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Good morning, adventurers. Good morning. And welcome back to the good old US of A. We're back here. You guys, if you missed our last video, we were actually just in Jamaica and it was a bit of a scandalous trip. We went to a resort with a naked island. Yeah. And we did get naked. So, if you missed that, go check that out. But we're shifting gears from that now. We are back in the USA. We actually flew back to LA. Now, we are road tripping back to Missouri. So, we have been on the road for a very, very long time. We're actually rushing back home because my best friend Matt is going to be getting married in about a week or two. So, yeah. Got a bunch of best man duties to fulfill.
Yes. But on our way there, we decided to head a little bit out of the way. Take a little detour to a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. And why are we heading to a tiny town in the middle of Nebraska? Because it is not just any old small town. It is the smallest town in all of the USA, y'all. That sign right there is accurate. There is only one resident living here. So move aside one horse town. I got something even smaller for you. A one human town. It's a good one. Is it? I don't know. Well, the drive to the tiniest town in the USA is exactly as you would expect. There is nothing. It is truly in the middle of nowhere.
We are on only back roads driving through farmland. Cows everywhere. It is like classic Midwest out here. Yeah, talk about a lonesome road. The only other vehicles we've seen are ones that are literally plowing the fields. The town is called Monoway. I believe that's how you pronounce it. And it sits way up north almost at the border of Nebraska and South Dakota. But we are very excited to see this town because we heard about it ages ago and always wanted to stop by and just never were in the area. Not like we're in the area now, but we're close enough. The one sole resident of this town, her name is Elsie, and she is, I believe, 91 years old, and there's actually a tavern
in town is basically the only thing that's in town, and she works there, apparently. Yeah. Apparently, she serves food and beer in her tavern. But other than that, we are not sure what to expect, but we cannot wait to experience all that the tiniest town in the USA has to offer. And we are almost there right now. Well, this is exactly the kind of traffic jam I expected to see on these tiny back roads. This is quite a rig this guy has. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. All right, we made it. It's real. I don't know why I'm scared. Everything that's driving on here is like 1 million times our size and goes 20 m an hour.
We found it. This is it. Well, that's hilarious. Apparently, most people think this means like it's one mile ahead, but it literally just means population one. All right, so the town should just be right there. It looks like there's some weird little farm. I guess they don't they must not live there, right? Cuz Yeah, cuz then that this would be a lie. So, the town is called Monoai, which is an awesome name. It sounds like an alien race or something. Yeah, I think it sounds It reminds me of like a Mwai or something.
Yeah, exactly. But fun fact, it's actually a Native American word that means flower. I don't see any flowers though. Nope. Nope. But maybe back in the day there were a lot. This must literally be the town limit because there's a house right there. I guess they're not allowed to be citizens of Monai. They're just 10 ft too far away. Yeah. Speaking of, I guess we got to go see what this teeny tiny town has to offer. And try not to be hit by a car. We're pulling up now. And yeah, you can see the little farm area with all the equipment over to the right. And to the
left, that's the Monoai Tavern, which is basically the only establishment in this entire town from what we understand. The only uh standing establishment. There are a lot of establishments that are just demolished. Do I? Yeah. Just road tripping. Yeah. Are you local? Yeah, I'm a local. I help her out once in a while, but he's in there. Elsie's there. So, okay. Awesome. Thank you. Cheers. It's a local fellow. He says he comes and helps Elsie sometimes. He also said people come from all over the world to eat here. So, we're in good company.
We're just hanging out in the main drag of town. It's pretty hustling, pretty bustling. Not absolutely not. All of the buildings in this town, the very few that are actually in here are completely destroyed, dilapidated, falling apart, except for one. That is the Monoai Tavern. According to the guy who was just talking to Alison, Elsie is in there and she is working her tavern today. So, let's go in and uh say hi to her and hopefully grab some grub. I'm so excited, you guys. I've been wanting to come here for so long. Yeah. How long have you lived here? Well, I was born Well, I wasn't born here, but I my folks moved to this area when I was about a year and a half old.
Oh, no way. Okay. My husband and I bought the bar in 71. So 55 years is June, but he passed away in '04 and I stayed here. So were there more people living in the town back then? His top was well between 150 and 160. The high school, the church, and couple grocery stores. Well, we heard about it a long time ago and always wanted to stop in and we were kind of driving through Nebraska. We're like, you know what? Let's pop up there and scope it out. Very cool. Yeah. Well, first things first, you got to grab a beer at the smallest town in the USA. And it is guaranteed the coldest beer in town. Says so right here. This whole place has a very good sense of
humor. Make sure you uh look at the walls. There's lots of stuff hanging up. That is just a hoot. You guys, we walked in and we are the only people in here. And Elsie was just hanging out near the fryer back there. And we walked up and we're able to talk to her for a bit. I've known about her for so long that it was like meeting someone famous. I wonder did she have any ideas when they bought this bar back in the day in the 70s that she'd still be running it in 2026 all alone and be the sole resident of this town? Just what a legacy. The bar is so unassuming and so simple on the outside and then when you walk in it is like a just a classic bar. Like they have a literal bar over there that I must get pretty busy at some points
because they have a ton of seating and then it's just all this super kitschy, super simple country decor. It's awesome. Oh, and it smells like a fryer in here. All the greatest things. It's the kind of place that when you leave, the fryer smell stays with you. In addition to the owner of the local pub, Elsie is also the clerk, the treasurer, the librarian, and the mayor of Monai. And I read on Rick Wikipedia, she issued herself her own liquor license. That's awesome, right? She even has her own spot. This is her chair right here. And Elsie's spot. That's great.
Lunch has arrived. We went with the crusty cheeseburger, French fries, and our beer. Does it get better? This is exactly what I want in this moment. Exactly. And most importantly, this was made by Elsie herself, which to me feels like someone literally famous made me food. She is a celebrity, you guys. She's like on the BBC. has been written up about many, many times. Exactly. So quite famous.
She even had Larry the Cable Guy come in here. And if that doesn't make you famous, I don't know what does. What is it? It's a bag. Oh, awesome. Have you ever had to pop it out and force something? Parties the guys are having and Yeah. All that kind of stuff. Yeah. No, that's that's super legit. I love it. Yeah. Even has a name on it.
Y'all, they have a guest book who goes back to 2024. Oh my gosh. Look at all of this. I guess we got to sign it, right? Yep. Thank you. Great meeting you. Awesome place you got here. It's tons of fun. Yeah. Well, y'all, that was absolutely lovely. That was like reconnecting with an old friend or a grandma or something. She was so sweet and just told us all about the history of this town, who used to live where, what buildings were what. She did say that she would like to maybe move on from this place after 55 years.
I think she's uh reaching the end. She said her eyes aren't doing so well. So, if you get the opportunity, get here ASAP because it was totally worth it. I got a t-shirt so I will always remember Elsie. And look, it's even signed by her. Fantastic. All right, y'all. It is officially time for a tour of Monawaii. This is it. The tavern in this dilapidated building, which we learned used to be a general store back in the day. Okay, so we kind of lied earlier. There is one other structure that you can go into. It is this tiny little shed. It is actually the town library. More specifically, this is Rudy's library named after her husband. Okay, confirmed
it is a library and smells like one. Just that smell of like old books and old paper and old house and a little dash of mold. Just a smidge peppered in there. Yeah. I was just looking at the Google reviews for this library and it says, "I visited Rudy's library while on a road trip. I applied for a library card but got denied because I wasn't a resident of Mono, Nebraska." So, I guess no library
card for us today either, huh? No library card, sir. We found this old ledger book. And uh I maybe I'm wrong, but I believe these might be the articles of incorporation for the town. Holy cow, that is awesome. Whoa. I mean, I didn't see any dates here. Look. 1905. 19. No way. Is this 1905? This was written in 1905. That's why I can't read any of this stuff. Like, this is English, believe it or not. We might be from the 1900s, but not that part of the 1900s. Feel like I shouldn't be touching it.
It's just sitting here like, man, there it is. This is too fancy. and official for us. And there's also this. Everything will be just fine. Benny Thomas, lady killer. We're just driving down, you know, one of the main thoroughares that goes through Monoai. It's hard to imagine that at some point this was an actual main road. So on the sides of the road, you're going to see a bunch of really old rundown houses. Like we mentioned earlier, it's hard to believe that there was over a hundred people living here, but as you drive around the little streets, you kind of get it. Like there actually are a lot of structures hidden
off in the woods. And Elsie actually told us that there were really nice, fancy houses here way back in the day. People would come in and buy them up and then move them cuz they didn't want to build their own house. How crazy is that? Yeah, she said. And some of them are still being lived in to this day. Yeah, that's crazy. While Monoai might not have any shortage of charm or beer or burgers, the one thing it is missing is a gas station. And we are almost on empty. You all know that the gas prices have gone bananas. We've got a little secret weapon that gives us cash back every time we fill up. And it's called Upside. And they are once again partnering with us on this video.
Upside gives you cash back on groceries, restaurants, and gas. and I have found a gas station that is going to give us a whopping 17 cents back for each gallon. And you guys, it really racks up quickly. We just cashed out another $30 Visa card. So, to use it, you just pull up the Upside app, look for offers nearby. Once you find one, just click claim offer and then pay as usual with a credit or debit card and get paid, baby. Upside has given back $1 billion to its users. And to find out how much you could earn, download the free upside app and use promo code endless adventure to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas. All
right, our tank is officially full. We got a long drive ahead of us, so it is time to hit the road. Well, we made it to Omaha. Just checked into a hotel that's right near the city. But we thought it was funny that we just went to the smallest town in Nebraska and now we're in the largest town in Nebraska, which obviously is Omaha, right? Yes. And it is still very tiny. It's pretty adorable. Fun fact, I actually used to live here from like kindergarten to third grade, something like that. But yeah, we're doing our favorite thing in the world, you guys. We got some Thai food. We're eating it in our pajamas in a hotel room. And we really enjoyed that beer that we had earlier, so we were like, let's stop and get some Yingling. That's one of our
favorite beers ever. I think we're going to explore Omaha tomorrow a little bit, right? We Yeah, we actually want to go to some of Allison's old houses and then explore the downtown a bit. So, I think we're going to do that on the way down. Yeah, we'll probably need to do like an actual real video on Omaha in the future. But, we'll dip our toes in it. And y'all, we've been watching Lost, re-watching it. This is the third time that we've watched through Lost. But this show is freaking great, huh? It's so old, but still so good. All right, but now it is time to eat our food, watch our stories, and we'll go exploring Omaha tomorrow. So, cheers. and get the heck out of my room.
Should I put him in the Oh, is that what we're doing? Oh, yeah. Do it again. Oh, cheers. And get the heck out of my room. We just had a street view car sighting. We're going to be on it. Yes. Yeah. Famous. World famous. So, if you go to Jones and 11th, I think we are in Omaha, you might just see me pointing my camera at that car on street view and me going, "Wait, what's happening?" Well, we left our hotel and promptly went over the bridge to Omaha. We were actually technically in Iowa last night, which I don't know if I really realized.
No, just across the river. But y'all, I like Omaha. We actually came here a long time ago and I forgot all about it. But it is a super classy city. Like the skyline is super unassuming cuz it's just got a few buildings, but then once you get into it, it's got all these really old brownstone type of buildings, cobblestone streets, just this really classy industrial feel. It's giving me like Midwestern Brooklyn vibes. It seems very cool and hip. Lots of uh boutiques and bars. And they got cops on horses, which is always pretty freaking cool.
Very cool. They also, luckily for us, have about 1 million coffee shops. And we found one straight ahead. Oh, yeah. It says it right there. Party coffee. I'm ready. Insert into my hand. I'd say this is the only thing that was missing is Monawai was a good coffee shop. I mean, they had beer, burgers, good company. I think there was a lot missing from Mona. Yeah, there was. You know, Elsie told us that people call her all the time trying to buy property there. She said a lot of single women want to move and like live the rural life. I guess they call in and
ask her about the fixer uppers in the area. There are no You guys saw them. They are not. They're terror downers. Yes, they're burn it downer and walk awayers. Yes, exactly. Monawai fun to visit Omaha maybe fun to live. Is it funny that we would straight up just move to a city if they had good coffee? That's all we need. Good coffee, good vibes, breweries. It's all we need. Yep. Well, this is pretty dang cool, huh you guys? What do you think? So, in the old market, there's this underground alleyway. It's called like the passage or something. It is covered with all
this incredible greenery. I absolutely love it. It's basically the outdoors indoors. It's like some tropical wonderland in the middle of Omaha, like underground. If you don't know, Omaha gets very cold in the winter. And apparently this is a great place to come and escape the cold and the snow. That's got to be really cool to come in from the snow and then be greeted with this. Yeah, it's like a cold paradise or something. Stumbled upon the world's creepiest sculpture garden. But it is super cool, huh?
These heads are a little ominous. He's staring into my soul. What does he see? Who knew that Omaha was so freaking artsy? Like as you walk around. So that's the alley over there and it's just surrounded by art galleries like this all over the place. It's very cool. Yeah. And it smells very good in here. Lots of incense. We're about to hit the road and head back to St. Louis. But before that, we're going to hit up my childhood homes, y'all. We're going to go see where I used to live and see how wildly different it is because I was a little old gal when I lived here. I was actually born in Phoenix and lived there for quite a bit of my life, my young life. And uh I drag dragged her to all my childhood homes. So
yeah, I don't know if I'll recognize them to be honest. And if this all sounds incredibly uninteresting to you guys, hold the phone. Maybe we'll show some old pictures of Allison. Oh my god, little Allison. She sadly was not very cute. Believe me, that will be interesting. So stay tuned for that. No, she was cute. She was adorable. Yeah, thanks. That's that's nice of you to say, but you don't have to lie. Okay, so this is one of my houses where I grew up, and it is surprisingly familiar in here. Now, when we moved in, it was a brand new subdivision. This was a brand
new build and it was only this row of houses. There was not a whole like street of houses coming in here. It was kind of awesome as a kid because it was just fields. So all the neighborhood kids would just go run in a muck everywhere. Okay, it looks like we were coming up on another house up here on the left. I think we moved in when I was in kindergarten. Notable things. I took the wrong bus the first day of school and it took me to the middle of who knows where. I had no idea where I lived and I was just crying on the bus. The bus driver had to call the school. And when I came here, my grandma, my parents, and my siblings were all outside waiting on me to come home. This
was also the house where I learned that there is no Santa Claus, y'all. My sister and I lived in the basement. And on Christmas Eve, we snuck up to the top of the stairs and we're looking under the door to see Santa cuz we heard noise and we saw my parents wrapping presents. Neighborhood was quite a bit different when I was little. There was no neighbor next door, so it was an empty field. There's a lake over here that was just open to everybody. Now it's all closed off. We can't get down to it. But it was a sweet place to live as a kiddo.
Well, that was a fun little stroll down memory lane for Allison at least. But I think now it's time to hit the road. We have a long, long way to go before we get to St. We've just been enjoying our time in Omaha. I know. But if you are from Nebraska, let us know your favorite places to go or what we should do in Omaha cuz I'm thinking maybe we need to do a whole full-on video here. I want to experience the city properly. It's super cool. But I think we're going to switch. I'm going to drive for a little bit and we have about 7 hours to get back to St.
Louis only seven. That's fine. Yeah. Well, we have officially made it to Missouri. We've actually been driving through the state for quite a while, but uh it's taken us some really strange route because I guess there must have been a lot of traffic through like the Kansas City route. So, we're just cutting right through the middle of the state. And it is surprisingly beautiful, you guys. Just like all this lush greenery, like all the colors come back to all the leaves cuz we're getting into like spring now. It is surprisingly magical out here, y'all. I feel like we can be we can dog on Missouri a little bit, but it's got its beautiful areas.
Yes. But it's cool. It's just this two-lane road. I've been driving through it for about 15 20 m. Haven't seen a single other car. Nope. Just Deer and Turkey. And we're also listening to a podcast called What Went Wrong? Which does a deep dive into all of our favorite movies from the past. Right now, we're listening to Back to the Future. Yes. And it's awesome. It has just been a delightful afternoon. All right, but we are almost there. Homestretch. I feel like I've been driving for weeks, months, or a month now.
Kind of halfway. We kind of have right now. I think maybe we'll lay off the road trips for a second. What do you think? Yeah. I think I'm a little bit road tripped out. Uh spoiler. Let's let other vessels take us around, huh? Oh, with us. That could mean literally anything. Stay tuned. We made it. We're here, you guys. That was so much driving. And we drove across the country and back. It was a lot. Especially in the last couple days, we've just been doing nothing but driving.
I think we're ready to not be driving again for quite a while. Huh. No. And you might notice we're not in old Doug, our SUV. And that is because literally as soon as we got to Missouri, we parked and came back and noticed there's a big puddle under him. Turns out his radiator sprung a leak. So, we have a little rental for a little bit. Yeah. A little Ford Focus. Yeah. We were actually pretty nervous that we were going to be late for the wedding because this happened up in St. Louis. We're down here. If you guys, this might look a little familiar to anybody who watched the RV renovation. We're back at my dad's house.
This is where we renovated the RV. Right here and there. Actually, still some tape that we keep trying to get up. This is leftover tape from when we resealed the thing. It's still there. It not going anywhere. It's like part of the pavement now. But we made it with like 12 hours to spare. And so now it is just weekend of wedding festivities, I guess. Yeah. And as we mentioned, I am the best man. That means that I have to help with planning a bunch of stuff. I have to write a speech that I have not written.
Speech. But we're done. Now it's just party time and chilling. And then can we say where we're going next? Where are we going? We're going back to Alaska. We are going to do an Alaskan cruise. We're starting in Seattle. So you guys know we took a ferry up there once with the RV. Now we are gonna redo that but on a much cooler ship and have much cooler stops. So Alaska cruise has been a bucket list thing for us forever and we are gonna do it. Next well maybe not abs maybe not our next video but it's coming up.
Yes. I think we'll have one or two more little adventures nearby cuz we're going to be in the area to see family. And after that I think we've got some international travel coming up, some other faraway travel. It's going to be fun y'all. But for now we're done. We're dead. So goodbye adventurers. We'll see you on the road.
