American Road Trip Talk

Over the last few years American Road Magazine has featured stories about the Hocking Hills in southeast Ohio. This beautiful part of the state is quite different from the flat farms lands of the north and east of the Buckeye state. In the Hocking Hills the land begins to roll gently as it heads southeast into the Appalachian Mountains and the Virginias. This is a two-part conversation about a tim...

Over the last few years American Road Magazine has featured stories about the Hocking Hills in southeast Ohio. This beautiful part of the state is quite different from the flat farms lands of the north and east of the Buckeye state. In the Hocking Hills the land begins to roll gently as it heads southeast into the Appalachian Mountains and the Virginias. This is a two-part conversation about a tim...

As a reader of American Road Magazine, you know we are all about enjoying and preserving America’s Scenic Byways. They are not just great vacation destinations but are also vital economic links to a host of communities offering entertainment, opportunities to learn and appreciate our heritage and taste the wonderful variety of American cuisine; but this is a delicate ecosystem that needs support....

There is just no better treat on a hot summer day than a scoop of ice cream. Our Friends of the Fastlane column in the Summer Edition celebrated one of America’s oldest ice cream companies, Velvet Ice Cream as they celebrated their Centennial. What adds to the charm of this family owned creamery is that is located in the heart of central Ohio’s countryside in Utica, Ohio 45 minutes north of Columb...

The summer 2014 issue of American Road Magazine brought back one of our favorite family themes for the lazy, hazy days, A Night at Drive In Part 2. This podcast is part 2 of a series focused on the Melody Drive In located in rural northern Indiana near the Bass Lake campground resort. Their family owned drive in is one of the few that still sport grass infield rather than asphalt or gravel and giv...

The summer 2014 issue of American Road Magazine brought back one of our favorite family themes for the lazy, hazy days, A Night at Drive In Part 2. The best part about the more than 30 outdoor movie palaces reviewed is that the majority of them are still going strong. Being a family business seems to be one of the big factors in their survival. Families work cheap! Just ask Fred Heiss and his son...

The summer 2014 issue of American Road Magazine brought back one of our favorite family themes for the lazy, hazy days, A Night at Drive In Part 2. The best part about the more than 30 outdoor movie palaces reviewed is that the majority of them are still going strong. According to Steve Bloomer, second-generation owner of the Skyview Drive In of Belleville, Illinois, things have never been better....

Summertime and the living is easy or so the so went in the famous operetta Porgy and Bess. We certainly hope the arrival of our summer edition of American Road Magazine is adding to your summertime relaxation. Our Friends in the Fast Lane column made a stop at a unique exhibition at the Lincoln Highway Experience Museum in Latrobe, PA. There we met executive director, Olga Herbert, who described t...

This is part 2 of our Odessa, Texas interview. Our Spring 2014 issue of American Road Magazine featured an article entitled Hopping the Hippety Highway by Jillian Gurney. The author followed rabbit trails all over the country tracking down big bunnies. One of the stops was Odessa, Texas, home of the largest jackrabbit in the world. In this two-part interview with Linda Sweat of the Odessa Conventi...

Our Spring 2014 issue of American Road Magazine featured an article entitled Hopping the Hippety Highway by Jillian Gurney. The author followed rabbit trails all over the country tracking down big bunnies. One of the stops was Odessa, Texas, home of the largest jackrabbit in the world. In this two-part interview with Linda Sweat of the Odessa Convention and Visitors Bureau we will find out about t...

In the Spring 2014 issue of the magazine Tunnel Vision highlighted the birth of a new scenic roadway, the Nanticoke Heritage Byway which will eventually traverse parts of southern and western Delaware. In this podcast Dan Parsons, a historic preservationist for the Delaware, tells us about the importance of this unique byway and its link to the beginnings of our nation. To keep up with the Nantico...

The Tunnel Vision Column of our Spring 2014 issue of American Road Magazine featured a bizarre piece of art called the “Paulverizer” in front of an auto recycler on Highway 501 in Buena Vista, VA. It is just one of dozens of huge, humorous and highly visible works of art created by Mark Cline. In our interview, I hope you will catch some of his passion for creating these merry roadside monsters th...

In our Spring 2014 issue of American Road Magazine, you’ll find a story about a three wheeled, bullet shaped orange car called the Urbee 2 in our Friends in the Fast Lane column. The strange little car represents the vision of Jim Kor and Bruce Stewart to build an aerodynamically perfect and absolutely energy efficient vehicle. In Part 1 of the Urbee 2 story, Jim and Bruce share the journey that i...

In our Spring 2014 issue of American Road Magazine we presented the story of a three wheeled, bullet-shaped orange car called the Urbee 2 in our Friends in the Fast Lane column. The strange little car represents the vision of Jim Kor and Bruce Stewart to build an aerodynamically perfect and absolutely energy efficient vehicle. In Part 2 of the Urbee 2 story, Jim and Bruce describe how 3D Printing...

2016 will mark the official 100th anniversary of our number highway system. Up to 1926 the process of naming, building and publicizing a stretch of roadway was very much a local affair. The results were often confusing if pleasantly familiar to the folks who drove them. The named trails served a valuable purpose in their day, but they began to pass into history when the American Association of Sta...

The Think Big Column in our magazine is a regular platform for some of the most remarkable sights along the American Road. Erika Nelson is the peripatetic folk artist who chronicles kings and queens of the highway like the largest ketchup bottle or biggest baseball bat in the World’s Largest Collection of the Smallest Replicas of the World’s Largest Things. In this conversation Erika shares her mo...

In the Spring 2014 issue in the Friendd in the Fast Lane department, we show a Kansas artist, Dave DeArmond, who was so moved by the 1916 Midland Trail Tour guide that he began painting scenes mentioned in the book. Now people like our guest, Joan Nothern, of the Solomon Valley Hwy 24 Heritage Alliance are making that nearly century old driving guide come alive. Joan is the president of that assoc...

Butterflies normally conjure up beautiful images of colorful, delicate winged creatures flitting by your mind’s eye. How about throwing in a few thousand cockroaches you can play with and lots of hungry caterpillars? In the Spring 2014 issue of American Road Magazine in our US 40: Across the Middle Department, I described some of the Looking Glass Insects I discovered at the Sophia M. Sachs Butter...

In the Spring 2014 issue of American Road Magazine our Memory Motel column was all ears as we swept down into the mountain resort of Steamboat Springs to visit the Rabbit Ears Motel. Ironically, as Greg Koehler, our guest and owner of the motel will tell us, the name has more to do with geology than a certain rascally cartoon character. On the other hand the inn’s overactive sign did create someth...

In our Winter 2013 issue of American Road Magazine we wandered a bit north of our theme area of Washington State into the Canadian Rockies for the subject of our Memory Motel Column. Tucked in the foothills of the craggy grandeur of British Columbia near the town of Ainsworth Springs stands the Mermaid Lodge and Motel. Not quite the image that would seem to go with a town that grew up in the rough...

In our Winter 2013 issue of American Road Magazine we wandered a bit north of our theme area of Washington State into the Canadian Rockies for the subject of our Memory Motel Column. Tucked in the foothills of the craggy grandeur of British Columbia near the town of Ainsworth Springs stands the Mermaid Lodge and Motel. Not quite the image that would seem to go with a town that grew up in the rough...

In our Winter 2013 issue of American Road Magazine we wandered a bit north of our theme area of Washington State into the Canadian Rockies for the subject of our Memory Motel Column. Tucked in the foothills of the craggy grandeur of British Columbia near the town of Ainsworth Springs stands the Mermaid Lodge and Motel. Not quite the image that would seem to go with a town that grew up in the rough...

Welcome to Part 2 of our interview at the Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis where I met Mary Ellen Hennessey Nottage, the passionate curator of medical history in Indiana. We conducted the interview as we strolled through what had been the pathology lab for the state's main mental health hospital for more than a century. In Part 2 of our interview you will find out how death provided...

In 2011 a California grocer named Dave Schaub drove his Brizio-built Custom ’32 Ford roadster through all 49 continental United States in an amazing 7 days, 14 hours and 21 minutes. We featured a picture of Dave at the finish line in Alaska in one of our recent Friends in the Fast lane Column. In part two of our interview Dave describes how he made the incredible journey on 5 hours of sleep a day...

In 2011 the jovial California grocer drove named Dave Schaub drove his Brizio-built ’32 Ford roadster through all 49 continental United States in an amazing 7 days, 14 hours and 21 minutes. We featured a picture of Dave at the finish line in Alaska in one of our recent Friends in the Fastlane Columns. It was all part of an effort to raise funds for the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford University...