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My Travel Innovations

Disclaimer

Updated: July 17, 2026

1. What this document covers

This page explains the limits of what My Travel Innovations publishes and how you should treat the material you find here. The journal documents trials: methods for planning and running independent trips, tested by one editor and written up plainly. A trial report describes what happened in one place, on one set of dates, under one set of conditions. It is a record of an experiment, not a set of instructions, and it arrives with no warranty of any kind. Read this page beside two others: the Terms of Use set the rules for using the site at all, and the Privacy Policy deals with personal information. The three documents are meant to be read together. If any part of them seems unclear to you, reach the office through the contact page before you rely on anything published here.

2. Informational purposes only

Everything on this site exists for general information and reading interest only. Articles describe experiments Evan Merrick ran while planning or taking his own trips in and around Idaho. They reflect his judgment, his tolerance for inconvenience, and the exact conditions he met on specific days. Nothing here is a directive, a tailored recommendation, or a substitute for your own preparation. When a trial reports that a method worked, that statement covers one attempt by one traveler with one bag and one calendar. Your dates, your route, your companions, and your obligations will differ in ways the journal cannot predict. Treat every article as a field report from someone else's trip, written for readers who enjoy seeing a method examined. Then decide for yourself what, if anything, transfers to your own plans, and test it in a low-stakes setting before you depend on it far from home.

3. No professional advice

My Travel Innovations publishes the work of an editor, not a licensed practitioner. Nothing on this site constitutes professional advice, and reading it creates no professional relationship between you and the company or Evan Merrick. The point deserves specifics, so here they are.

If a decision carries legal, medical, or personal weight, hire the right professional for it. Treat this journal as background reading at most, and never as the deciding voice.

4. Field methods and your own responsibility

The trials often involve physical activity in real places: walking a river loop before sunrise, riding a regional bus across a high desert plateau, or navigating a town with a paper map while the phone stays in the bag. If you choose to repeat any method described here, you do so at your own risk and under your own judgment. Evaluate your fitness, your footwear, your equipment, and your familiarity with the area before you start. Build margin into your schedule so a missed connection or a closed path never becomes an emergency. Travel with a companion when conditions suggest it, tell someone where you are going, and carry water and layers appropriate to the season. The journal cannot see the ground in front of you on the day you go. You can see it, and that makes you the only qualified decision maker out there.

5. Weather, roads, and public spaces

Outdoor conditions change faster than any publication schedule can track. A path described as firm in March can flood in April. A rural road that sat quiet on one weekday can carry heavy equipment through the same stretch during harvest. Check forecasts from official weather services before you leave, and check them again while you are out. Obey posted signage, seasonal closures, and traffic law without exception, even when a detour ruins the plan. In museums, markets, stations, and other shared spaces, follow the directions of staff, drivers, rangers, and security personnel at all times. Their instructions outrank anything you read here, every single time. Local rules exist for reasons a visiting writer may never learn about. If an article describes a route or a room that has since closed, the closure wins, and the respectful move is to turn around without argument.

6. Accuracy, currency, and aging content

The editor checks facts at the time of writing and lists consulted materials in the What was checked notes at the end of each article. Even so, published details begin to age the day they go live. Timetables shift with the seasons. Opening hours contract in winter and stretch in summer. Admission fees, platform assignments, ticket rules, and construction detours change without notice and without courtesy. The journal dates every article and marks meaningful revisions when they happen, but it cannot promise that any operational detail remains correct at the moment you read it. Where a number matters to your plan, treat the version printed here as a historical observation from a specific date, not as a current fact. The older the article, the more skeptically you should read its particulars.

7. Verify with official sources

Before you act on any schedule, hour, fee, or requirement mentioned on this site, confirm it directly with the operator, the venue, or the responsible public office. Official websites, posted notices at the location itself, and staffed information desks are the right places for current answers. A phone call still works remarkably well for small facilities that update their websites slowly. The source notes attached to each article tell you what the editor consulted during the trial. They exist for transparency about the reporting, not as a substitute for your own confirmation. Five minutes of checking before departure costs you almost nothing. Recovering from a wrong assumption in an unfamiliar town, after the last bus has left, costs a great deal more.

8. No endorsement of places or services

Articles name towns, trails, stations, museums, markets, and other locations because the trials happened there. A mention is a fact of the record, not an endorsement, a rating, or a promise about the experience you will have. The journal accepts no payment for coverage, holds no affiliate arrangements, and runs no sponsored placements of any kind. No place named on this site asked to appear, reviewed the text before publication, or approved what was written. The same logic runs in reverse as well. If a location never appears in these pages, that absence says nothing negative about it. The log covers where one editor happened to go, and nothing more than that.

9. Not a travel agency, not a carrier

My Travel Innovations is an independent publication. It is not a travel agency or booking service, it sells no tickets or tours, it takes no payments, and it is not affiliated with any airline, rail operator, or reservation platform. The company cannot reserve anything on your behalf, cannot alter a booking you made elsewhere, and cannot intervene in a disagreement between you and any operator. When an article mentions a bus, a train, or a small airport, it treats them as environment: the setting in which a method was tested. Any arrangement you make for transport, lodging, or admission is a contract between you and the party that provides it. This journal has no part in that contract and accepts no responsibility for how it is performed.

10. Reader notes and corrections

Readers sometimes write in to flag a detail that changed after a trial was published. The office welcomes these notes and reviews each one during regular hours. Where a correction is confirmed, the editor updates the article and moves the revision date forward. This process improves the record over time, but it cannot make the record perfect. Sending a correction creates no obligation beyond an honest review, and a delay in updating a page does not shift responsibility for your plans onto the journal. The FAQ explains how reader notes are handled, and the contact page lists the address that reaches the editor directly.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, My Travel Innovations LLC, its editor, and anyone contributing to the site are not liable for any loss, injury, delay, expense, or damage of any kind arising from your use of the site or your reliance on its content. This includes direct, indirect, incidental, and consequential damages, whether a claim rests in contract, tort, or any other legal theory. What is published here comes with no promise attached, of any sort, whether stated outright or assumed. This paragraph puts the limit from the Terms of Use into ordinary words; where the wording of the two differs, the Terms decide. Local law sometimes refuses to enforce limits like these, and where that is so, the parts it refuses simply do not bind you.

12. Changes to this disclaimer

The company reviews this document whenever the site changes in a way that affects it, and at least once a year alongside the other policies. When the text changes, the updated date at the top of this page moves forward, and meaningful revisions are described plainly rather than buried. Continued use of the site after a revision means you accept the revised version, as the Terms of Use explain. The current version always lives at this address. If you keep a copy for your own records, compare it against this page from time to time so you are reading the wording that actually applies.

Contact about this policy

Questions about this disclaimer reach the office fastest in writing, though the phone works during listed hours.

A short note that names the section you are asking about gets the quickest answer. The office replies during the listed hours, usually within a few business days.