Finishing up my road album

Last 2 pages of the album completed.

It was sooooo cool, even though we were hotfootin' home

we did catch up with Shane in Ocala.

So we saw Shane at the beginning of our trip and at the end.

 Then just a journaling page on the final leg...

It was a wild ride, we even overnighted in a Walmart

parking lot.

It was interesting.

Our house is shuttered and we have food and water.

Updates will happen on Facebook

when we can :).

Thanks for all your prayers.

Highlights from the Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum

I seriously don't want to spoil it for you - but it's a must see!

Absolutely amazing and needs to be on your bucket list.

It goes from boyhood to President.

(Ahem-my hubby's best side 😉 ).

 Mrs. Keckly and Mrs. Lincoln is the name of the book

written by Mrs. Keckly. They were friends until they weren't sadly.

It's a very good read.

 The Lincoln house in Springfield...

You get a tour with a ranger and of course I have inside shots.

You need to go see for yourself.

Amazing from a log cabin to middle class America.

A self-taught lawyer and legislator - then President.

How cool is that.

It was a dark and stormy day....

I have always wanted to start something with that sentence LOL.

I know you have too.

Anyway, it didn't get any better coming through Florida and heading

to Alabama.

That is the county seat for Monticello, Fl.

Isn't that dramatic??

 It's a beautiful building up close.

 This was too cool to pass up but I had

to take it quick sooooo that's my window screen you're

looking through.

 As you know I adore buildings that are not

necessarily in good shape so be warned

you'll be seeing a lot of them.

 We take the secondary roads as much as possible

(unless we're in a hurry) so I pass the time

snapping things that interest me.

 And hopefully you...

 This house had a ton of flags in the yard. 

I couldn't get them all through the window.

 Hassled mama duck and her ducklings trying

to get a close up of them.

Totally adorable.....but mama wasn't happy with me and

they finally swam off.

 He was a cute little bugger.

 And this guy - quite the poser.

Walked right up - had to back off with the zoom LOL.

 I actually think people may live here.

Not sure.

 And the farms, silos and tractors, oh my.

Love them all.

 Sunset over the lake at our second camp that we

swung in by the skin of our nose.

Funny story there - we were actually looking for Hugh Smith

State Park and ended up at the North Abutment 

but for another park. 

And they were totally FULL.

The camp host, Clyde, was trying to make a spot for us

and found one when bad luck befell the previous

campsite occupant.

His awning blew off and tore in half so they left

a day early to get it fixed.

 And who can resist sunset with ducks

gliding across the water.

Not me....

Packing scrappy supplies for the road

And what a conundrum picking and choosing.

I have done this for 3 maybe 4 trips now and it has been evolving.

I started out with that super satchel that is currently housing

the punches (see below).

And it worked on a limited basis as I was trying

to minimize what I brought.

 However, frustration would set in. 

I didn't have this or that

which would stop me dead in my tracks

and wasn't that was totally annoying.

 And now I'm going overboard. 

 Oh well - and I have to apologize to Studio Calico for

my bad thoughts on these mesh zippered pockets.

Each kit comes with these meshed bags and as you can see

I've accumulated quite a bunch (I have even given some away).

But NOW....Omg.
Perfect for putting stuff in to keep things tidy.

 Therefore, I have mesh bags for precut dies, stamps, and

embellishments.

 And for the scraps.

I am using Pink Fresh for the album and

I'm having some second thoughts about that - because

we are going to the mountains on a

road trip....My other road trips - were basically

earthy colors - so predictable and now I'm going to roll with
well not earthy colors.

 I may trade out this water colors for the one

M's watercolors because there is more of a color choice.
And I did swap them out.

 I got this PL album on sale at HL - great score

8.5x11 and am mixing it up with PL and regular page protectors.

 I filled the pages already precutting the papers because

I do not take a paper trimmer with me

and with the Selphy printer I can custom size the prints.

 Sadly, it took awhile for me to figure out that I

didn't NEED to fill all the pockets -

but it took me 3/4 of way to decide that.
LOL.
So I do have enough papers.

 So everything sort of fits and I keep finding more because

I'm still scrapping and keeping a lot

of stuff on my desk.

This tucks neatly under the couch in the RV.

Actually the album will be stored in the overhead and

now the decision is do I additionally take

my faux traveler's journal and my regular journal.

Regular journal is gonna be a given so I can write in it everyday

as I  tend to forget the day to day stuff because

I can't scrap everyday on the road and
the mind is a terrible thing for remembering.

Packing it all in.

We are hitting the road today- and its raining which
will hopefully keep all the others off the road.
I'll be posting photos as we roll and when internet is available.
Gonna be a fun time.

Washington DC photos from the wayback box

And I love them in a pocket page.

Some of these pix were mom's and some were mine she
had acquired because she liked them.

It worked out well because now I can point them to

the Road Trip album - which house a lot

of pix - starting from beginning to end of the trip I took

with Shane and Memaw. 

We had so much fun traveling the highways and by-ways
together and the memories rock.

I looked at that Road Trip album and omgee it was done 14 years ago

when I thought I was "da bomb" of scrapbooking

and "heavy sigh" the pages are sooooo "at a loss for words" LOL

but the journaling in that album - NAILED IT.

Pointer pages in regular album

That point you to "The Album."

For those of you that followed our 2 month

travel escapade you'll remember that I did an album

as we went, so except for one page the

entire album was completed before we returned home.

I know it still boggles my mind as well.

This album is the West of the Mississippi Tour.

 This double spread (more or less) are our adventures

in Yellowstone park - And yes I did get the kit from the park store.

As you may or may not know, Tom and I don't do a lot

of pictures of ourselves and I decided that

we were going to include some for this trip because 

why not. 

So to make a statement or two, I printed the photo 8.5x11

and decided to scrap straight on that photo.

 With a note on the page to check out our road trip album

for more details.

 Because the story of this photo was fun.

 It's a gorgeous place and if you ever want to

go anywhere and only one place to go

check out Yellowstone Park.

You will NOT be disappointed.

 And because we took another photo together

that had another fun story with it, I printed two of them

because I wanted to frame one. When I

decided the photo to be frame needed to be tweaked,

I decided to scrap the second 8.5x11.

The Grand Tetons are the breathtaking mountains

you see on the ride to Yellowstone - if you're coming in

from Jackson Hole Wyoming - you

get a gorgeous ride to a phenomenal park.

Win-win.

Of course we stopped at the ranger station to get our

passport stamped and I picked up a couple of do-dads perfect

for scrapping.

Again pointing out the road trip album.

 Love how these 2 pages turned out and I

may also pull out other photos - maybe to tell a bigger story.

Its pretty hard to do that because it was so cool scrapping

as we went so the stories have already been told.

I also have a better idea of what to take now

although stopping at a scrapbook shop on the road

was a total win and I documented that.

If you go back through my posts started about mid-July in 2015

you can read about our exploits starting with Packed and Ready to Go.

The photos in my road trip album were printed from Canon Selphy printer.

Its a great road trip printer - small and compact however, the largest

photo size is 4x6.

It is also not the most cost effective printer but it was the convenience

of being able to have the prints instead of adding

them after the fact...

I also kept a separate "daily journal" that I'm going to

try to combine this next time around.

Highlights of our Road Trip to Texas

We like staying off the main highway as much as possible

and its then you see little

gems like the town of Shinersville and

their old buildings - 

Don't they make you swoon?

 It was a Sunday and all the stores were closed

and the streets were bare.

 Evidently there was a shindig going on and they

didn't tell us where.

That's ok because we were headed to the Alamo.

 Of course you can't wander through Texas without seeing

an oil rig or 3M. LOL.

Tried to get this statue of all the lost

from the fight at the Alamo without a bunch of people

posing. So its at a very weird angle and the names are hard to read.

 From across the street - again it was full of people

because we picked the 4th of July weekend to visit and

6 million others had the same idea.

 The lines were around the block to get into the actual Alamo

and it was extremely hot so we admired it from the outside.

 There were entrances into the courtyards that

were green, lush and most important cool that we hightailed into.

There were nooks and crannies to explore- too dark

to capture on the camera, this well that was in the center of this

courtyard.

 And cannons - what's a fort without cannons.

And a gift shop.

That has this amazing diorama (under glass) of the fort/mission as it

would've looked back in the day when it was under seige.

It was alot bigger than you think.

I took this with my phone and that is the front of the mission that

still stands today (fixed up), and the walls that surround it today

were two stories back then are now one story and wooden slats have

been installed in the arches.

Around the back side of the diorama show a lot more buildings

and courtyards with a force of soldiers "attacking"

that really emphasises how outnumbered they really were.