Happy Monday everyone! This week, we’re continuing with our series of Table Talk conversation cards. If you missed the previous cards and want to go back and print them out so you can use them at your family table, or with your book club, or at your next meeting or holiday party, you can get them here:
— Conversation Card 1 click here
— Conversation Card 2 click here
On the porch today, we’re moving on the Card #3, which comes from Marybeth Whalen’s book The Guestbook:
So, what about you? When you travel, do you look at the guestbook? Do you sign guestbooks? I do. I love to read a good guestbook. It’s fun to think about other people who have come and gone from the same place–what brought them there? Who did they choose to bring along? How long did they stay? Inquiring minds want to know… or perhaps I’m just hopelessly nosy.
The last guestbook I signed was at the Outer Banks during a girlfriend-trip-slash-research-foray with my mom and my favorite gal pal and digital graphics whiz, Teresa Loman.
One thing we learned from the guestbook was that we should be sure to walk down to the beach at night with a flashlight and experience the hunting frenzy of the ghost crabs. It was definitely worth the walk down the trail through the dark, creepy woods, as we clung together with our with flickering penlights. The beach was truly a creepy, crawly crab-a-palooza. The ghost crabs were thrilled that we showed up to annoy them with our flashlights and cameras.
Guest books are a great place to learn about fun things to do in the area (like visit the ghost crabs by night). Guest books are also a neat place to record a little personal history from visit to visit in your regular family vacation spot. As the years have gone by, we’ve enjoyed finding our old entries in guest books at our favorite cabins. It’s fun to read the notes the kids wrote and to remember the things we enjoyed in years past.
When the boys were younger, we even let them create “guest books” of their own as we traveled. At the start of family vacations, we provided them with blank journals, so that they could record their favorite sights and experiences on the trip. We laugh when we look back at those books now. I love to read their interpretations of things we saw and did. Their books are filled with brilliant entries like:
Mom wok me up. We got in the car. Other pepol drive a lot but I sleep a lot. I got up. We ate snaks frm the baskit. Shane got sick, so we stoped. He thrugh up. We got in the car agin. We saw wind mils. There was a hundred or 2 hundred. Shane got sick. We stopped agin. Mom said stay out of the snak baskit…
With excitement like that, is it any wonder that we look back on those trips with fond memories? If your kids or grandkids are still young, and you’ve never given them a “trip book” of their own, I encourage you to try it. You’ll enjoy those pint-sized vacation views in later years.
What about you? What’s your favorite guestbook memory? Have you ever found an unusual memory in a guestbook? Drop a note and let us know about it!
Lisa
New On Shelves — The Latest Moses Lake Book
Click here to read the first Chapter!
