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It’s summer, the time of the year when we book our trips, tweet our vacation plans, and set up our auto-replies. In two weeks, I will be traveling to Russia, starting in St. Petersburg and cruising down the Volga River until I reach Moscow. Before I give off the wrong message, I’m not one of those epic explorers you see on TV shows, or busy consultants who travel intensely with suits and briefcases. I’m just a regular vacationer. As a kid, my parents would take me somewhere new every few months, and now it’s become a custom to travel.

Recently, I realized that aside from my favorite destinations, some of the places I’ve been to have begun to blur together. I needed a better way to keep track of travel memories.

So I started reading reviews and blogs about the various vacation-related mobile apps. As expected, I found hundreds of travel apps, many of them designed with precision and creativity, covering everything from recommendations to reservations to language translations. They fit into five general categories:

1. Suggestions: A database of amazing travel destinations (i.e. Beautiful Planet HD)

2. Reviews: Recommendations on specific tourist sites, services, and restaurants (i.e. TripAdvisor)

3. Itinerary management: Flight schedules, hotel bookings (i.e. Blackberry Travel App)

4. Navigation: Maps, GPS systems, gas prices, parking areas (i.e. Garmin StreetPilot)

5. Other useful tools: Currency calculator, language translation (i.e. Language Translation Phrasebook)

Sure, it’s extremely convenient to have all those features, but there was something missing: the people I met, the decisions I made, the personal memories, where did they fit in? Years after a trip, I won’t look back and think about the GPS route or flight time. I want to look back at the small yet unforgettable details of my trip:

I want to remember the lady in Mongolia who had woken up at 5 am to pick berries, smiling at me as she washed them. When I asked what they were for, she replied, “I’m making jam for you, because you’re from the city and you’ve never had fresh jam.” And the man who had galloped bareback on a horse on the mountain trail, something I’d only seen in movies. And the children in the Philippines who imitated my English and then giggled cheerfully as they ran off.

This summer, my ideal mobile app would be able capture the life and energy of my travels. My ideal app would help me recreate the beautiful memories of travel. I would include features such as these:

1. Favorites: Favorite street, favorite mountain, favorite night out. A notepad where I can write down anything that I found absolutely fascinating, along with the date and location.

2. People: A collection of photos and names of people I met, and why they were awesome.

3. Quotes: Funny, embarrassing, or best of all, inspiring.

4. Photos: The ability to add effects to make the most memorable photos stand out.

5. Integration: This is the most important feature. The app should be able to combine all of the above into a collage-type piece of art, a true memory book featuring all my favorite details, events, and people.

6. Share: The option to share parts of my memories on social media, while keeping others private.

At the end of the day, when we go home and talk about our travels with our friends and family, we make recommendations based on whether there was something worth experiencing and remembering. That “something” is what a summer vacation app should capture.