Samantha Brown at the Santa Monica Pier on Route 66 in California. Credit: Samantha Isom/Samantha Brown Media Throughout her nine seasons hosting PBS show Places to Love, Samantha Brown has surfed in New Zealand, gone tubing in Costa Rica, and danced in China, yet it’s a road trip through America that captured her heart. “In my 25-year career, driving the entire Route 66 is the greatest trip I have ever taken,” she told Travel + Leisure of completing the 2,448-mile journey between Chicago and Santa Monica, California. “There’s that sense of accomplishment, but it’s also going in thinking one thing and coming out and being a different person because of it.” The 55-year-old travel expert admitted that she wasn’t innately drawn to the highway known as the Mother Road, but had done a mini trip down its Illinois portion for Season 7 and was immediately mesmerized.…