American Road Trip Talk

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. Whether it’s political turmoil in the Middle East or pure greed on the part of oil companies, there always seems to be an excuse for jacking up the prices of fuel. Well there are some folks in the heartland of America working to break that dependence on foreign fuels at a company called POET, a company formed in the mid-80’s to turn corn into ethanol, liquid fuel that has been included in most of our gasoline. On this program I speak with Nathan Schock their PR director about producing ethanol to break our addiction to foreign fuels.

Claude Bell was a man who could dream bigger than most men can imagine. Two enormous concrete dinosaurs that command the Mohave desert town of Cabazon, California are silent witnesses to his hard work, persistence and vision. The desert dinos were featured in our spring 2011 American Road Magazine column The World’s Largest Things. In every issue, author and artist Erika Nelson salutes the king-sized roadside attractions that adorn the American Road. Here Erika tells the story of Claude Bell’s towering dinosaurs of the desert and talks about her traveling display of miniatures of the World’s Largest Things.

The State of Washington is building a series of rapid recharging stations that will release the electric cars from the urban grid and let them breath the air of wide open spaces. These stations are part of the West Coast Green Highway that will one day stretch from Vancouver, Canada to Baja California. Tonia Buell, Project Developer and Communications Manager with the Washington State Dept. of Transportation, explains the scope of this great green highway and the schedule for implementation starting in late 2011.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. Rollin Southwell personifies the area that he calls the loneliest and oldest highway in America, US 50, the Lincoln Highway. His website www.lincolnhighway.com chronicles this dusty road that makes its way through central Nevada like a rattle snake through sagebrush. I spoke with Rollin about the fall of the shoe tree near Middlegate, Nevada around Christmas 2010 and how his website is preserving the history of this wild west roadway, the Lincoln Highway.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America.  This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine.  Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. When filmmakers want to create a dinosaur domain for our imaginations, there is one favorite place on earth that they go to create their prehistoric settings: The Hawaiian island of Kauai. Specifically, they set up their cameras in the National Tropical Botanical Gardens. Our spring issue of American Road Magazine is built around the theme of dinosaurs so I dialed up the NTBG and spoke with communications director Janet Leopold about this remarkable tropical gem. On Kauai, the westernmost of the Hawaiian islands Steven Spielberg found the perfect setting for many of the scenes in his 1993 prehistoric classic, Jurassic Park. Janet was there for the filming and has some interesting stories to share on this podcast.

This is a special American Road TripTalk due to both the subject and the guest. Weeki Wachee Springs, is a natural wonder in northwest Florida where “mermaids” have performed under water for millions of visitors since it opened shortly after WWII. Right now the very existence of this extraordinary attraction is in danger. Like every state in the union, Florida is trying to save money by cutting costs and state services. Weeki Wachee became a Florida state park in 2008 and has been extremely successful since then. However the state of Florida is threatening to privatize services at the park which would threaten the quality of services currently being offered. Our guest, Barbara Wynns, became a mermaid at the historic park many years ago but still performs regularly as one of the “retired” mermaids. She is passionate about saving Weeki Watchee from the changes that the state of Florida wants to make.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. The spring 2011 edition of the American Road Magazine is centered around dinosaurs and their many manifestations along the highways of North America. One of our articles presented The Extinction Theatre part of the Talisman Energy Fossil Exhibition housed in the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Canada. Our guest for this American Road TripTalk is Dr. Steve Cumbaa, a paleontologist at the museum and one of the scientific advisors who helped create the Extinction Theatre. He’ll describe the show which is actually a truly unique multi-media experience that chronicles the passing of the great thunder lizards and the dawn of a new age for the earth ruled by mammals.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. The stretch of desert highway between Austin and Fallon, Nevada was home to one of the rarest trees in Americana: the ”shoe tree.” Actually there are a number of these huge trees draped with Doc Martins, tennies, work boots and all manner of used shoes all across the country. Rather than being treated as smelly, eyesores, they have become beloved roadside shoe shrines. Around New Years 2011 tragedy struck the shoe tree on the loneliest stretch of highway in America highway, US 50 near Middlegate, Nevada. Dee Helming of the Austin, Nevada Chamber of Commerce tells the tragic tale.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America.  This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine.  Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. Like any dedicated artist Costas Schuler wants to make his mark on the world. The only difference is that Costas wants to make that mark with used up pens, thousands of them, in all sizes and colors and all of them glued to his 1981 Mercedes 300D, better known simply as the Mercedes Pens. Costas has his sights set much higher than his ingeniously colorful ride and you’ll hear more about what made Costas simply known as The Pen Guy and the big dreams he has for the future in his adopted home state of California.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. Tom Holm is a man on a mission to change the way Americans travel our favorite roadways without becoming enslaved to foreign oil based fuels. In early 2011, Tom completed a 10,000-mile Eco Trek from coast to coast and back powered solely by cellulosic ethanol. It’s a fuel derived from cornhusks, stalks, and other plant byproducts and is currently produced by a company named POET. Our conversation with Tom talks about the incredible event that turned his life around 180 degrees to plant based fuels and is now leading him on a quest that could have profound impact on the defenses of our nation.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. Starting in the 1920’s the art of neon lighting lit up American roadways and towns from coast to coast. In many ways it was a revolutionary as the digital artistry of today. Curiously, neon lighting made its way into the US from Europe by jumping to Los Angeles. So it’s fitting that the city of the angels is the home of the Museum of Neon Art and on this American Road TripTalk we’ll visit with Kim Koga, the museum’s director to find out about a national display of neon art at the beginnings of one of America’s great highways, Route 66.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. When the weather person wants you to know just how cold things can get in case you were starting to feel sorry for yourself, they would probably say, “But in Cut Bank, Montana it’s 40 degrees below zero.” In our Winter 2010 Holiday Road tour we visited the Glacier Gateway Inn and Plaza in Cut Bank where former owner Ron Gustafson had built the largest penguin in the world to mark the coldest spot in the nation.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. Route 66 has been dubbed the Mother Road and Bob Waldmire has to have been one of her favorite sons. A Tunnel Vision article in the Winter 2010 issue of American Road Magazine describes some of the unique vehicles that Waldmire used while creating his incredibly detailed pen and ink images of the American Road along Route 66 . In this American Road Trip talk, Jim Jones, the director of the Route 66 Hall of Fame and Museum in Pontiac, IL shares fond memories of an eccentric but passionate artist and the vehicles that took him from Illinois to the great Southwest.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. "You'll shoot your eye out!" was probably the most famous line in the movie, "The Christmas Story" but it was the infamous leg lamp that became the movie's most famous prop. As a matter of fact it was a homemade version of the Leg Lamp that served as the inspiration that led Brian Jones in 2005 to buy the Cleveland house where the movie was shot. The full story behind the rebirth of the Christmas Story House can be found in the Grand Old US Six column written by Joe Hurley in the Vol. 8 Winter 2010 issue of the American Road Magazine. In this TripTalk, Steve Sidlecki, the executive director of The Christmas Story House and Museum fills in more of the details.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. The city of Wheeling, W. Va is home to a treasure trove of childhood toys we all fondly remember collected in the Millers Kruger Street Toy and Train Museum. Alan Miller and his son assembled toys dating from the 1890's along with an impressive collection of trains and housed them in a Victorian mansion. The National Road column of the American Road 2010 Winter issue tells the full story of their collection.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. In 2010 three graduate students from California State University East Bay campus created “The Mother Road Multimedia Experience”. The project was described in the Tunnel Vision column of the Winter 2010 edition of The American Road Magazine. My American Road TripTalk guest is Ann King, one of those bright young students, who combined the best of cutting edge technology, with a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle to provide a virtual tour of a portion of Route 66.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. Fans of Abraham Lincoln have a very special weekend to look forward to Feb. 12-13, 2011 in Vandalia, Illinois. It was there that Honest Abe served as a young politician and it became his launching pad into history. So it is fitting that would both celebrate the great man’s life and a crucial moment in American history. JoAnn Sasse Givens, Director of Economic Development & Tourism for Vandalia will share the full details of the event in this edition of American Road TripTalk

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road Magazine. Join Foster Braun, Your host and our guide on the American Road Trip Talk Show. Over 50 years ago a man named Wally Bronner, the son of German immigrants, bucked family tradition and opened a Christmas store that has become a holiday landmark throughout the Midwest. In this edition of the American Road Triptalk, you’ll meet Wayne Bronner the founder’s son and learn how Wally’s dream grew into a Christmas Wonderland the size of nearly two football fields.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road® magazine. Join Foster Braun–your host and your guide on the American Road® Trip Talk show. In the Big Foot Country of northern California, you need an appetite the size of the legendary Sasquach to beat the challenge laid down by the Seiad Valley Cafe. Find out more about this mountainous meal and the lost State of Jefferson in this podcast from Rick Jones the proprietor.

American Road Trip Talk hosted by Foster Braun is a talk show that celebrates travel across the two-lane highways of North America. This unique broadcast is an extension of American Road® magazine. Join Foster Braun–your host and your guide on the American Road® Trip Talk show. The little village of Christmas, Michigan was built on a dream in the Nineteen Thirties that was almost wiped out by fire. But the spirit of Christmas is alive and well on the shores of Lake Superior and it is home to the world’s tallest Santa Claus. Sharon Tesch is the proprietor of Santa’s Workshop where Christmas reigns all year ‘round.