Wyatt Earp, small town USA, and mic problems

Here’s the latest on Travel with a Wiseguy!

We have climbed to over 5,400 subscribers and 750,000 total video views in the history of the channel. I never would’ve imagined this would grow to those numbers and I want to thank everyone for their continued support!

small town, USA

Two weeks ago, I started posting a new series of videos about small towns that aren’t ghost towns, and the response has been very good! I’ve only published two videos so far (Madison, KS, and Howard, KS) and they have received over 16,000 views already. I even got an email from the city clerk of Madison that sent her appreciation from the people of the town! People are generally proud of their small town they grew up in, and hopefully these videos continue to resonate with those communities.

You never know how a new video will go. I know that I have a pretty solid base of ghost town “fans” as well as an even larger base of viewers that watch anything I put out about Kansas. These new videos kind of combine that. I will be putting out “small town, USA” videos from other states in the coming weeks, so it’ll be interesting to see how that goes (Here’s looking at you Butte, Nebraska).

Recent travels and mic problems

We just had our “Fall Break” at Wichita State, so I took a few days and traveled up to Nebraska. The goal of the trip was to visit the 10 smallest towns in the state (which I accomplished). I also visited a bunch of ghost towns and did some of the aforementioned small town, USA videos. The highlight of the trip was when I got to meet and interview Elsie Eiler, who is the only resident of Monowi, Nebraska. I rarely ask someone to do an interview and I was fortunate that she sat down with me and talked for 10-15 minutes. The bad part is for some reason the mic on my phone didn’t like something and much of the interview has a scratchy sound. I couldn’t believe it – this is basically the only interview I’ve ever done, and the mic screwed up (face palm). But I am hoping to salvage it enough to be part of the video, because she was great to chat with! I also bought a cool Monowi t-shirt from her. 😊

 Wichita’s Wild West past

1870's Wichita

Speaking of different kinds of videos, today (Sunday, October 23) I released a video about the early years of Wichita and when Wyatt Earp was roaming the streets in the 1870’s. I’ve always been fascinated with Wild West history and now that I live in Wichita I can literally walk to where a lot of those historic things happened! There aren’t many photos and videos from that time period, so much of this video is just me talking. Honestly, I hate that, but if you watch you’ll notice I try to put up what photos I could find, newspapers quotes, maps, etc. to take the focus off looking at me haha. I know some of the most famous YouTube personalities make themselves the focus of the videos (and often that is exactly what they need to do), but I hope my videos generally keep the focus on the topic I’m talking about. I just want to be a voice giving the information and showing videos I’ve made, but I have been told that it’s important to have a “connection” with the viewers (that sounds arrogant) to keep them coming back to watch more videos. I definitely never want to make this about me, because the history out there is so much more interesting!

Travel plans and future videos

While I was in Nebraska, I was able to get around to enough places to have footage for 10 future videos (see below). I have been thinking about a couple of short trips before the end of the year. I might take a day trip up to Cottonwood Falls, KS, and some interesting areas near there. Also, I might go down to Oklahoma for a day or two before the weather gets chilly. As I mentioned last month, I have a lot of ideas for late December/early January travel. Those are still up in the air. I might go to Denver for the US Track Coaches Convention in mid-December. I plan to go to Ohio for Christmas. I’d like to squeeze in a few days in Texas before returning to Wichita for track practice in early January.

If you are interested in keeping up with where I’m at, the best place to follow me is Instagram (Travel with a Wiseguy). Often, I’ll put some photos in the story of where I’m currently exploring.

Here is the tentative release schedule for the next few weeks (sometimes I change it on a whim):

Sun, Oct 23 (today) – Wichita’s Wild West Past/Wyatt Earp

Thu, Oct 27 – Greenwood County, KS, ghost towns Part 1 (14 towns and 1 bridge!)

Sun, Oct 30 – small town, USA – Butte, NE

Thu, Nov 3 – Greenwood County, KS, ghost towns Part 2 (13 more towns and 5 more bridges!)

Sun, Nov 6 – small town, USA – Hamburg, IA

Thu, Nov 10 – Nebraska Ghost Towns #2 – Amboy, Angus, Spring Ranch

Sun, Nov 13 – Top-10 Smallest Towns Nebraska

Thu, Nov 17 – Kansas Ghost Towns #15 – Nicodemus

Sun, Nov 20 – small town, USA – Scribner, NE

Thu, Nov 24 – Wyoming Ghost Towns #2 – Miner’s Delight, Atlantic City, South Pass City

Sun, Nov 27 – small town, USA – Beaver City, NE

Thu, Dec 1 – Idaho Ghost Towns #2 – Chesterfield, Silver City

That is the current plan through the end of November. It could easily change if I go for a short trip to one of the above mentioned places. I like to try and mix it up and not have to many videos from the same state all in a row.

I also have 3 Nebraska ghost town videos that I filmed and will release in December or later:

Nebraska Ghost Towns #3 – Kronborg, Nysted, Dannevirke

Nebraska Ghost Towns #4 – Sparks, Meadville, Brocksburg

Nebraska Ghost Towns #5 – Venus, Wee Town, Ames

That seems like enough for now. Thanks again to everyone for the support! Happy Travels!