There is an abundance of camping journals and logbooks available to those who wish to record and document their travel adventures. How do you sort through all of the options available? Which one is best for you? In this post, I’ll try to summarize the different types of guided journals available.
A search on Amazon for the term “camping journal” returns a list of over 50,000 results. Similarly, a search for the term “camping log book” returns a list of over 30,000 results. How much time do you think it will take to look through all of those results? More time than I care to spend.
Did you know that Amazon makes it easy for anyone with word processing or desktop publishing software to make a book? It’s true and it really shows in some of the books I’ve seen. Some folks know just enough about word processing software to barely get by while others have obvious difficulty with spelling.
So, to make it easy for you, I’m going to say you should just buy the journal or log book I’ve created! That would be My Campground Logbook and My RV Travel Journal (both links are Amazon affiliate links). Now that I’ve put that sales pitch out there, I’ll dig in to the other options available to you.
To see what kind of competition I had with my books, I created a spreadsheet to record the various titles available on Amazon using the search terms mentioned above. My spreadsheet included the name of the publisher, the book’s title, page count, trim size, year published, and retail price. I spent many hours over several days collecting the data and figured I could probably spend many more days doing the same. After entering information in my spreadsheet for nearly 50 different titles, I decided I should rethink doing this.
In my opinion, there are three books from competitors that are popular sellers on Amazon that provide a good format for recording travel information. They are as follows:
- The Ultimate RV Logbook by Nomadic Souls
- RV Camping Journal by Lourdes Welhaven
- Write it Down! Camping Journals by Journals Unlimited
The Write it Down! series are spiral bound so the cost is a little more than the others. By the way, the link to each book listed above is an affiliate link so if you buy any of the titles on Amazon, I make a small percentage of the sale price. These three titles appear to be professionally produced. A fourth book I considered for inclusion above was The Camping Logbook by Peter Pauper Press. It also is professionally published but I just didn’t care for it as much as the others.
While looking inside each book, using Amazon’s “Look inside” feature (not available on Amazon’s mobile site), I learned that many publishers used the same form for entering information but created different covers for their books. This isn’t bad, necessarily, because folks may prefer one cover over another. It just adds to the number of books one must look at to determine which one to buy.
All of the books provide the same basic prompts or guided questions to assist you with writing. Things like campground name, description, favorite aspects of the campground, people you met, and ideas for the next time you visit. Some books provide a detailed form with check boxes for selecting features, amenities, and activities available. A lot of the books provide space for attaching a photo. Considering that many travelers take digital photos with their phone, I’m not sure how useful this feature is. How many people will actually take time to print a picture and paste it into the book?
So, for what it’s worth, I present to you a list of some of the “publishers” of camping journals and logbooks I came across during my research. As you commence with your own research, you’ll start to recognize the publishers and the standardized form used on the inside of their guidebooks. I will attempt to provide a link to “author pages” as provided by Amazon but in some cases the link will point to a general keyword search. Also, the links provided are affiliate links so I’ll earn a few cents for any purchase made through the link.
- AC Writers Club
- Alley MaGraw
- Angel Smith Creations
- Bri Travel Creations
- Burke & Bunny Books
- Camping Camper Journals
- Cute Notebooks
- Enchanted Willow
- Endless River Press
- Exquisite Press
- Family Camper Supplies
- Happy Eden Co
- Journals Unlimited
- Lourdes Welhaven, Annell Nelson
- Mounir Press
- Nomadic Souls
- Peter Pauper Press Inc
- Playful Press
- Pretty Useful Prompt Notebooks, Journals, & Logbooks
- Siskal RV Camping Planner
- Square Root of Squid
- Stacy Bressler
- Starshine
- Stylesyndikat Camping Friends
- T R Sutherland
- Wanderlust Life Press
- Zephyr Press
There are many, many more journals that I’ve not included here. If you know of some really good camping journals or logbooks that I’ve not discovered, let me know. I’d be happy to take a look and decide if it should be included in this post.