WORDS WITH A WISEGUY 12!
Thanks to all of you who have recently signed up – we’re over 300 strong now! If you want to read any of the previous posts, I usually put them on my website a couple weeks after I email them here. If you know anyone who might be interested in receiving this newsletter, please have them visit TravelwithaWiseguy.com and sign-up!
THE PAST THREE WEEKS …
… have been very busy. But I like being busy so that’s a good thing! As most of you know I have two jobs. One is this YouTube channel, and the other is coaching track and field at Wichita State University. I’ve been able to rearrange my daily schedule a little bit since August, so my life isn’t totally crazy, but there are times where there just isn’t enough time in the day – like this past week. Today (Sept 8) I published a video about the 10 Smallest Towns in Illinois, which has been a long project to work on. In fact I didn’t complete the finished product until the evening before it was published. This is mostly due to the fact my worlds collided this week (cue George Constanza). We hosted a big cross country meet at Wichita State Saturday as well as having the first full week of track and field practice. On top of that last Monday was a holiday and I was finishing up traveling through Texas County, Oklahoma, since I had a day off “work”. ANYways, needless to say I welcomed today and the opportunity to relax and write this newsletter (although this morning I already spent a couple hours writing a different newsletter for Wichita State Track & Field haha). None of this is for you to have sympathy for my busy life. In fact I rather enjoy all of this – just letting you behind the curtain as to what is going on lately.
THE PAST THREE WEEKS OF VIDEOS AND TRAVELING
Since the last time I wrote here, I released 10 videos from literally all around the country. Alaska, Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and a road trip from Canada to Mexico. I know I like to bounce around quite a bit, so I appreciate you all understanding that you never know where the next video might come from. By far the most successful of these videos was my tour of Worth County, Missouri (the smallest and least populated county in the state). Those 3 videos have over 50k views so far and I am glad so may people were able to see how interesting these little communities are. Two other videos did better than I thought – Mora, Minnesota, and the US 89 road trip. More on the US 89 road trip below. Usually when I do a video about a totally new state (like Minnesota), as expected those videos are slow to find an audience. And even though 8,000 views in one week isn’t “viral” it’s better than average and bodes well for other videos I might do from that state in the future. More reasons to visit my friends who live there!
As far as my travels recently, I planned a trip over to Elk County, Kansas – which is about an hour east of Wichita (where I live). After about a day and a half, I had to get back to Wichita and wasn’t able to finish my tour of the county. However, I ended up filming a bunch of ghost towns from around Wichita, so it turned out great! But I do plan to head back to Elk County soon and finish what I started. Last weekend I went back down to the Oklahoma panhandle for 3 days. You might remember I did a series of videos about No Man’s Land, focusing on Cimarron County. This time I went one county east to Texas County to continue this series. I’m totally fascinated by No Man’s Land and now have thoroughly traveled through 2/3 of the areas of the panhandle. Beaver County will be the final county in the series, but I’m not sure when I will get back there.
US 89 COMPILATION VIDEO
I mentioned how the US 89 video I put out did well. This was a compilation from a trip I did in 2021. When I interviewed Traveling Robert, he talked about how he did this kind of “movie” and it was very successful. So I decided to try it. The first one I did was my 2020 Route 66 trip, and this US 89 trip is the second. I wasn’t sure anyone would want to watch these “old” videos, but much to my surprise they’ve done well! What I didn’t think about was there are so many new subscribers in the past year that they probably never saw these videos to begin with. Want to hear something really funny? When I released the first Route 66 video on December 10, 2020, I had a TOTAL of 130 subscribers!!! When I released the first US 89 video on August 12, 2021, I still only had 674 subscribers!!! If you were one of those early subscribers, congratulations for being so patient with me and this channel – wow!
I have two other long road trips like this I will eventually release as compilations – The Oregon Trail and US 50 (KS to CA). But I’ve also been chatting with my buddy Curt about how to incorporate some other older videos into interesting compilations. Stay tuned!
MEMBER VIDEOS
I’ve been very happy to have so many people sign up to be members and financially support the channel! In the first two months, we’ve climbed to 50 total members – very thankful for you all! For those who are at the $5 level or higher, I try to do at least one “behind the scenes” video per week. So far, I’ve done 13 of those videos and there are some great discussions from the members. As the channel continues to grow, I’ve found it’s hard to keep up with the comments on the YouTube videos. So this is a different way for me to keep in communication with supporters. Whether you are a member or not, I am so appreciative of all the support. We are now over 32k subscribers on the channel – I can’t believe how awesome that is! Thank you all!
UPCOMING TRAVEL
Like I mentioned above, I’m going back out to Elk County soon. Other than that, I don’t have anything planned until I go to Hawaii in October (more on that next time). I’m sure I’ll go somewhere else in the next three weeks, but not sure where yet. If you like to follow along in real time, make sure to follow my Instagram account. I like to post photos in the story in real time when I travel.
FOR THE DIEHARDS (Spoiler alert)
For those of you who read all the way to the bottom, here are the upcoming videos on the channel for the next 3 weeks.
Tue, Sept 10: No Man’s Land Museum tour/interview
Thu, Sept 12: Texhoma, OK/TX
Sun, Sept 15: Texas County, OK – Part 1
Tue, Sept 17: Ron Baker interview (former NBA player)
Thu, Sept 19: Goodwell, OK
Sun, Sept 22: Texas County, OK – Part 2
Tue, Sept 24: TBA
Thu, Sept 26: Texas County, OK – Part 3
Sun, Sept 29: Elk County, KS – Part 1
THAT’S ALL FOLKS!
Thanks for reading all my ramblings!
If you enjoy my channel and want to help it grow, feel free to share videos to your friends and/or family! I also have Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X (Instagram is probably the best to follow). Oh yeah buy some merch! (but only if you want)
Thanks for all the support and we’ll see you down a backroad!
John Wise
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