November recap and looking ahead to a trip to Florida in December

NOVEMBER – IT’S GETTING COLD!

The weather has started to turn cooler in Wichita and that means two things for me: 1) the indoor track and field season is about to begin and 2) I’ll be heading out of town for the holidays. Before I talk about what’s going on in December, here’s a short recap of what I did this past month.

I had a very interesting day-trip down to Osage County, Oklahoma, where I went to all the historic and filming locations for the book/movie Killers of the Flower Moon. I had been to many of these places previously, but now that I’ve read the book and seen the movie it made more of an impact. I released a video of this trip as well as one of some ghost towns I saw the same day. That was certainly a great day of exploring!

At the end of the month, I spent several days in Texas a couple hundred miles west of Dallas exploring King County, Stonewall County, Dickens County, and Wise County (of course haha). I should have 6-7 videos coming out from that trip, and the first one will be of King County tomorrow (Sunday). I really enjoyed being down in Texas and found a lot of interesting places that I didn’t know much about.

Those are the only two times I was able to get out of Wichita this past month. December will be quite different!

It was an interesting month on the YouTube channel as well. The first half of the month was very successful, and then the past two weeks have not been as much so. As I’ve talked about previously, watching the analytics on YouTube is like looking at the stock market. Lots of ups and downs, and hopefully over time it generally goes up. Next month I’ll give a perspective of what the entire year looked like, but basically, I can say that the trend has generally been good, and November was another solid month.

The November stats on Travel with a Wiseguy were: 185k views and 572 subscribers.

That brings the grand total to: 3.8 million views, 18,895 subscribers.

For those of you who are really into the numbers, the top-5 viewed videos for the month of November were:

1. 10 Smallest Towns Arkansas – 28,884

2. 10 Smallest Towns Missouri – 24,994

3. 10 Smallest Towns Texas – 16,286

4. Zinc, Arkansas – 9,225

5. Route 66 Ghost Towns Missouri – 7,327

The all-time top viewed videos on the channel are:

1. 10 Smallest Towns Texas – 420,723

2. Loving County, Texas – 349,253

3. 10 Smallest Towns Missouri – 258,220

4. Route 66 Missouri Ghost Towns – 236,185

5. 10 Smallest Towns Oklahoma – 182,625

6. 10 Smallest Towns Kansas – 163,771

7. 10 Smallest Towns Arkansas – 106,122

8. 10 Smallest Towns Nebraska – 101,085

There have now been 8 videos cross the 100k view mark!

COMING UP IN DECEMBER

My coaching duties require me to be in Wichita for the first half of the month, but I plan to be on the road for most of the last half of December. I’m still working out the details, but the big picture is I’ll be driving from Kansas to Florida passing through Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, and of course Florida.

When I did US 50 this summer, I received a lot of requests to do eastern half of the road, so I’m going to try and do the Missouri portion on my way to Florida (sorry Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia – maybe next year).

I’m still trying to figure out where I’m going to explore in Tennessee and Alabama. In Florida I’ll be finding the 10 smallest towns in the state and then documenting my drive all the way to Key West (where I’ll be spending Christmas with family).

The way I do this YouTube thing is to film a bunch of stuff all at once and then release it over the course of time. I am hoping to get 15-20 videos out of this trip from Kansas to Florida and then release them from January through the middle of March. From that point until June it’s pretty random because of my work schedule. I was able to continue doing two videos per week last year and I’m hopeful I can do it again this year. We’ll see! It’s a fun challenge!

UPCOMING DECEMBER RELEASES (for the diehards)

I like to reward anyone who is interested enough to have read this far :)

As always, this is a very tentative schedule, but here’s an idea of what I have coming up …

Sun, Dec 3 – King County, TX (3rd smallest populated county in the USA)

Thu, Dec 7 – small town, USA – Orlando, OK

Sun, Dec 10 – Behind the scenes in Iowa

Thu, Dec 14 – small town, USA – Spur, TX

Sun, Dec 17 – Dickens County, TX

Thu, Dec 21 – Kansas video TBA

Sun, Dec 24 – Wise County, TX, Ghost Towns

Thu, Dec 28 – small town, USA – Aspermont, TX

Sun, Dec 31 – Top Ghost Towns of 2023

Thu, Jan 4 – Looking head to 2024 (and I’ll have at least one very exciting update about the channel!)

These videos about the counties in Texas could be broken into two parts each, but I won’t know until I get into the editing process. I know King County will only be one video; we’ll see about the others!

Thanks again for all the support! Until next time, safe travels!