Pinning Past Adventures and Charting New Explorations with a Conquest Map

There is something special about traveling and exploring new places, which is one of the many reasons I enjoy cruising. In a digital world, all of our memories are tucked away on our smartphones, memory cards, hard drives. Select photos become focal points on walls in your home or backgrounds on your devices. When I was young, my parents picked up a travel map for me so that I could track my travels across the United States. The map hung on my bedroom wall, and I still have this map, although it is in a box in the attic. I’ve been looking for a way to document, primarily, our cruise travels, and one day after looking at scratch-off poster travel maps, I was presented with an advertisement on Instagram from ConquestMaps.com.

Now, I know what you are thinking, they sent you a map in exchange for a promotion on the website, NOPE. I promise, this is NOT AN AD; I liked what I saw in the Instagram ad, shared it with the family, and placed an order. Less than a week later, a box arrived.

Right out of the box… No, right away, before the map was out of the box, I was impressed. There was a sticker on the box with instructions on how to properly open the box to avoid damaging the map.

Conquest Map Box

The maps are wrapped in bubble wrap and there is an thank you card with some tips to care for your map.

When we ordered the map, we were given the choice of the actual map, the style of the map, and our choice of two packs of push pins. A map having guide, level, and nails were also included.

The different maps styles available should offer something to match almost any decor. I liked the older looking maps with sailing ships on the Golden Age and the Rustic Vintage. Ultimately, Rustic Vintage won out as it better matched the wall color.

The map is printed on canvas with full printing wrapped around a wood frame. Sandwiched between the canvas and the wood frame is a layer of cork which keeps the pins secure.

When ordering, we were given the choice to personalize the legend for an extra fee with a unique style and specific text. Included in the price you are offered a choice of 2 packs of 50 push pins to get started.

Conquest Map Legend

Our first challenge was deciding on our push pin color coding plan. We ended up going with silver for past adventures, and bronze for places yet to explore.

Conquest Map Legend Past Future Adventures

We started pinning all of our visited ports of call using summary list automatically generated based on my past cruises on My Cruise Summary. Since we had some pins remaining, we expanded the past adventures to include non-cruise trips for a complete family travel history.

Now, the fun part, pinning future adventures. This was a mix of pre-planned as well as destinations we’d like to visit in the future.

Specialty push pins are also available to highlight locations. After pinning our silver and bronze pins on the map, we went back and ordered hearts and houses to add to the map.

Now, our family’s past adventures, and future explorations are on the wall enabling us to look back and to the future.

Overall, I was really impressed with Conquest Maps, the only regret, I have is that we didn’t order a second regional map of the Caribbean to make it easier to see which ports we’ve visited as it is difficult to see all the islands on the World Map once you start pinning. As I mentioned, in the beginning, this is not an advertisement and I do not have any affiliation with Conquest Maps, I just wanted to share a family activity from this summer as we were looking back at our past cruises and looking forward to embarking on our next cruise adventure.

What have you done to document your travels, do you have a travel map?

7 Replies to “Pinning Past Adventures and Charting New Explorations with a Conquest Map”

  1. Colleen Barsin

    Scott,
    Thanks so much for this post. It’s the perfect Christmas gift for my daughter and son in law.

    Reply
  2. Michelle P

    We bought a world map and tacked it to the wall in our guest bedroom (DCL themed). We have three colors: one for places traveled together and one for each of us for places we travelled on our own.

    Reply

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