Vlog

Las Vegas Travel Vlog

In April of this year, my fiancé’s family and I went to Las Vegas, Nevada to see Aerosmith at their residency in the Park MGM Casino. I was a little hesitant to do a travel vlog around her family. I’m still always weary of getting on people’s nerves with all of my filming, but I’m glad I decided to record. I think this travel vlog is one of the best since the Seattle Trip.

Time Lapse at Caesar’s Palace

For the most part we just relaxed and went wherever we wanted. My fiancé, Wendy, and I aren’t really into gambling so we took in some of the many other attractions that Vegas has to offer. (I did gamble 20 dollars in slot machines and lost all of it in about 15 minutes)

I’ve been to Las Vegas 3 times in my life, but the last time was about 25 years ago when I was 11, so there was plenty of new stuff to catch up on.

Some of the activities that didn’t make it into the final video were riding the roller coaster at New York, New York, visiting the Coca-Cola Store, and of course the Aerosmith Concert.

The New York, New York Casino Entrance

The roller coaster is SO NOT WORTH THE MONEY. I think we paid $25 per person to ride it once. The line took about 45 minutes and the ride lasts less than a minute. The price gets slightly more reasonable if you plan to ride it more than 3 times, but unless you have a bucket list to ride a roller coaster in every state, I’d spend your money elsewhere.

The Coke store was just what you’d imagine, a store full of various coke products. They do have a tasting of Coke flavors from around the world that seemed popular. We tried a few, but I can’t remember if they were good or not. :)

Finally, the Aerosmith Concert. It was only their 6th show of their residency at the theater when we saw them. You’d think by then the technicians would have all the kinks ironed out. The theater was awesome. There were various “mascots” walking around before the show dressed as notable characters from their albums. Aerosmith performed as great as you would imagine. The problem was the the audio. The only way I can describe it is as if the sound person grabbed all the sliders on the mixing board, screamed, ‘This is a rock concert, turn it up to 11!’ and proceeded to slide every slider to the max.

It hurt my ears and it sounded like absolute crap. Everything was muddled together. Even Steven Tyler was having troubles with the audio. Twice he went over to the sound booth and more or less yelled at them because he didn’t like the sound of his in ear monitors. I’m happy to say I got to see Aerosmith, but I wish I’d seen them some place else. Hopefully by now they’ve gotten the sound sorted out.

Entertainment at the Linq Promenade

We spent quite a lot of time at both the Promenade at the Linq (yes, that is what it is officially called. I was struggling pretty hard to understand without seeing it written down anywhere, lol) and sitting outside the New York, New York casino. The Promenade had just a lot of various things to look at, while the New York, New York street area usually had a good musician or two to pick from. That’s where we were at the very end of the video.

Finally, we have to talk about cost. It’s expensive to visit Vegas. Wendy and I each ended up spending about $800 not including hotel rooms or tickets to Aerosmith. What cost so much? Everything. You can see me get excited by a drink that cost $7 being ‘cheap’ in the video.

The High Roller

That being said, the best fun for the money was the High Roller Wheel. Yeah, it’s $50 dollars for 30 minutes, but it’s a very fun 30 minutes and if you are inclined to drinking, it’s the cheapest place to go to get a good amount of drinks (I ended up with 9). If you’re friendly to the bartender, they’ll even let you walk out with more than 1 (1 is usually what they give you).

In this exclusive, website only video, you can see how much you can do in 30-45 minutes. (For the record, I wasn’t hung over in the morning. 😉)

We also went to Fremont Street which is in the old north part of Las Vegas. There’s a lot of history there (it was generally known as the sketchy part of Vegas) and it’s great that they are trying to revitalize it. However, like I said in the video, you may want to think twice about brining your children. There were lots of people protesting things or asking for petitions to be signed. There was also a lot of skin, more than what you see just walking on the strip. Think pasties and male thongs. You can see in one scene that I had to blur out a nude buttocks and a sign in the background of the video.

East end of Fremont Street. Feel the nostalgia.

Overall, it was a great trip. If you don’t like to gamble, there’s a load of things to keep you busy. We could have spent another 2-3 days with the amount of things we would have liked to do. The 2 things I enjoyed the most however are:

  1. Bobby’s Burger Palace - That was amazing. I sent my parents there on their last visit and they both loved it too.

  2. The Titanic Experience. - Yeah, it’s sobering and a quiet way to spend an hour and a half, but if you’ve ever been interested in the Titanic at all, you’ll find something interesting there.

Bobby’s Burger Palace Menu

With that, I’ll leave you to watch the video! Let me know what you think and share some of your favorite things to do in Las Vegas in the comments section below. Please share this with your friends as well if you enjoyed it.

First Year Review of a YouTuber

Well, it's been just over a year since Flarecorp Media was founded! Happy Birthday to us! Woo! It's been really enjoyable and we've gained 61 subscribers in the first year! Hello to all of you and thank you!

The video below explains most of it (it's certainly long enough to not leave much out), but I started this YouTube Channel as an outlet for my video creative endeavors. I've been fascinated by videos and movies since i was 10 and used to steal my parents' camcorder to make little home videos.  If there was a video camera in the area, I'd walk in front of it and steal the show.  It's just always struck a chord with me.

So after years of playing around, including some serious attempts on my storm chasing website, Unreal Weather, I decided to give it a go.  I was happy seeing the quality I could produce with the Drone Christmas Lights video in December 2016, I figured I'd learned enough to at least not put out completely amateur looking stuff. 

Along the way, I've been on a journey finding out what I like to make videos of and refining my technique. I've given myself until the end of 2018 to just have fun with it, regardless of subscribers and build up a library of videos of the best quality I can make.  After that, I'll decide if I want to put more effort into it as a real business or just continue having fun.

Thank you for being here for the first year. There's some good stuff planned already for the next year. Please subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss out on it. I also put out bonus content on Facebook, so like that page to see all of that.

I'm taking a short 2 week break to recharge my batteries and catch up on somethings, but at the end of January, I'll be right back to work making videos.

Have a Happy New Year!

Seattle Trip Vlog

It's Travel Vlog time again! The Kayak Trip vlog went pretty well so we thought we'd try it again with a trip to Seattle, WA. Best of all, it's 4 parts; one for each day!

Special thanks to Seth Burkey for joining in the video and for his assistance. Check out his awesome photography work at http://sethburkeyphotography.com/

Day 1

We flew out from Omaha, NE at 5:45 in the morning with a layover in Salt Lake City, UT before continuing on to Seattle, WA. We stayed at a nice AirB&B (which you'll see on the Day 4). The first day was just about getting out for a few pictures, drinks and checking out the town. It turned into more of an adventure than we had planned when our bus drove right past us and we had to resort to.... alternative transportation.

Day 1 Video

Day 1 Photos

Click on an image below to see it full size and you can click on the left or right side of the full size picture to move to the next and previous pictures.


Day 2

Today was our more structured day. We got tickets to Bill Spiedel's Underground Tour and also to the Smith Tower.  Both were a lot of fun. The Underground Tour had a lot of laughs and unbelievable stories detailing the original history of Seattle.  Smith Tower had a very nice hands on museum type feel with a great Tap Room and view at the top.

After our history lessons, we thought it would be great to get some pictures of the Seattle skyline and found a ferry that would take us just across the bay.  It was well worth the trip because the pictures and video we got were spectacular, not to mention it was an amazing rush to ride on the front of a Water Taxi doing 30 knots!

Day 2 Video

Day 2 Photos

Coming soon


Day 3

On Day 3 we did some shopping because my shoes were about ready to get a hole in them. Then we checked out the world famous Pike Place Fish Market before hitting up our favorite pizza joint, MOD Pizza again.

Then it was off to get ready for the concert. Seth went as a werewolf and Jason went as a Vampire. There weren't as many people dressed up as we had expected. One of the whole reasons we picked this band on Halloween, was because we thought it would be a bit more of a spectacle.  The concert was pretty good. Not the best either of us had been to, but entertaining none the less.

Day 3 Video

Day 3 Photos

Coming Soon


Day 4

On the last day we tried to go down to the boats that we'd seen every day on our walk to the coffee shop in the morning, but we were thwarted again by the Seattle Public Transit system.  After waiting 30 minutes for a bus, we witnessed someone tap their card on a sensor on a pole by the bus stop. He then proceeded to get onto the back of a bus without needing to tap the card in the bus.  It also turned on a notification light on the pole. So we thought we would try it, however, we didn't realize that this was only for a certain bus, so when we tapped it, the bus we'd been waiting for kept right on driving.

We then decided to start walking following a Google Maps route, but after 20 minutes we encountered a locked fence and couldn't go any further. At that point we were ready to just go pack up and head to the airport for a few drinks before flying home.

Day 4 Video

Day 4 Photos

Coming soon

 

Kayaking Trip - Vlog

I got into kayaking over the summer. During the 100 degree days, it was pretty great to climb onto my sit-on-top kayak and have the lake water splash up and around me to cool off while working on my tan. My friend Seth used it as an excuse to finally get a kayak as well.

After lapping the local lakes several times over the months, we decided it was time to try a river trek. The route we took, found here, was to take us from North Bend, NE to Plattsmouth, NE for a total of 71 miles.

The plan was to go down river and take pictures along the route, but as anyone from Nebraska can tell you, the Platte is not the type of river where you can stop paddling for a bit and pull out your camera.  It is almost always necessary to make course corrections to go around hidden sand bars.  If you're unfortunate enough to get stuck on one, you're lucky if you can get out in 2 minutes of hard paddling and really unlucky if it takes you 5 or forces you to climb out of your kayak.

So, needless to say, we didn't get a whole lot of pictures taken, but I was able to record enough video to make this vlog for you to enjoy.  I've never done a vlog on this page before so hopefully its low production values are good enough. 

If you have any questions about the trip, leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer them.

A special thanks to Seth Burkey for lending some video and photos to this. You can check out his awesome work here:  http://sethburkeyphotography.com/

Some of the equipment used on the trip:
Nikon Coolpix w300 Underwater Camera - http://amzn.to/2yLWq3k
Nikon Coolpix a900 Digital Camera - http://amzn.to/2yaM5Ra
Jetboil Flash Cooking System - http://amzn.to/2yyOzF8

 

Below is our trip as recorded with the GPS in my Nikon w300.  You can play around with it and see it in a bigger window here.  It was taken with 1 minute intervals between GPS logs.