About | The Endless Highway

WELCOME FELLOW TRAVELER! I'M MIKE!

I've been the morning announcer and talk show host at WTNS radio in Coshocton, Ohio for over a quarter-century. In addition to the usual politics and current events, our discussions often turn to travel. My on-air travelogues are among our most popular talk show features.

I have been an avid traveler since I was a small child. In fact my earliest memory is of a family trip to Lake Erie when I was 2. My mother was a schoolteacher and my father operated a one-man business. While my family was certainly not affluent, travel was always a priority, and I had seen much of the United States and Canada by the time I left for college at age 17. Since then, my insatiable wanderlust has taken me to all 50 US states, 52 of the 62 US national parks, most of the US and Canada's largest cities, and recently to several Caribbean islands.

As a child, I traveled across the country with my parents pulling a tent camper or trailer. As an adult, I've done some single-destination travel with large groups of friends, and I've done a bit of solo cruising. However, I have always preferred the freedom and independence of multiple-destination "roadtrip-style" travel, especially when traveling with my two (now grown) daughters. It allows you to enjoy your destinations and attractions on your own schedule. Best of all, roadtrip-style provides the opportunity to see some quirky, offbeat places and experience the local culture.

These days, I'm a happily single grandfather always on the lookout for the next adventure... with family, friends or on my own. I love sharing my experiences with my radio audience and online friends.

Would you believe that this website has been operating for well over two decades? That's right! It sprang from the World Wide Web's primordial soup. In 1999, I started it innocently as an Angelfire website. I quickly graduated to Microsoft's FrontPage software, and "Mike Bechtol's Travel Page" was launched at the mikebechtol.com domain. It became a hit among my Ohio community and, to my surprise, gained some traction on the internet at large. Over the years, Dreamweaver replaced FrontPage, content outpaced tech, and my site became a difficult to manage Frankenstein's monster. It was time to start over! You are looking at a newly rebooted website created from the essence of the original! The technology is modern, but the travelogues and photos go all the way back to 1999. Frankenstein's monster has been put to sleep. Welcome to the renaissance of Mike Bechtol's Endless Highway!

All photos, designs, text and other content are produced by Mike Bechtol unless otherwise credited.