Trek or blog when travelling?

Most travellers set up a blog on one of the free bloggers Carolyn and Peter. I find I don't have time when touring :O so do mine in detail after I get home. I send a few photos in a 'where we are' type of email to a group occasionally.

Hi Carolyn & Peter,
we too are travelling soon to the Kimberley and WA. We have set up a closed Facebook page for our family and friends to see where we are and what we have been doing. Enjoy your trip and safe travels. Greg & Di

Its going to cost you thousands to go to the Kimberleys a $30membership is nothing. Blog on ExplorOz and you have a permanent record of your travels for your friends. yourself, and all of us.

Hi Peter

Seeing that you are members, you can still do a blog and your family and friends can just log on as usual and view what you have in your blog.

One tip, when inserting images, use lots and make sure that you do not down size them too small. Nothing is worst that looking at what you think is going to be a good picture, only to find that the pictures are the size of a postage stamp.


Have a great trip.


Cheers



Stephen

I always feel like a photo blog is a nice way to do it. It's always great to read about someone's experience, but the pictures always make it more real. Just set up a freebie.

EOTrackme is another option you could try to supplement your travel blog, if you have a smartphone.
This provides anyone you give the tracking detail to, to follow your movements on a map.

Having said this, I haven't tried this for a while as a couple of large deviations (like from Broom to Perth) we didn't take were displayed, causing some confusion amongst our family members.

I am going to run this again on our next trip and see if my new model iPhone behaves itself.

This is a little off topic and I took my time posting it.

We never put anything on the web that lets others know we are not home. Why, you ask. Because we were burgled once. Electronics stuff was stolen but worst of all was the jewelry, mainly my family hand downs, including a diamond ring from Mum that went back many generations. Never again. We may mention it in planning but always use bogus dates. We aren't in need of others following us as "no phone (sat phone) call = all good".

Just our opinion of telling the world where we are.

I would use a locked account on something other than the popular sites. Photobucket.com comes to mind. Post the photos and add your comment in the description of the photo.

Another reason we don't do this is because we rarely have internet/mobile coverage where we go.

Which way you choose all the best we had 6 weeks up there. Try to add a cruise on the ocean side of the Kimberley and not with that big lump of steel where you are just a number. Try this mob and I recommend the 7/8 day cruise up the coast. They know you by name.MV Diversity II charters out of Broome

Trek or Blog?

Whilst trek notes can document your daily travels much like a dairy, I always find a series of stories on people’s trips more interesting.

Rather than writing a running commentary on the whole trip you could write some stories on specific things and places you visit. Mind you, nothing wrong with a running commentary, as long as it doesn’t become mono-tone, if you understand what I mean…

And as Stephen mentioned elsewhere include lots of photos. Photos can capture the imagination and draw the reader in.

Enjoy your travels and I look forward to reading.

Cheers, Baz – The Landy

How and what you do will depend on your personal preferences. If you want your friends to follow your progress on a day to day basis you could use Facebook (using a closed group) but beware that in places like the Kimberley you may not have internet access for days at a time.

My preference, arrived at over many trips, is to write a daily trip diary. Whilst I usually write using the computer, when we are travelling I prefer to sit by the campfire and write the diary the oldfashioned way by hand. We also take a LOT (thousands) of photos.

Then when we get home I write up a series of blogs using the blog facility on this site (available to paid-up members) and include plenty of (edited) photos. I now limit each blog to about 2 pages and make sure I break the text up with paragraphs to make it easier to read.

This process has the advantage that it gives us time to reflect on our experiences and remember and recall the trip. We find that doing so greatly adds to the pleasure of the trip itself and cements our memories of it. And the resultant blog becomes a source of information for others on here who want to travel in that area (although you can limit who views you blog if you dont want to make it public.)

As for family and friends who want to follow us on a daily basis - our experience has been that in practice most of them dont get the time to do that, or may do so for a few days, then only occasionally after that. Or give up when you dont blog because you are out of phone contact - whatever the reason you will want to live your trip on your terms and will have plenty of other things to think about anyway, without being bound by the expectations of others back home. Im not suggesting that we cut ourselves off - we keep in phone contact where possible. But I have found that writing a decent blog is not really compatible with daily travelling and exploring.

Having said that on future trips i might consider combining my daily diary writing with a FB group where short entries - a photo and a few words - are the go.

Click on the blogs button beside any members name and you can see how each blogger approaches your question.

Cheers,

Val.

Carolyn & Peter,

Back in 2011, when we did a couple trips that weren't medical or work related, we bought a "copy" of Nomads Notes.

Probably not want you want, in relation to letting the relations know where you are/what's going on, but is a useful travel tool. Can log camp sites, fuel use, photos and a host of other things that would make blog writing, at a later date, much simpler. The Boss used to update onto her Android phone at the time, say after refuelling, and we could then download all the info onto the PC.

Think it's available from E O shop too.

Bob

An interesting subject.

We have been doing both long (e.g. the big lap), medium and short trips since 2009. I blog, discharge my duties as accountant of a small company and see the sights, and get eight hours sleep a night. It depends how you spend your time. I got over camp fires when I was a teenager, so my evenings are spent doing the first two of the above, unless we are in company with someone who must have a camp fire in which case we are sociable.

I have found my Nexus 7 tablet invaluable for drafting blogs. If I wake early or is a few spare minutes it is so easy to pick up and make some notes or progress the next blog post. I email the notes to my computer with any photos that I have taken on the tablet. Incidentally, I have downloaded the Swift Key keyboard to my tablet. It is excellent. I received an Emil a few weeks ago to tell me that it had saved me 100,000 key strokes.

I started posting blogs to the EO blog site and giving a running commentary of our travels on a day to day basis. I have changed more towards writing on subjects - perhaps to be offered to travel magazines in the future. Or perhaps not! I also moved my blog to my own hosted blog site so that I have complete ownership and control of of the material. I have an extensive list of readers who I notify by email when a new post goes up.

For tracking we use the Spot2 device and EO TrackMe facility. All my blog readers know how to check where we are. Additionally we hit the OK button on the Spot2 at day's end to let a selected group (e.g. son and daughter)know where we have stopped for the night and that all is well. Or not well, but we have not had to use those buttons on the device as yet.

On occasions, when travelling to remote destinations, we have advised someone at the destination how to track us on EO. That proved useful on one unexpectedly wet day on the Dowling Track. Next trip we are planning a couple of quite remote side trips. We will report our intentions to police and give them instructions on how to check us on EO FollowMe should we not check back in on time.

I am a keen supporter of EO and although my blog material does not appear on the EO site, when I get home from trips I use photographs and notes to update and create new Places. I also use my images and videos to create videos with sub headings and background music for us to watch in our dotage when we can travel no more.

We all do things differently. I have posted this to give a slightly different perspective on how these things are handled by other travelers.

This stuff is peripheral, of course. The main event is to travel and see this great land.

Cheers,

Kevin