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My Travel Innovations

Terms of Use

Updated: July 17, 2026

1. Acceptance of these terms

These Terms of Use govern your access to mytravelinnovations.com and every page published on it. The site is owned and operated by My Travel Innovations LLC, a registered Idaho Limited Liability Company with its office in Boise. By opening any page, reading any article, or sending a message through the contact form, you accept these terms in full. If you do not agree with any part of them, close the site and do not use it. That sounds blunt, but it keeps the arrangement honest on both sides.

These terms work together with three companion documents. The Privacy Policy explains how reader information is handled. The Cookie Policy covers the single small setting this site keeps in your browser. The Disclaimer explains the limits of the field notes we publish. Where one of those documents addresses a specific subject, its wording controls for that subject.

You must be at least eighteen years old, or the age of majority where you live, to submit information through the contact form. Simply reading the journal carries no age requirement. No account, registration, or password exists anywhere on this site, so there are no membership terms to worry about.

2. What this site is, and what it is not

My Travel Innovations is an independent publication. Evan Merrick, the founder and editor, tests planning methods for self-organized trips and writes up the results as trials. The journal has two sections, Workbench for methods tested at the desk and Waypoints for methods checked in the field. Publishing those write-ups is the entire scope of the operation, and it is worth stating the boundaries plainly.

This site is not a travel agency and not a booking service. It sells no tickets, no tours, no lodging, and no goods of any kind. It takes no payments and stores no payment information, because there is nothing here to pay for. It is not affiliated with any airline, rail operator, or reservation platform, and it holds no inventory on behalf of anyone.

Reading an article here creates no client relationship, no agency relationship, and no duty beyond what the law requires of a publisher. Every decision about a real trip, and every arrangement you make with a carrier or a host, remains yours alone. If a page ever seems to suggest otherwise, treat that as a drafting error and let us know.

3. Acceptable use of the site

You are welcome to read every page, print single copies for personal reference, and share links with anyone you like. Personal, noncommercial reading requires no permission from us. Teachers and librarians may hand out printed excerpts in a classroom or reading group, with credit to the journal.

When you use the site, you agree not to do any of the following. Do not interfere with the operation of the site or the systems that deliver it. Do not attempt to reach any file, directory, or mailbox that is not offered to the public. Do not send automated traffic designed to overload pages or harvest content at scale. Do not submit false information through the contact form or write to us while posing as another person. Do not present yourself as connected with this company when you are not. Do not frame the site inside another site in a way that hides where the material came from. Do not use the site in any manner that violates federal, state, or local law.

We may limit or block access when activity threatens the site or its readers. We would rather never use that option, and a plain email asking someone to stop is always our first step.

4. Intellectual property

Every article, headline, page description, illustration plate, logo, checklist, and design element on this site belongs to My Travel Innovations LLC unless a page names another source. The same applies to the trial format itself and to the wording of every policy page, including this one. Copyright in this material is reserved from the moment of publication, whether or not a notice appears next to it.

Quotation is welcome within fair limits. You may quote brief passages from an article, in print or online, when you clearly credit My Travel Innovations and name the piece you drew from. A working link back to the original page is appreciated wherever your format allows one. Reviews, commentary, criticism, and reporting that rely on short excerpts are exactly the kinds of use we are glad to see.

Some uses require written permission first, and a few are simply off the table. Do not republish a full article, or a substantial portion of one, on another site or in another publication. Do not copy, crop, recolor, or redraw our illustration plates for use elsewhere. Do not scrape this site with automated tools to build datasets, archives, or mirrors. Do not feed our text or images into the training of machine learning models, language models, or similar automated systems without prior written permission from the company. Permission requests can go to the mailroom address listed at the end of this page, and a person answers each one.

We publish original work, and we extend the same respect to the original work of others. If you believe that material on this site copies your protected work, tell us and we will look into it promptly and in good faith.

Send your notice by email to mailroom@mytravelinnovations.com with the subject line Copyright concern. You may also mail a letter to My Travel Innovations LLC, 950 W Bannock St, Boise, ID 83702, United States. Either route reaches the same desk, so pick whichever you prefer.

A complete notice includes five things. First, identify the work you believe was copied, with a registration number or a pointer to the original where one exists. Second, identify the exact page on this site where the material appears, ideally with the full page address. Third, include your name, postal address, and an email address where we can reach you. Fourth, state that you believe in good faith that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, an agent of the owner, or the law. Fifth, state that the information in your notice is accurate, and sign it, physically or electronically.

We review every complete notice and respond within ten business days of receiving it. If the claim holds up, we will remove or rework the material and tell you exactly what we did. If we believe the use is lawful, we will explain our reasoning in plain language rather than sending a form letter. An incomplete notice gets a reply asking for the missing pieces, not silence.

6. Mentions of third parties

Articles on this site sometimes name real places, public agencies, transit systems, museums, markets, trails, and similar points of reference. These mentions appear as plain text only. The site contains no outbound links, no embedded maps, no social feeds, and no third party widgets of any kind, so a name on a page never carries you anywhere else.

A mention is never an endorsement, and it is never paid. No organization named in an article has sponsored, reviewed, or approved the piece it appears in, and we accept no compensation, product, or favor in exchange for coverage. The reverse is also true: nothing on this site implies that a named party endorses this journal or its methods. Names appear because a trial happened somewhere real, and honest field notes require saying where.

Any name or mark that belongs to someone else remains the property of its owner. We use such names for identification and description only, in the ordinary editorial sense.

7. No warranties

This journal is published in whatever condition it happens to be in on the day you read it, with no promise that it is complete, current, uninterrupted or fit for what you intend. So far as the law permits, My Travel Innovations LLC gives no assurance of any sort, neither stated nor assumed, and that includes the assurances a court would otherwise read in about quality, suitability for a particular use, ownership and freedom from infringement.

Field notes record what happened on specific dates under specific conditions. Schedules shift, trails close, hours change, and a method that worked cleanly in April can fall apart in November. We do not promise that any article is current, complete, or free of error. We do not promise that the site will be reachable at any given moment, or that it will load free of technical faults. The Disclaimer sets out these limits in more detail, and it is worth reading before you build plans around anything published here.

8. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, My Travel Innovations LLC, its members, managers, and agents will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the site or your reliance on its content. This exclusion covers, without limitation, the cost of a disrupted trip, a missed departure or connection, a canceled or rebuilt reservation, lodging arranged around a plan that later changed, gear bought on the strength of an article, lost time, and lost data.

If liability is found despite the paragraph above, the total combined liability of My Travel Innovations LLC for all claims related to the site will not exceed one hundred United States dollars. You read this journal free of charge, and the cap reflects that arrangement. Not every place enforces exclusions and caps of this kind. Where the local rule refuses one, that part falls away, and what remains of our liability is held down to whatever narrow margin that rule does allow.

9. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless My Travel Innovations LLC, its members, managers, and agents from claims, damages, losses, and reasonable attorney fees asserted by a third party and arising from your breach of these terms, your misuse of the site, or your violation of any law or of the rights of another person. We will notify you promptly of any such claim and may, at our own expense, take part in the defense. This section survives any end of your use of the site.

10. Governing law and venue

These terms, and any dispute connected with the site, are governed by the laws of the State of Idaho, without regard to its conflict of law rules. You and My Travel Innovations LLC agree that the state and federal courts sitting in Ada County, Idaho have exclusive jurisdiction over any such dispute, and each side consents to personal jurisdiction there. If you reach this site from outside the United States, you are responsible for following your local law, and you accept Idaho law for any claim against the company.

Before filing anything, write to the mailroom first. Most disagreements about content can be settled with a short exchange of email, a correction, or an added clarification, and we take corrections seriously as a matter of editorial pride.

11. Changes to these terms

We may revise these terms from time to time as the journal grows or the law changes. The date at the top of this page always shows the latest revision. When a change is substantive, we will say so plainly on this page rather than slipping it in quietly. Your continued use of the site after a revision takes effect means you accept the revised terms. If a revision does not sit well with you, the remedy is simple: stop using the site. We keep prior versions on file at the office, and you can request one through the contact page.

12. General provisions

These terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Cookie Policy, and the Disclaimer, form the entire agreement between you and My Travel Innovations LLC about this site. If a court finds any provision unenforceable, that provision will be trimmed to the smallest degree necessary, and the rest of the terms remain in force. Our choice not to enforce a provision at a given moment is not a waiver of it. You may not assign your rights under these terms to anyone else. The company may assign its rights in connection with a reorganization of the business. The headings are signposts for reading and carry no weight of their own; the paragraph beneath a heading means what it says.

Contact about this policy

Questions about these terms, permission requests, and copyright notices all reach a person at the editorial office, not a queue. Choose whichever route suits you, and expect a reply from a human being.

We answer most notes within three business days. Copyright notices receive a substantive response within ten business days, as described in section 5 above.