Travel Blog Posting Contest

Here's a chance to win a trip around the world

Does the world need more travel blogs? Probably not. There are already way to many unenlightening "what I did on my vacation"-type blogs out there. Does the world need more informative, insightful, well-written travel postings in cyberspace? Maybe "need" is too strong a word, but armchair and actual travelers alike can never read of the latter. I applaud any medium, traditional or not, that tries to get more quality writing out there.

A British site called My Life of Travel, a searchable online, anthology of travel journal postings, seems to want to elevate the content on the site that currently includes a lot of pedestrian prose. It is trolling for more inspiring words than this sampling I just pulled up from some posts that are on the home page:

• "Annie and I left Grand Junction, CO on the 22nd of June and drove until 4:30 a.m. to get to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We spent Sunday biking with the Lohans and enjoyed ourselves as we biked past waterfalls, parks, rivers, and vagrants... (the vagrants are wild here so it is suggested that you don't feed them) :0) We then drove north to I'falls..."
• "So we headed for Mancora, a small beach resort in the North of Peru which at the right time of year is a great destination for surfing and general sun lovers! ...."
• "Well, we've done it. Exactly four months and 18,741km after arriving in Cape Town to start my African adventure, we arrived safe and sound in the bustling metropolis of Cairo."

In that context, it shouldn't be too difficult for a talented writer to come up with at least 100 well-chosen words and a photograph s/he has taken while traveling to have a shot at winning one round-the-world trip in a contest that My Life of Travel is promoting. The rules are simple:

How to Win
Create at least 1 journal entry about any location you have visited.
Your entry must contain at least 100 words.
Your entry must
contain at least 1 photograph that you have taken.
Entry Closing Date
September 26, 2008

There is a link you can click on to enter, and you must register in order to do so. My Life of Travel does not indicate who the judge(s) might be, but if my quick scan of the posted journals from the land of Shakespeare and Byron and Austen are any indication, the competition might not be too stiff. Good luck.

Site Features -- Contest or Not

The My Life of Travel site has some intriguing features, including each contributor's ability to create an interactive map to accompany his/her journal entry. And if you are planning a trip somewhere, finding what others have posted there. The search function is easy, and even if some of the prose is snooze-encouraging, you might just find useful gems there. And if you are lusting to launch to your words about travel into cyberspace, paid or not, you might explore My Life of Travel as a way to do it.