I really enjoy reading about your JMT trips with the kids! What wonderful memories they will have.... and how lucky they are to start out their backpacking lives like this!!
...and...OMG... your pictures are amazing!!!
I also have a question - last year (or the year before?) you had posted info on a book that you had printed for the kids on one of their JMT hikes... what was the publishing company? I remember that you were really happy with the result, and had posted it... I was impressed.
Rosie,
thanks for the kind words - going to be harder and harder to get them to do this now that they turned into true teenagers at thirTEEN
Book company was blurb.com, the link is in my signature. The place is one of the more affordable online one-off book printing outfit that lets you print them in quantity 1 if you wish (and the software they provide for free is relatively easy to figure out compared to pro publishing and layout software).
It's expensive per copy, especially in the large format I chose, and thus not really meant for volume resale, but for memories there's nothing better than a fat hardbound book with large two-page spread sized images of your trip. I'm definitely going to do another one for 2010, but right now am not really sure what format to use. The big satellite maps and daily multi-page coverage for the entire trip may be a bit much and somewhat repetitive. Maybe a collection of themes and memories, dunno yet.
One day I'll also publish my German language JMT guide, which I first wanted to write in 1990 when publishing something like that would have been a tough undertaking, but now I actually have no excuse left other than the time it would take to do it. There's a lot of info Europeans don't have easy access to unless they do a lot of online research before their trip, and a brief guide focusing on logistics and other basic stuff that's never covered in the guides available now may just find a few dozen buyers a year, especially if I keep the book small and to the point.
