iPad or notebook

Set up the ipad to receive your email Email yourself the Word document by attaching the file to the email. You should be able to click on the attachment when you open your email on your iPad and it should open as a PDF file. You can view it, but not alter it. You can also word process documents on the iPad itself using "Pages" app from the app store (cheap). I'm not sure if a Word document will transfer to Pages or not.

Word documents can be transferred to Pages. I used a memory stick to move documents from Word on my laptop, to Pages on my new Mac.
Never thought I'd be able to say anything about Techie 'stuff', most of it is a mystery to me ;-)

If it's an emergency and you're running out of time, or it's something like a page in an atlas, just take a picture. Screen shots of stuff you dig up off the Internet work well also. Drop box is the king of solutions.

After opening the PDF from your email on the iPad, you save it to iBooks.

I agree with Ed, Dropbox is great. Sign up for a free account, which gives you 2GB or 3GB of free online storage. Copy the files you want into the Dropbox folder that is created on your PC and they will be uploaded to the online storage. Go to the Apple app store, install the iPad Dropbox app. Log in to your Dropbox account and you will see all your files. Any you mark as favourites on your iPad app will be downloaded to that device. Anything you don't mark as a favourite will stay in the online storage, but will be available when you have a WiFi signal. Dropbox synchronises all your devices, and provides a backup (which isn't really a backup in IT terms, but it'll do as a description for here) in the online storage. You can also save items from your iPad to Dropbox and access them on your PC.

I tried saving as a PDF and into ibooks but I can't edit it from here. any ideas?

Best 10 bucks i have spent. I downloaded Pages and it works great! Thank you all for your tremendous help it is greatly appreciated!

With that endorsement, Shelley, I'll get it too! Thanks for posting the question.

Thanks George I might look into that too. Yes we like to keep track...usually just in a little notebook but the app might be nice too. I'm glad my question helped you out Bett too. You never know if your question will be something that everyone else knows and you just never knew or it's something that others need to know. :) I think the people on Rick Steves have been a tremendous help to me with planning our trip. :)