Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638

Short road trips are great. Going away for the weekend is fun. My preference is for much longer trips. Storm Chasing in Missouri. Visiting the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma. Don’t forget Arkansas. Meeting up with my son on his own road trip in Kansas. Visiting old friends in Tennessee. Now in Virginia checking in with family in Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638.

Happiness Is A Clean Windshield and A Full Tank Of Gas

There is a sense of peace that only comes from seeing the highway through the windshield. If you happen to be in the mid south, try a couple of the highways I mention in Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638. Backroads are always better and some of them are spectacular through Tennessee and Arkansas.

Seeing The Real America

The media is full of locators. This happened in California. That happened in Florida. Atlanta. Chicago. LA. New York City. York PA. The news gives us a sense of the United States as either exclusively urban or hopelessly rural. Travel on the highways and backroads reminds us how vast and actually empty our country is.

Family Stories

One of the missions of this road trip is to visit the hometown of my grandparents and great grandparents, great uncles and aunts and cousins. Most of my life I’ve been hearing apocalyptic stories of coal mining in southern Ohio. I don’t know about your family get togethers but mine are punctuated by confirmations of some of those stories, and guffaws. “Grandpa made that up!” is a common refrain. Time to at least go back to the old village and at least get a sense of the ground. In Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638.

Where Did That Happen?

Doing a long road trip? You’re mind will wander. Thoughts will come in and go out just as quickly. Months later you’ll be doing something and a thought and experience will come to mind. You will think, “Where was I when I thought that?”. We don’t always have the time to do this, we don’t travel like this enough, and it is good for the soul to do it. In Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638.

Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638

 

Planning First Summer Road Trip-Storm Chasing-Podcast 632

Americans are allowing themselves to disregard most of the news they don’t agree with. Everything is ‘fake news’, unless it tells me what I want to hear. For those addicted, disengaging is nearly impossible. It’s important to realize in a concrete way, there is another world out there. There are many escapes. One of the best is travel. Time to prepare to head out in Planning First Summer Road Trip-Storm Chasing-Podcast 632.

Getting Ready

Planning the trip. The moment before the trip begins is almost as fun as the trip itself. Makes me recall getting ready for camping trips as a boy. Everything laid out on the floor for packing in the back pack. Calling friends and figuring out what everyone was bringing. What we would be cooking over the open fire.

Storm Chasing

This Memorial Day weekend I am Storm Chasing! Many things on this week’s check list. Getting Mobile Podcast Command checked out. Renewing my drivers license. Getting a haircut so I can do my You Tube videos. Loading in the sound board, microphones, the office stuff, and the food. Double and triple checking.

Into The Belly Of The Beast

Some of the underrated but fertile Tornado Chasing areas include Southeastern Iowa, Northeastern Kansas, Eastern Arkansas and Western Texas. Then the standard destinations for Storm Chasers. Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa. We will chase the storm chasers and get an idea of what this tribe is all about these days. In Planning First Summer Road Trip-Storm Chasing-Podcast 632.

Nature’s Summer Show

Storms are obviously bigger than all of us. Uncontrollable. Following these storms takes you through rural America. Two lane roads. Farm roads. Small towns across the Midwest and Mid South. Places made famous during the Bonnie and Clyde era. Places generally forgotten but magnificent in their own way.

It’s All About Anticipation

Join me planning the first three legs of this summer trip, with a hint of what is to come after. This isn’t a vacation. This is how the Bob Davis Podcasts works on the road. No talking heads. No one telling me what to think. Nothing but the open road, a clean windshield and fuel tanks full. (Editor’s Note: A few hours after posting this podcast I realized I referred to the movie ‘Twister‘ as ‘Tornado‘. What was I thinking? Maybe ‘Sharknado‘? LOL)

Sponsored by Brush Studio in the West End, Saint Louis Park

Planning First Summer Road Trip-Storm Chasing-Podcast 632

Podcast 559-Why I Travel

Podcast 559-Why I Travel. Travel is good for so many things. Join me for a ride on the Washington State Ferry on the way to Port Townsend, Washington, on a clear, bright, sunny day in the Pacific Northwest. You’re inside the ride from boarding Mobile Podcast Command Unit 8, a conversation with one of the ferry workers, and a quick walk up to the main deck for a cup of coffee and a walk around the outer decks as the ferry leaves the dock. This is a big deal for a midwesterner. In Minnesota we do not have the working ports, the huge ferries and the breathtaking scenery of the Pacific Northwest. Minnesotans will of course say, “Oh but it’s pretty good here in Minnesota” and it is, but the Pacific Northwest is pretty much peerless on this front. Pines, islands, temperate climate, mountains, and the Pacific, beaches. Still every place has something it can call its own that is pretty incredible. I’ve talked to a lot of people on this trip and they ask about Mobile Podcast Command, or they ask about snow in Minnesota. So there’s that. Podcast 559-Why I Travel takes a look at why travel is so therapeutic for the soul. It softens hard opinions. It opens your mind. It allows you to appreciate the small things people do for each other, and it allows you to appreciate the jewels every state has. Believe it or  not, every state of our country is a little different from the other. Regions are even more different, and since this trip is a Great Northwest and Great Western trip, you’re going to be hearing a lot about some of the issues regarding development and the environment. These two issues are paramount in the west, and the northwest. Some of this was covered in Podcast 558-Pipeline Protest, and I am sure there is more to come along these lines. After the Ferry Ride, another Ferry Ride and a quick hit in Seattle, then south to the Oregon Beaches, as a big Pacific Fall Storm bears down on the region. One thing is for sure and it is driven home when I head out aboard Mobile Podcast Command. The country is not falling apart. Some people might be hurting and we could use more economic growth, but for the most part the highways are smooth (remember I am driving on two lane state roads most of the way, and they are fine, even in North Dakota where the oil trucks are beating them to death.) and small towns look prosperous. Sponsored by X Government Cars.