Samantha Brown’s ninth season of her “Places to Love” travel show begins today on PBS-TV stations, including three episodes along Route 66 in New Mexico, Arizona and California.
Episodes from Season 9 can be viewed online here. In the previous two seasons, Brown’s show traveled the eastern half of Route 66.
Here’s a teaser trailer of the upcoming season:
USA Today interviewed Brown about the upcoming season and had this to say about the Mother Road:
We started in season seven with the state of Illinois and we just thought: what if we did the whole thing? It was a three-season approach and this is the last.
We ended with New Mexico, Arizona, and California. And completing the entire route, which is something like 2,400 miles, it really is an accomplishment I never thought I needed. As a traveler this late in my career, it was never on my radar and it just knocked my socks off.
She was asked about her favorite hidden gem of the route.
In Seligman, Arizona, that is basically the start of all of Route 66. There lives a man named Angel Delgadillo, and he owns a barbershop.
When Route 66 was decommissioned, he understood the challenges of every single small town in the United States that used to be along Route 66, and what would happen, that the highways would bypass.
He was instrumental in fighting the government of Arizona and then the United States to form the very first Route 66 club.
He is still alive. He’s 95 years old. He owns a gift shop with his wife, and he is just a joy. He is an absolute treasure of the United States and he is there to tell the story.
Delgadillo will actually be 99 in a few months. But you get the idea.
(Screen-capture image from video of Samantha Brown at the Santa Monica Pier)