Souvenirs, everyone loves to get them, but what do you do with them once you get too many? Especially when living in an RV. Especially when living in an RV with 7 people. There isn’t much extra space for souvenirs so when we first started traveling we narrowed it down to three. Three souvenirs that we can collect at different places that we all enjoy and that don’t take up a lot of space.
One was a collection that Harmony had started 20 years ago and that is the flat penny. They don’t take up much space, they don’t add weight and now all the kids collect them too. We have fun searching out the machines and making them to add to our collections.
The other one is stickers. Every place we go sells stickers. Many RVers collect them. They are fun to look at and remember the places we’ve been. We have a wall of stickers on the inside wall of the slide. When the slide is in Emmett likes to sit on the stairs and see the stickers.
When the slide is out, they are up high on the backside of the RV.
While we were in Alaska we were collecting and saving the stickers because we didn’t have our fifth wheel and we knew we’d only be in the summer house temporarily. So it was fun to get to put the stickers on and think back on the memories of the places we went in Alaska and Canada.
We also added 3 stickers on our state map. We added British Columbia, Yukon, and Alaska. Most RVers have made up rules for themselves on what they have to do to earn their state stickers. Most just have to sleep in a state. Some just have to be in it. For our family to “earn” a sticker we have to sleep in the state and paddleboard. We did paddleboard Alaska so we earned that one. For the Canadian provinces and territories, we just have to go there and make a memory to earn our sticker. We have a lot of new memories in British Columbia and the Yukon. Those are three stickers we are proud to have earned. It was a great trip.
The third thing that the younger members of the family collect is Jr. Ranger badges. On our Alaska trip Emmett started earning badges too. Before this trip he was too young, but on our way up he started asking for his own Jr. Ranger book. Most of them have plenty of pages that he is able to do with some help. Most of the time all the boys enjoy the books and learn quite a bit from them. They learn about the history of the park, geology, biology, famous people, etc.
The boys have so many badges they needed a way to keep track of them. About a year ago we bought the older boys Jr. Ranger Vests to keep their badges on. Emmett needed a way to mount his, so we gave him a piece of fabric and it hangs next to his bed. When he is a bit bigger we will probably get him a vest too. He wants to be just like his brothers.
So now we are caught up on sticking on stickers and pinning on ranger badges so it’s time for more adventures….stay tuned.
