Travel

Traveling has become another hobby of mine. I like to take mini trips, do Get-Aways, get-togethers, and go on long vacations. I have been traveling occasionally for many years. Although I share a few tidbits on Facebook about my travels by checking-in at spots so that they show-up on my Timeline, I have kept a lot of my adventures private. I share my awesome experiences with family, close friends, and some interested clients. The experiences I have had travelling though could easily make for some great stories, possible travel guidebooks, and entertainment reading. It has been suggested that I write a book or two to share a few of the adventures that I’ve had. Oh, if only I did. What incredible tales they would be.

So, although I already have an overwhelming number of things on my plate to keep up with and accomplish, I am going to try to start sharing some of my traveling adventures via this website. I am going to start with the one’s where I combine some aspect of the travel or adventure with one of my other hobbies which is Trains, or more specifically, model railroading.

One of the things I like to do is incorporate real train experiences into the places I visit. In some cases that might be something as simple as observing a consist of trains on the tracks (rail fanning) or stopping by a train facility. Sometimes it means riding a train, visiting someone’s train exhibit, or touring the homesteads, monuments, buildings, or other creations of railroad Tycoons. Occasionally, I get to pick-up train items that I don’t already have and add them to my collection. And sometimes, I’m simply inspired by a place, a thing, or an activity during my travels that I wish to incorporate into my train layouts or some aspect of them. If it is train related and I traveled to it or encountered it during a trip, I will be presenting those TRAVELS first.

Some of the Travels I present here will be PAY-PER-VIEW only. The reason for that is I need to keep the money flowing to keep the train collection growing, prepare to build my own storage facility / train museum, and keep on traveling, being able to share more and more great adventures with visitors to this site and eventually members of this site. It is also getting close to time to add programmers to help me get the programming that needs to be done on this site finished faster so that soon other people can SHARE their HOBBIES and their TRAVELS too.

I encourage you to support me if you see topics you like. Buy the hobbies that are up for sale. I do my best to evaluate every item and provide you with the most accurate description (and history, where known or discovered). Read or listen to the travels and adventures. If I’ve done something or been somewhere that you are planning to go, definitely check-out my experience there first. Many times, I may have done something that can make your travels easier, more fun, or more interesting.

However, it may not necessarily be a good idea for ANYONE to attempt to DUPLICATE anything you discover that I have done. Why? Because time and time again it has been determined that the majority of my adventures take on a very unique occurrence of their own. There are some experiences that I have had that cannot be replicated no matter what you try to do. The people, the circumstances, and a lot of other factors are just not going to be present and very few people have my personality or approach situations the way I do. You may see that many times I’m doing something solo in a situation where many people wouldn’t dare put themselves, yet FOR ME, it all works out. If you see pitfalls you can avoid, then do so. But do not try to reproduce circumstances to get the exact same results as me as attempting to do so could not work out in your favor.

Do not accept anything I have done as the only way to do something, the right way, or even the wrong way. It is simply THE WAY THAT I DID IT and sometimes I have to make adjustments in real time on the fly. Should you choose to visit a place, do a thing, or incorporate any aspect of what you read here into anything that you’re doing, you do so on your own volition. You agree to hold me harmless and unaccountable for any and all actions you take, any and all harm or negative circumstances that arise from your actions, even if you get the idea from me or are inspired by something you observe me doing.

DISCLAIMERS. I hereby disclaim that anything in this travel section is fit or appropriate for any use or any purposes other than for your possible reading entertainment pleasure.

The rest of this gets sticky and legal like, but it needs to be presented for my protection and to prevent people from getting bent out of shape, hurt, or trying to ruin stuff for me or anyone else.

You MAY NOT and CANNOT accuse me of anything, even if you happen to be someone present in any story you read or review here. I typically do not change the names of people, places, or things. And while most photography that I take is amateurish at best, I try to lessen the number of people present in photographs and videos. Nonetheless, one might easily find themselves among such content. No matter what, I am not responsible for what happened or happens to you or anyone else in anything that I present, do, or have done. If I reveal your name or someone else does, you are not entitled to bring any charges against me, them, or anyone else as a result of viewing any content contained here or referenced here. I am not liable for any negative or positive affect that any presentation of mine might have on you, your character, your lifestyle, your situation, or any aspects of you or anyone you know. If you are present in something that I happened to be doing, you are there on your own volition. Even if you were present as my guest, close friend, or family member, you have ZERO rights to any claims for or against anything, in regard to anything posted on this site, any debts incurred, and profits made, or any materials used. With the exception of being a consignor, no one has any rights to anything except me. Consignors have rights in other sections of this website governed by the agreements they signed.

I, and/or the entities I created, operate, or assigned ownership to, own the content, the presentations, the photography, the words, and all the rights associated with everything presented here. No other entity, constitution, law, or government shall have any right to ban, request access to, disable access to, share, destroy, create derivative works therefrom, or attack me or any materials related to any content posted here or referred thereto by me. You do not own any of this content, even if you THINK YOU DO, you don’t! I am not required, nor will I be required to answer, validate, or provide any proof or support for any statement I make. EVERYTHING I SAY SHALL BE DEEMED FACT unless I explicitly state otherwise. Anything stated by anyone else at any time shall be considered hearsay, irrelevant, not my statements, and not germane to my content. However, nothing audible shall be silenced, muted, or stricken from any content that I publish by any means or any entity including any algorithms or artificial intelligence except by me or on my insistence. Furthermore, NOTHING I present is scripted. There are no PERFORMERS present in any video whereby such performances occurred for monetary consideration on my behalf. However, if I happen to playback a song, a musical, a theatrical presentation, or bits and pieces of any of those, a movie, or live presentation, whatever price I paid to access such performances or materials was done so with the understanding that I had the right to record it and redistribute my copies thereof without any need for additional permission from you or its creator, and whereby I may charge for access to such content, no one other than me is entitled to any portion of such funds for any reason whatsoever.

I have visited places that place restricted use on personal photography and recordings made onsite at such places. I do my best to adhere to such restrictions and to lessen any impact that might happen to such places as a result of my presentation or replay of my recordings made at such places, I may provide PAID ACCESS to such content. It is rare that I knowingly recorded any such content with the premeditated intention of strictly monetizing such content later. In almost all cases, such content was recorded as part of me doing something else and because a stop or visit to such a place with restricted limitations on recorded content was encountered, such content was simply played back as part of the whole along with the other content elsewhere that was relevant to the materials being presented. If such a place deems that my playback or presentation of photographs or recordings made at their content limited facility has or is violating their limitations that were clearly presented to me prior to or at the time my recordings were made and NEVER AFTER such recordings were made, then a legal representative of that place may contact me and present evidence of their restricted limits and the date they have evidence that they informed me that such content could not be replayed by me. It will be up to me to determine if I will stop presenting any content deemed to violate such restrictions. If evidence is provided that I was aptly informed and agreed to such limited use restrictions, my presentation will be removed within a reasonably executable timeframe from review of your notice. Additionally, I will inform you that I received your notice and that I removed such content. Otherwise, I will inform you that you have no claims, and the content will not be discontinued or removed. Prior to contacting me you should review and understand the following scenario:

Imagine, if you will, that I have a GoPro strapped to my body or head. The GoPro is visible by anyone looking at me. I have the GoPro turned on and it has been on since I started my adventure or since the most recent battery change. While the GoPro is operational, I walk into an establishment that has no posted restricted limits that either my natural eyes encounter or that the GoPro lenses capture. I walk through the establishment while the GoPro captures a recording both visually and audibly of everything it sees and hears. I exit the establishment and continue on my adventure. Later, the video content taken during that visit is incorporated into a travel segment and posted on this site. Caught on camera with sound are my movements, the things and people in that establishment, and recorded / overheard are the conversations of most of the people present inside that establishment including the employees. Caught on camera happens to be an altercation between one of the establishments employees and another guest/visitor, and the scene is not favorable for the establishment or the visitor. Someone buys access to my travel experience, happens to have been considering visiting the establishment but doesn’t like what they see and as a result chooses not to visit the establishment. That person then notifies the establishment. The establishment, the employee, or the guest doesn’t like what they were told. Either after buying access to the same content and reviewing it or without doing so, either or all of these entities contact me feeling they have the right to tell me to take down my presentation or threaten to sue me with defaming their character or negatively affecting their sales or them. Sadly, any and all of these entities is/are mistaken. No one has a claim. No one can legitimately ask me to do anything about my content. And I will take offense to being asked to do so or any legal action aimed at me to try to force me to do so. I am not liable for anything in such an occurrence, and if you waste my time having to review your request or actions, I will charge you a very high hourly rate for doing so and YOU STILL WILL NOT ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING BECAUSE I WILL NOT TAKE DOWN THE PRESENTATION. Additionally, you are NOT entitled to a refund of your access fees or any monetary compensation for loss, damages, etc. Make sure you comprehend me when I say this: NO ONE HAS ANY RIGHTS TO ANYTHING IN REGARD TO THE CONTENT POSTED IN THE TRAVEL SECTION AND QUITE FRANKLY ON THIS SITE EXCEPT ME! Making any attempt whatsoever to claim any portion of any content on this site or damages / losses, you incurred because of content on this site, will result in you being CHARGED an astronomical hourly rate for me to deal with your actions including from the second I receive a notice of your actions.

There may be errors, mistakes, omissions, etc. in these statements and in any content provided by me. There may be legal jargon that is not properly formed or present in these statements. You are bound by these terms whether you like them or not, whether you read them or not, and whether you directly access this site or not.

This content was not designed to suit your purpose or anyone else’s other than my own. The travel section does not contain any “how to” instructions for anyone to follow. Most things here are for ENTERTAINMENT purposes and where appropriate and applicable, for sale, if a price is presented and a product or service is identified as such and is available. If a sellable item doesn’t have a price, is not up for bid, is out of stock, or explicitly implies or states that it is NOT for sale then it is NOT FOR SALE!

Use at your own risk via your own volition. ALL of your ACTIONS are your own. You may not copy, modify, create derivative works here from, or represent that any portion of any of the content presented here in any form whatsoever belongs to YOU or anyone else, other than ME. You didn’t contribute to the making of the content in the TRAVEL section, even if you THINK you did, and even if you happen to be identified in such content or referenced in some way. I do not acknowledge anyone or anything as being a Co-creator of the content provided here, with maybe 1 exception: Occasionally, when I take photos and videos on my Android phone devices and that content is stored / backed up to Google Photos, Google creates animated and sometime audibly annotated snippets or memories of such content which it presents to me asking me if I wish to keep such content. Occasionally, I will like what Google has created and keep that content. I may publish that content on this site and/or others as my own. It is my understanding that once I accept the saving of such content, Google has relinquished all rights to it to me, especially since it compiled such content without my prior express permission from my own content and added its own creative additions to it. No other entity and not even Google may lay claim to any of the other content beyond the possible reclamation of the memory photos or videos that they produced, that I saved and republished.

Consignors are bound by the consignment agreement they signed which grants them absolutely NO rights for dispute, claims, or gains regarding any content presented, referred to, or linked to in the Travel section of this site.

Content that is definitely the property of someone else. I hereby disclaim all rights to any property that is known upfront to not belong to me. I hereby give all the rights to which the owners are entitled to their own content in the following categories: Ads, Content on other websites that are not owned or operated by me, Affiliated images and links, and content used by permission for advertising and linking purposes.

In the course of travelling and planning to travel, I typically research where I am going to find out what I can do when I get there, get good ideas on how to do things, ascertain how to communicate with people using languages other than English, arrange for transportation, dining, medications, emergencies, and protections. Many times, I will be armed with the information gleaned from my research or knowledge acquired from interactions with people that have been to where I’m going, done what I plan to do, and/or who may be present or involved in what I wish to accomplish or any activity I am participating in. I may share such information, provide maps, photos, or excerpts and summaries of the information and knowledge. I may present my opinions, conjectures, conclusions, and suggestions without solicitation on any given subject or matter. I may paraphrase materials and conversations. I may interpret any situation as I see fit. Should I provide a direct quote, photo or audio copy, of anyone else’s copyrighted, patented, or trademarked materials, where appropriate and applicable, I will attempt to acknowledge the owner’s and holders of such content when known. I disclaim any rights to that content with only one exception: I control what I do with accumulated knowledge and how I wish to present or distribute any adapted information and am not required to divulge any source, be bound by limitations, or restricted by any use based on anyone’s rights, ownership, claims, the law, or whatever. My rights are whatever I deem them to be for all content except that which I specifically exclude, or state is not mine, is owned by me or the entities that I legally created or assigned ownership thereto. My thoughts belong to me and any works I create from those thoughts whether visually, physically, verbally, or otherwise and are hereby copyrighted, patented, trademarked, and owned by me, whether or not legal submission to any authority or registry has been or will be provided. Only I can grant anyone any rights to copy, translate, create derivative works here from, modify, alter, redistribute, disrupt, or delete my content and my property. The materials used for advertising purposes do not belong to me. They are used in accordance with an agreement that I signed and comply with.

Quoted materials and other content may be cited, and references thereto may either be in line with such content, referred to, footnoted, endnoted, or contained in some sort of Bibliography, Works Cited, or Works Consulted. However, since the aim of my Travel articles is for them to be read as if they were entertainment books, or listened to as audio books either via the plug-in readback agents that I use within this site, or via the Read Aloud options available in the browser you may be using, the idea is for the flow of the content to remain readable or audible without interruptions by such methods as cite reference numbers or symbols which many audio translators will attempt to verbalize. Therefore, in most cases, no marks or symbols will be present in the flow of the article and all cited works shall appear as endnotes or in a bibliography using my own personally developed format not to be in compliance with anyone else’s formats or methodologies. Any omitted sources are always unintentional but may be vast as on any trip I may consult hundreds or sources for information that I sift through quickly to gain what I need. Keep in mind, I’m not obligated to provide any references to sources whatsoever. My articles are works of art and entertainment created as I see fit. Any sources that I cite are as a courtesy to the source and possibly to the reader should they wish to follow-up further on topics that I present and review the same information that I reviewed. My articles are not REPORTS, term papers, white papers, or news articles. They are my recollections of trips, travels, and adventures that I have had and therefore require no official or formal declaration of any source encountered or used.

If you feel that anything that has been published here is not to your liking or you are unable to agree with or be bound by these statements and terms, then you should not access, view, read, or listen to any information or content displayed throughout the travel section of this site and articles included in it or referenced by it. I will rarely allow or entertain comments on this material. I get that some people may feel slighted or some kind of uncomfortable way about the way I have worded this information. Here is something that you might consider if you are having issues comprehending or accepting what has been mentioned here:

Imagine that you walked out your house and took a leisurely stroll down your street or through your neighborhood. You took your camera enabled phone with you. At some point during your walk, you decided to take out your phone, turn on the camera and snap some pictures and take a video. At first, you simply liked a flower arrangement you saw in one of your neighbor’s yards, so you took a snapshot while walking. You may have started the video and started talking to yourself about how you were feeling as you went on your walk. The camera may have been pointed at your feet and then all of a sudden, an exotic bird like an Eagle flew overhead so you turned your camera towards it in the sky. The Eagle began to squawk, and you caught its movement and sounds on video as it flew to a branch in a tree. Meanwhile, another set of neighbors happen to be on their front porch, rocking in their rocking chairs. They saw you suddenly react to something in the sky, followed your gaze, saw the Eagle too, stood up, walked to the edge of their porch, and also watched the Eagle land on the branch. As you passed in front of them, they made audible commentary to each other and then they called out to you, waved to you, and expressed their excitement over what just happened. You did the same. Maybe you paused and spoke with them for a moment. Maybe you didn’t. Either way, their conversation among themselves was recorded in your video and at some point, your camera was pointed at them and caught them in your video as well. You resumed your walk and talking out loud to yourself to finish up that video. When you made it back home, you decided to share the entire event with whatever family members were in your house at that time. That may have started with something like, “Hey y’all, guess what I just saw in the neighborhood!”

So, your family gathers around, and you start verbally telling them what happened in your own words and to support your description of the Eagle, you playback the recording for them. They see and marvel at it. You were so lucky to catch a glimpse of an Eagle. They liked the content your camera caught and so did you. You liked it so much that after telling your family members, you immediately posted it on your timeline on Facebook. Guess what? Your neighbor’s house is in the photos of the flowers, and it might even show their house number or the tag on the back of their vehicle. The other neighbors that were on the porch have their faces displayed along with audio recordings of them talking. You may have captured their mailbox and street address as well. What rights do the people and the owners of the physical and audible items caught by your camera have? What obligations do you have to them to disclose that you are including their property in your Facebook posts? Should you get their permission? Should you block them out of your video? Does Facebook owe you or them 1 penny when Facebook sells a statue of an Eagle via a link that is presented in the timeline stream when it put your video in front of a half million people within 2 hours of you posting it? Who owns your video? What are your responsibilities to divulge or identify the people whose faces, places, or things showed up in your video when you were showing it to your family, or you posted it online?

When you consider the questions that I just poised in a very plausible scenario you will realize that the only appropriate answers that easily and fairly satisfy those questions is that YOU own every bit of that video and everything you do with that video. You are not obligated to remove, block-out, and deafen any portion of that video. You are not obligated to identify the people or their property in your recollection or storytelling of what happened. And Facebook doesn’t owe you or anyone else in your video anything as a result of you publishing your video on their platform no matter what you say or think because you previously agreed to give-up such rights when you joined the site or uploaded your content. Likewise, none of the people in your video have a leg to stand on in attempting to make a claim against you for any reason. That doesn’t mean they won’t try. It just means they really will most likely NEVER get a judge to agree that they can have any influence on your use of the video you took or their presence in it.

So, to any entity on this planet or another, be advised that I have clearly presented you with a very clear understanding of how I own everything related to the content I create and present here and that it would be unwise and foolish to attempt to waste 1 second of my time attempting to make a claim or influence my use of the pictures, videos, and writings that I present in the travel sections of this site. Additionally, I shall deem every attempt to do so as an aggressive attack against me and if I choose to review your notices or actions, I will charge you an outrageous hourly fee for every second I must use of my time to review, respond, or deal with you and your actions until you have legally been denied the ability to do anything regarding my content. Save us both any trouble and just don’t approach me with any attempts to influence what I do with my property, my words, my writings, my information, or my videos. You do not have a leg to stand on and therefore, you have no legitimate claims whatsoever. I will not be bullied, harassed, or bothered by anyone’s claims or threats. And if I hear of any detrimental or derogatory statements regarding any content displayed in any of my travel sections or see such comments or statements appearing in the public media, or on other websites, or within private arenas no matter how big or small, I may exercise my rights to have you remove such defamatory remarks, request a retraction or public apology, pay damages or losses including my exorbitant hourly fees for time used to file injunctions, cease and desist orders, and fees encountered using any other legal instruments, to deal with you on those matters, and/or legal fees and expenses for the same.

With that being said, I invite you to view the different Travel articles that I present here from time to time as they are presented. Relax. Sit down and get cozy and comfortable. I’ll do my best to present you with real accounts of my trips, travels, vacations, and adventures. Many of them might have you laughing. So, get ready for some side-splitting fun. I’ll be presenting articles as time permits so check back often for the latest adventures. There are over 25 years of them just waiting to be published…

Please help select the first TRAVEL experience to be presented here by using the Survey Question Box that shows up on every page until you make a selection. The following Travels are available for you to choose from: