This is separate from Robert’s goal to photograph all 50 state capitol buildings. He is usually drawn to small, county courthouses when he has a camera in hand though, so it seemed like a natural fit.

Do you have any photography goals like this? Maybe you take photos of birds or tree leaves. Or you love to photography textures. What is it that you find over and over again in your photo files? We challenge you – whether you are a writer, blogger, or just plain traveler – to give yourself some photo goals in 2010. It could be to try taking photos from a different angle. Or to capture every independent coffee shop you visit. It could be to find the color blue. Whatever it is, go do it! And let us know what it is so we can all encourage each other along the way.

Here’s the gallery of courthouses so far – please go check it out! And if you love one of our photos, let us know. We can set up some options so you can buy a print, have it on a coffee mug, or pretty much anything else you want. We’d love to see our photos out in the world, being enjoyed.

What's this? Lonely Planet is our giveaway sponsor. Keep reading to learn about our great Lonely Planet prize.

I got the cool part right. Passports with Purpose was started last year by a group of travel bloggers who wanted to make a difference. Instead of just writing about the places they visit, they wanted to jump in and do something bigger. I’ll bet they knew not everyone could buy a plane ticket to go on a faraway service project too. So Passports with Purpose – a month of travel (and other) bloggers giving away great prizes – was born. How does that help? The giveaways are a raffle style. Entries cost $10. For each entry, or ticket, you buy, you can put your name in for a prize. The prize list is growing every day, and there is some great stuff in there. Keep reading to find out what we’re raising money for.

Passports with Purpose is partnering with AAfC – American Assistance for Cambodia to build a rural school. I knew we were in as soon as I saw the project. Robert and I are both certified teachers (though neither of us is teaching now) and good schools for kids are something we know can make a difference.

Passports with Purpose is working to raise $13,000 – the cost of one school in Cambodia through AAfC. The school will be a recognized school by the government and supplied with teachers, it will have solar power for computers, desks and all the basics, and a well to provide water for the students. In a small, rural village, this is a big deal. It gives the children the opportunity to learn, and to possibly move beyond the poverty of their village if they want to. AAfC also works to provide internet for the schools, both via satellite and through the ingenious motoman system where a motorcycle equipped with a satellite internet receiver travels to schools in the area to provide wifi for a certain amount of time each day.

Just $10 is all it takes to get involved. You can make a difference for an entire village as well as win great stuff. Pick a prize and jump in! Better yet, pick our prize – a $75 Lonely Planet gift certificate. You can select the Lonely Planet guidebooks you want from their online store (Note: redemption is via mail not via the online shop. Details provided to the winner). We love the Guide to Travel Writing, the Guide to Travel Photography and all of the US Trips books. The best part about our giveaway though, is that you can pick any books that you want with the $75 gift certificate. So if you’re planning a trip, dreaming of a trip, want to read about other people’s trips, see beautiful photographs or even read the Lonely Planet magazine, it’s all up to you. And with frequent sales and special prices you could probably get four or five books, easily.

Map link

We’re really looking forward to attending Schlitterbahn’s Hill Country Christmas which is what is bringing us to New Braunfels.  Since we have four days in town for the holiday weekend we’re also planning a stop at Gruene Hall to get our picture taken with Cowboy Kringle.  Also, who could go to New Braunfels without stopping at the Smokehouse?  The delicious smoked meats and sausage are something we’ve really enjoyed.  Finally, we’re likely to take in some hiking at either Colorado Bend State Park or Enchanted Rock State Nature Area.

We’re still open to suggestions, so if you have any hot spots in or around New Braunfels, Gruene, Fredricksburg or even Austin or San Antonio be sure to hit the comment button and let us know what else is a can’t miss in the Texas Hill Country.

We’ll head first up towards Springfield, IL to take in the Lincoln Home and other Lincoln sites (and hopefully find some tacos). Then it’s on to Northwest Indiana to spend some quality family time, as well as seeing some of the local sites – namely the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and LaGrange County (Amish country). After that we’re planning several days to meander across Ohio and Pennsylvania to get to New Jersey. We’ll basecamp in New Jersey for about 5 days, seeing the sites, maybe running in to New York City before finally, making the long trek back home again.

We are planning lots of posts and lots of information on Twitter, and the coolest part is you can follow us on The Wonder Map made by our friend Austin of Travellious.

Basically, you can look at the wonder map and see where we plan to be each day – roughly at least – see photos of places we’ve visited and, the best part, you can suggest places for us to visit along the way. This is where we need your help. Look at the map, see the route, and give us your best suggestions for Taco Travelers along the way. Springfield, IL will be our first target, so if you know of a good place, let us know right away!

We’d also love to hear about campgrounds, good hiking spots, dog-friendly places, or anything you just think is cool along the way. We’ll try and hit as many suggestions as we can. The wonder Map will be a great place to see some of our photos and our Twitter information and experience the trip in “real-time” with us. We’ll be posting along the way too, but it will be a mix of things we do on the trip along with some other posts so the Wonder Map will be the way to really know what’s going on.

So please, jump in and make some suggestions, follow us on Twitter (@Travel_Notebook or search for the #rtaddicts hashtag) and get ready to ride along.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

Cherie of The Travel Bee is the winner! She said:

My favorite destination list is growing with each country/city I visit. However, there is one Place that I absolutely love. That is Canterbury, England. It is a charming little town, with boatloads of history! Away from the hustle and bustle of London, about two hours away by train. There you will see quaint buildings, winding rivers, a grand cathedral in the middle of the city, and cobblestone streets. You will fall in love with this place, as I did. I hope to go back someday, and England is one of my favorite countries to visit. There are so much history, So many different towns with so much character. London is another place I have to add to my list. With many reasons, I cannot list all of them-for it would be too much! I would love to go back to England, and touch the soil each season. For I am sure, there is much to offer travel addicts!

Care for a Cup of Tea and Scones anyone?

Cherie – send me an email chris (at) littletravelnotebook (dot) com and I’ll get this sent off for you to enjoy!

Travelers and Travel Writers – pay attention! If you missed the Travel Blog Exchange on July 26, you missed some important stuff. Not only did we get some great ideas for building our blog but we made some fabulous contacts and got some cool swag. Keep reading if you want some cool swag too!

Kristain of Londonelicious is going to hook us up with some cheap eats next time we’re there.

Sandy of Travels with Sandy actually quit her job so she could travel. How cool is that?

Mary Ann of Enchanted-Traveler spends a few weeks each year in France and Kiratiana actually lived in Paris – and she’s blogging about how to do that for yourself.

Chris of Amateur Traveler has been podcasting about his travels for four years and shred some great insights both about travel and about capturing good video.

Amber of Mile High Mamas is cool just because she’s from Denver – we’re big fans of Colorado!

Heather is a flight attendant and shared some pretty hilarious stories from her Galley Gossip column on Gadling.

Linda writes about travels with children at MinneMom and wow, she has some serious detail in those posts. You’ll know where to go, how to get there, where all the good snacks are and everything.

Jeff of Savvy Navigator plans some awesome luxury tours for his gay clients. And we do mean awesome!

Kristin was there to represent the Chicago Office of Tourism who operates the awesome @exploreChicago on Twitter. Anything you need Chicago info just ask @exploreChicago and  they’ll hook you up.

Jessie and Ed were there from Wandering Educators and were great to meet up with.

Kelly of Travellious was there after several days on the road as part of the TBEX Road Trip. Kelly likes to travel rebelliously. We’re not quite there but we get it and we love it!

Donna of My Itchy Travel Feet writes for baby boomers who travel and she tweeted pretty much all of TBEX.

We also met folks from Vail Resorts who want us to come and visit and so many other people we can’t even list them all.

If you want to feel like you were there, here’s one opportunity – we’re giving away one of our Travel Blog Exchange Swag Bags.

Here’s what you’ll get –

• a Hertz laptop friendly backpack,
• an Energizer battery charger and batteries,
• a Boingo luggage tag and free try of Boingo internet,
• a free session of GoGo Inflight Internet,
• a bunch of the new Starbucks Via brew,
• an Ask Arthur Frommer book,
• a Tots-on-the-Go first aid kit,
• a Savvy Navigator luggage tag,
• a stainless steel TravelPod water bottle,
• a free level one language lesson from Rosetta Stone,
• a tugo cupholder for your suitcase,
• a $10 gift certificate and free shipping from Minimus.biz,
• a CD of the Indie Travel Podcast and
• a Hotels.com thumb drive.

In addition we picked up -

• a BootsnAll t-shirt (black, size large, men’s style),
• a BootsnAll sticker and
• a GoGo Inflight Internet luggage handle wrap.

In order to enter, please leave a comment with your name (we don’t want anonymous winners!) telling us your favorite travel destination and why you like it so much. We’re planning some trips and want some good ideas, so give us your best. You can gain an extra entry by tweeting about our contest, featuring a link to this post and our name, @Travel_Notebook.

The contest is open to anyone. You don’t have to be a travel blogger, you don’t have to live in the US. Now, start commenting! Contest ends at 12pm CST on Monday, August 3, 2009.

This time was a little different. There were three objectives – share some of my favorites with Robert, do some exploring, and of course, go to the Travel Blog Exchange conference.

I would say that most of that was accomplished. I’ll leave the  exploring and the favorites for another post, but TBEX… well, that was great. I am so happy that I found out about it in time and that we were able to go. Robert and I  have kicked around the idea of a travel blog, or some other project we could work on together for quite awhile. Pulling our idea together and starting it off in close proximity to this conference has given us a solid base to start off from, some seriously amazing contacts and lots of great ideas.

I am guessing our entire trip home will be spent talking about ideas, brainstorming and working on posts and plans. I definitely plan to spend some time looking at blogs of people we met, emailing everyone and just getting lots of things written up about Chicago.

We had the opportunity to ride on a sailboat  on Lake Michigan which made me feel like I was home all the way down into my bones. Going to TBEX and bringing Little Travel Notebook together, with Robert is that same kind of feeling.

We’re both really looking forward to the journey and we are glad we’ve met so many on the same journey! Welcome, we hope to keep  the conversation going.

In order to do that, I’m going to ask – what did you do  in Chicago that you loved? If you didn’t go to TBEX but you’ve been to Chicago, what’s your favorite memory of the city? Tell us here or tweet us @Travel_Notebook