Travel Journal Tools

Travel journaling tracks your action for future reminiscing, of course, but it can also connect you with home and curb the blues. With the proliferation and ease of online travel journals, keeping a paper journal sounds like Flintsone-era stuff, but it's not -- though finding the interent cafe is getting easier, having a journal on the train or while you're bunked out at night helps when homesickness on the road happens. Glue a picture of the two of you or your family onto the inside back cover of your journal, and you can take a piece of home along.

First, though, you gotta get a journal and, perhaps, some cool journal tools.

The journal search can be as easy as a trip to a superstore, like Walmart: grab a few small spiral notebooks, add a clip-on book light for night writing and a cool pen (more on both below) and you've put together what would be called journaling tools. Or get the sturdiest just-for-travel journal around, a cool travel journal meant for women, or the all time classic called Moleskine. Read on to learn where to buy journals and mini lights, read journal reviews and compare prices on all.

Nomad Travel Journal

This very sturdy journal, pre-printed with soy ink, comes from Colorado with its own zippered case, or fits (trim back cover slightly) in an LL Bean passport holder (pictured) that I've traveled with and like very much. Lined and captioned pages (refills available) offer spots for all the crucial info; covers are ruff-tuff cardboard. Several journal types; "adventure" pictured above and at left. Folks always ask me where I got this journal -- it's got the look of some serious scribe stuff. If they read between the covers, they'd see it's not -- just random scribbles that remind me where I've been and what I've done. I tend to fill the margins with words I want to look up, like mysterious road sign instructions seen while bouncing along in a bus ("I wonder if this sign means 'Curve of Death Ahead'...").

• Read Nomad Travel Journal review and buy direct
• Read LL Bean passport holder (pictured) review and buy direct

Women's Travel Journal

Publisher Ten Speed Press always comes up with the goods, and the Everywoman Travel Journal is the goods. Lotsa practical travel info, like international dialing codes, calendars, maps, women-specific travel advice and room for memory jotting, of course.

• Compare prices and buy the women's journal direct
• Read more on the women's travel journal as a gift

Best Travel Pen

Pictured at left with the women's journal is Fisher's famous Space Pen, which writes regardless of position or gravitational pull (hence the "space" factor) -- carpenters and chimney sweeps love it. It's a tad heavy though tiny, which makes it the perfect size to drop in a cargo pants pocket but actually kind of hard to lose.

• Compare prices and buy a Fisher space pen direct

Moleskine Journals

Folks swear by Moleskine -- the sturdy, oilcloth bound travel journal is divided into bed, food, people, sights and facilities by laminated and tabbed sections. It's got an elastic book closure, black ribbon placeholder and cardboard accordion pocket. Moleskine journals are good gifts, too -- if you're not giving one, you can always hint for your own. Got a Moleskine and a Moleskine story? Tell us all about it in the comments below.

• Compare Moleskine Prices

Add a clip-on book light

Little bitty book lights are a great travel accessory -- they can be used to read maps in a darkened train, check guidebooks on a night bus or, of course, clipped to a journal for late night writing in a hostel dorm. Your local book store probably has at least one variety of clip on book lights, as do superstores like Walmart.

"My Light" makes a couple of cool ones -- a super sturdy clip-on reading light and a carabiner clip light (pictured at left) that I love. I hang it over the rung of a hostel bunk for general illumination, slide it into a book, bending the bendy head over the page, or set it flat like a desktop lamp, head bent up and out to light up an area, and I hang it in my tent and my VW van when a lantern is too much. The light that the two LED bulbs puts out is really pretty amazing -- I clipped the carabiner to a chair to light the shot of my bag perched on a London hostel windowsill at late dusk (pictured at right) -- shows what powerful candlepower it packs.

And the carabiner latch light has two lighting choices -- I've used the red LED bulbs to light up a night when walking; the carabiner clip hooks it on a belt loop (the light's small, doesn't bang your body, and works like a hands free flashlight). The My Light clip-on booklight is meant just for reading and writing and it's lighter than the latch, but when carrying just one, I choose the carabiner latch light as an all purpose darkness dispelling tool.

• Read book light reviews, compare book light prices and buy direct online

Journal Travel Tips

Evelyn Hannon, Journeywoman Editor, gives up this bit of brilliance: her journal multitasks when she tapes money to her inside journal cover and staples an itinerary copy over it to disguise the cash stashing spot. Excellent. Unless you've got the super secret spy data like launch codes in there, nobody wants to steal your travel journal.

• More ways to hide travel money

And if you can't think of what to journal in your travel journal, try this: just jot down what you've eaten each day. When you read it later, you'll recall that sidewalk cafe in Rome where you had that espresso, or the Mexico beach where you were baking when you picnicked with those mangoes. Works.

Enjoy journaling the journey!

Related: Top 10 Gifts for Traveling Graduates | Finding Travel Internet | Travel Cash Stashing | Student Travel 101 | Backpacking Europe Tips | Moleskinerie

^{Photos: Top: © Nomad Adventure Journals; Center left - © Nick Crislip; Center left: © Ten Speed Press; center right: © Nexx; center left: © My Light; bottom right: © Kathleen Crislip}