This is a big month for family history in my family, and I haven’t even had to leave my house.

My sister is in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime, cross-it-off-your-bucket-list road trip, driving the length of Route 66 from Santa Monica to Chicago. Along the way, she’s visiting ghost towns, making a stop in Roswell, and (with a nod to the Eagles’ ‘Take It Easy’), standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. Luckily for this family historian, she’s documenting her adventures with daily photo updates, travel blogging, and plenty of postcards.

All of this is wonderful material to save for descendants who may be trying to piece together our lives, decades or even centuries from now. A travel diary can tell them much more than where we went. It can reveal what interested us, who we spent time with, and what we thought was worth stopping to see.

Technology makes it easier to share those details as we go. My sister uses Polarsteps, which I recently signed up for so I could follow her updates on my phone and laptop. Of course, sharing our adventures today is only part of the job. Saving the photos and stories somewhere we can find them later helps make them part of our family history.

(Winslow, AZ, courtesy of T. Janssen)

My mother and sister live together, so while one is out on the open road, the other has moved in with us for a few weeks.

Having my mom here for an extended visit is so much nicer than our usual single-day family gatherings or quick overnights. Those visits tend to be full of things to do and people to entertain. This time, we have room for ordinary days and unhurried conversations.

My mom is among the last surviving members of her generation in our family, and one of the few who remembers the generations before hers. She’ll happily answer my questions about old photos, family stories, and who was related to whom. But with a longer visit, I didn’t want to wear her out with a constant family history interview. Instead, I decided to try a few things that would let the conversation flow naturally.

First, I set up a digital photo frame and loaded it with family photos. This was something I’d been meaning to do for a while, so getting it done was a bonus. As the pictures cycle through, Mom can decide whether a familiar face or scene brings up a story she wants to share. Sometimes a photograph prompts a memory that I wouldn’t have known to ask about.

Second, we made a meal plan. My husband and I eat very different diets, and my mother added a third set of meals to consider. Some of her suggestions were dishes from my childhood, which sparked conversations about growing up in a middle-class Italian American home and how our meals compared with those in my husband’s Ashkenazi Jewish family.

Food belongs in our family histories, too. The dishes we remember, the people who prepared them, and the occasions when we ate them can tell us a great deal about family traditions and everyday life. A recipe becomes much more meaningful when we know whose kitchen it came from.

Third, I encouraged Mom to bring her Christmas cards and address list so she could start working on them here. It gave her a project to enjoy, and it gave me a chance to look through the names with her. Perhaps we’ll reconnect with a lost relative or two. Even a familiar name can lead to a useful conversation about how someone fits into the family and why we’ve stayed in touch over the years.

My sister’s trip is creating new family stories, while my mother’s visit is helping us recover older ones. Both remind me that family history is still happening all around us. It’s in the postcards arriving in the mail, the photos changing on a screen, and the conversation over dinner.

If someone in your family is traveling, or coming to visit, consider saving a little more than the itinerary. Write down a story, identify a face in a photograph, or ask about a favorite childhood meal. Those small details may become the very things a future family historian is most delighted to find.

(Note: I have two conferences back to back this month and won’t be able to do Office Hours. Let’s meet again in November before the holiday craziness starts!)