Airstream

Shakedown Cruise: The Great Adventure Begins

April is the cruelest month, says T.S. Eliot, perhaps because it brings you some false spring that often enough is put in its place by late blasts of winter. This is certainly true on the Great Plains. But I am leaving on my big John Steinbeck Travels with Charley Tour on April 27 …
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Site of the World’s First Atomic Chain Reaction — Video Dispatch

Clay visits the site of the world’s first atomic chain reaction on the campus of the University of Chicago.
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Book cover: Blue Highways: Journey Into America by William Least Heat Moon, first published in 1984.

Rereading Blue Highways — An Enduring Backroads Journal

Originally published is 1982, Clay says William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways is still our best backroads manifesto.
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USA map showing Route 66

Chicago, Launch Point for Historic Route 66 — Video Dispatch

Clay visits the eastern takeoff point for historic Route 66 in downtown Chicago. Now largely superseded by the Interstate Highway system, Route 66 still looms large in American history and mythology.
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Don’t Touch That Dial: Tuning in to America

Over a lifetime of travel, I have learned that one of the best ways to examine the pulse of America is to listen to local broadcasting.
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A stretch of old U.S. Highway (Route) 66 in Arizona. America's best-known highway, Route 66, was known as

America’s Unrelenting Love Affair With the Automobile

The American automobile is one of the most revolutionary (and liberating) technologies in human history.
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