Huh? Scrap Booking?
No way, I'm a tough nut Ol' Cowboy!

Hey, even a grizzled ol' cowboy can have some fun with scrap booking! Maybe even a sparky ol' Welder! Think about it. You've spent your whole life building stuff.

That's exactly what this here deal is.

But this time you're building and preserving the memories of your life!

One of the few things I regret is not having tripped the trigger quite enough on our camera in the past. We failed to put together enough albums of the places we've gone and the outfits we've lived on.

Now all I have is the fading memories in a weakening mind to remember 'em with! Don't repeat my mistake. I sure plan to do better in the future.

Someday your Grandkids will enjoy leafing through the Albums you built, back in your traveling days! They'll want to see their ancestors, and heck, it's their history too!

But, they'll want to see it not in an encyclopedia but in a down home, folk art sort of way.

Nowadays you could even high tech it and use some CD's in your efforts! Oh yeah! Record your voice and laughter with some video for 'em to see and hear! 100 years from now? My descendents could see and hear what a goofy old geezer their Great Great Grandpa was!

Don't know for sure how long such a thing would last, but it would sure be nice to know my Dads voice and hear his laugh (lost him when I was just 3). To even see more pictures of what he did and what he valued.......

Building these books is a long, long way from building useless foo fur rah. They provide snapshots of who we are. How we lived. Leave something for your folks to remember you by. And, for the ones who were unlucky enough to not have known you, to meet you by.

In the meantime, it's kind of fun to just do it for yourself!

Come on. There's an artist hidden under all that grit and gristle somewhere isn't there?

Ladies, you know there is too! Go on, poke and tickle him. Drag his grumpy ol' butt along and do some album building!

He will thank you later! And if he don't, you'll have the pictures and history of all the good times you shared so you can prove what a sorry fraud his grumpy act is!

We don't just use photographs in our scrap booking. All along the way we pick up bits and pieces that seem to carry some memory with them of some special place or time. Something as simple as a matchbook, or a drink coaster from some memorable meal in a restaurant along the way.

I picked a little tuft of goat hair off a bush up in Glacier some years ago. I was sitting quietly on the walkway as the Old Goat who left it (and who looked nothing like me I might add) passed by maybe three feet away, browsing on some sort of bushes. (ahem .............. another one of those times where it's a "do as I say not as I do" situation. Looking at those 8" daggers on his head .......... three feet away ........ I clearly remember thinking to myself ........... "you're a dumb son of a ........ !"

Was right up there with my little escapade agitating that young moose bull for fun ........Doh!)

Here's the tuft (upper right hand corner) and the Old Goat ........... this pic of him, the "cutout", was taken at a distance of no more than 60", just before he passed by so close I could smell his lack of proper hygiene!

Not one of my smarter days, but a pretty good thing for doing an album layout!Cut little sections out of maps showing the route you took. Write little comments about things that caught your attention or thoughts sparked by the time or place. Anything that's going to spark your memory down the road, or show a piece of you to your folks, farther down the road.

Don't just rely on what other folks suggest. Use your own imagination, it's your only limit. After all, it is your history isn't it?

Your scrap booking doesn't need to all be about your RV Boondocking either. Are you a poet? Do a scrap booking project about your poetry! Put some of your rough draft copies in. Your finished handwritten pieces. Your hand touched that page, wrote that ink onto the paper. Thats a powerful thing for your Great Granddaughter, 50 years from now. Maybe even a letter talking about what inspires your writing. Run with it. Have a good time.

You guys can build a book, or a couple of them, collecting a series of hunts or fishing trips .............. maybe the story of a '57 Chevy you rebuilt ......start to finish. There is no end to it. And it fits us.

Scrap booking is something that fits well into RV Boondocking camp life.

Some days you just aren't feeling like going out and chasing fish, or climbing a mountain. Maybe it's raining too hard, or the wind is blowing nine-O.

Build yourself a pot of coffee, sit down at the table, layout your scrap booking materials and have a quiet day just putting another one of your books together.

Not a bad deal. It doesn't take a whole lot to do a pretty nice job at this. We have a bag Heidi picked up in some scrap booking store somewhere along the way that holds a selection of border cutting scissors, some templates, a paper cutter, etc. The bag keeps everything neat, organized and fairly compact, sort of a scrap booking kit.

Having some sort of scrap booking organizer is a good idea since space is always an issue when you are full-timing in a modest sized fifth wheel!

One last thing ..........turn the camera on yourself once in a while! We forget to put ourselves into our own "memories" pretty easily .......... the pictures above prove that don't they!

So start collecting your souvenir and "memory" bits and pieces and get to scrap booking. Don't put it off! We'll compare our efforts down the road!

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