attending Northern Arizona University together), up through Colorado, to Yellowstone National Park.  Here what I completed a couple days ago of my retrospective journal of that trip:

After graduating from college in 1985 and getting real jobs, it was not until 1988 that we were able to afford the trip of our dreams, a trip to Jamaica!

So far it's been great fun to create these little journal pages as I reminisce on long-ago trips.  I plan to keep it up!