Storing Your Articles, Clippings, etc … Evernote

If you are anything like me and love to travel, you will have loads of articles, magazines, newspaper clippings, brochures – you name it – relating to places you want visit, etc. Over time (and generally a short time for me) a collection of these resources becomes quite the stockpile and there is then a major storage issue. Where do I keep all these things? How do I store them? Should I keep them?

Let me offer you a solution that works for me – or rather, I should say, will work for me (I have only just started to do this after all). Let me introduce you to Evernote:

http://www.evernote.com/

Evernote is a place that allows you to remember everything (they say that), simply by storing every note at Evernote.

Evernote is a web application that allows the user to store just about every type of note you can think of on their site – for free. There is a Premium account option (which I have) which considerably widens the usefulness of Evernote, but the free version is also very valuable.

How do I use Evernote? I use Evernote in a number of ways – but for the purpose of this posting I’ll limit the description of how I use Evernote to just the one simple way.

At Evernote you can use a ‘notebook’,’ which is really just Evernote’s way of saying a folder, to store various ‘notes’ in. These notes can be anything from a photo, to an article, to a clipping, to a receipt, to a … well it just goes on.

So I have a notebook devoted to ‘wilderness and travels.’ In this notebook I keep articles, brochures, leaflets, clippings, etc, of all pieces of information relating to destinations and places of interest. I no longer need to store them around the house, as I have them neatly stored away at Evernote, which is fully searchable and easily accessed. So now all of the clutter, boxes of articles and magazines, etc, will become a thing of the past as I store them all away at Evernote for future reference. I may never use all of them, but they will be there should I ever need them.

Check out Evernote and I’m sure you’ll find a 101 uses for this great application and site.

Advertisement

Updating the Website

I am constantly looking at ways to improve the kevinswilderness.com website and add new content to it. With the success of the Google Map that was added to the page dealing with my recent road trip, I have decided to add Google Maps wherever they would prove useful – such as for locations, track routes, etc.

The first part of the site getting an overhaul with Google Maps in mind, is the Barrington Tops page. I am also adding new content to the page as I go. The Barrington Tops page is one of the biggest pages on my site, so the process is taking a bit of time. You will also find the planned itinerary for my backpacking camping holiday here as well as I move along with it.

Visit the page at:

http://www.kevinswilderness.com/NSW/tops.html

Next Trip: Back to Trekking

With the road trip now done and the car returned to Budget (rental), my thoughts have turned to my next holiday. I have a few road trip style adventures in the works, but my next holiday is likely to be a trekking adventure.

In the past I have twice walked across the Barrington Tops, completing the ‘Tops to Myall Heritage walk’ section as far as the township of Craven. I now plan to do the second section of the walk, from Craven to Hawks Nest – not far from where I now live. This has been something I have wanted to do for some time and now I intend to actually complete it.

There is no intended date at this stage, though I would hope to do it well before the end of this year. I would think it likely to be towards the early part of the second half of the year – if that makes sense.

Prior to setting out on this trek, I will be looking to update some of my gear (most of which has vanished in recent moves). I will be looking at a new tent and a sleeping bag for starters, as well as a new back pack. I’m sure there will be a few other things I will need to acquire before I set off as well.

Planning for this trip can all be followed on this Blog… stay tuned for further developments.

NSW Road Trip 2010 Now Over

The NSW Road Trip 2010 is now over, so there will be no more ‘real time’ updates of the site. The website for the road trip, which includes links to photos at Flickr, a Google Map, an online journal from the trip, links to Blog posts, etc, can be found at:

http://www.kevinswilderness.com/NSW/nswRoadTrip2010.html 

NSW Road Trip 2010: A Few Thoughts From the Road

It is now day 5 of the road trip and I have already covered almost 3000km. As you can appreciate covering that amount of territory in 5 days doesn’t leave a lot of time to Blog, especially when I have been trying to keep the website updated as well.

See the NSW Road Trip 2010 website at:

http://www.kevinswilderness.com/NSW/nswRoadTrip2010.html

What I thought I might do in this Blog is just pass on a few thoughts that have come to me while I have been driving around this great state of Australia – New South Wales. Let’s call this post, ‘A Few Thoughts From the Road.’

I have often thought that the governments of this country are wasting a great opportunity in promoting tourism in Australia. With such great distances to travel in Australia, wouldn’t it be great if the governments came up with an action plan to improve the rest areas throughout the country. Certainly some of them have been upgraded to a wonderful state – but then there is a lack of maintenance.

Many of the rest areas I have stopped at in the last few days have no facilities at all. Often they are nothing more than an overloaded garbage bin on the side of a road, with limited space in which to park.

To cut a long story short, I think Australia’s tourism industry would get a great shot in the arm if rest areas were improved across the country. It would also be good if hey could be located somewhere with a good view, an attraction, a small park for families, etc.

To go a step further (and this is perhaps pie in the sky), wouldn’t it also be great for the many Australians that drive throughout the country on camping/caravan holidays, if a percentage of these rest areas had some limited facilities for tents and caravans as well?

Perhaps a lot more people would travel around the country if such improved rest areas were created. There would also need to be some plan to keep the maintenance of these areas up to scratch also.

Another thing that militates against the travelling tourism that is fairly popular in Australia (it could be far greater), is the condition of many of the caravan parks across the country. To be sure, there are some excellent parks – but there are also a large number of parks that charge top dollar for run down facilities and grubby grounds. These poor operators need to lift their games to provide good facilities for their customers or they won’t get the return business that caravan parks depend upon. They need to spend a bit of money in order to make money.

I won’t return to a caravan park in which I had a bad experience – whether it be top dollar for run down facilities, poor service, poor attitudes of operators, etc. Some of these places just have no idea how to run a successful caravan park.

More thoughts to come – these will do for today.