'A Pretty Cool Hotel Tour' of the Lincoln Highway
When done right, the American road trip is a unique escapade that blends expansive landscapes, local history, and quirky character. Travel photographers Margaret and Corey Bienert’s concept for “A Pretty Cool Hotel Tour” captures the delight of uncovering destinations of distinction, on and off the beaten path.
For their most recent adventure, the pair took a proper coast-to-coast road trip along one of the oldest routes in America, the Lincoln Highway, on its hundred-year anniversary. “This project was perfect for this road trip to work that muscle,” Margaret said. The Lincoln Highway, named in tribute to Abraham Lincoln, was opened in the fall of 1913. The route begins in New York and ends in San Francisco and covers 3000 miles over a dozen states. Industrialist Carl Fisher — who built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and was the original developer of Miami Beach — conceived the idea for the transcontinental highway. A dip down toward Denver, Colorado was cut out of the original route after it caused controversy, and is one aspect of the road’s colorful history.
The idea, conceived by Lincoln Motor Company, was for the Bienerts to drive a new vehicle along the route, leaning on new technology for comfort while they documented historic hidden gems along the way. For the Lincoln-meets-Lincoln pairing they drove a new Corsair, a small SUV equipped with branded Blue Cruise automated driving tech that assists on long stretches of highway. “The thing that I wasn't expecting was the feeling of how it actually made me feel safer to be using it because it felt like but like it was like an extra set of eyes on everything the whole time,” Corey said.
This latest excursion is part of the Bienerts’ ongoing efforts to document themed hotels and lesser-known museums and monuments, a small but might part of the travel industry. Last year, they published the book “Hotel Kitsch” (Artisan) a visual diary of the clever, cool, and camp properties they’ve stayed at over the past five years and documented on a blog, an episodic series on YouTube and their socials. The photos are vivid and dial in on funky designs like heart-shaped bathtubs, cars-as-beds, and under-water hotel rooms.
The Bienerts, who are married, met at Judson University in 2008 and discovered a shared loved for photography. The concept started with regional work travel that became an excuse to road trip to oddball properties outside of their destination cities. “When we were flying to places, we were missing all the things in between. And so many of these weird, cool, kitschy spots are really in the in-between places,” Margaret said.
The charming hotel tour is an online hit — they’ve attracted an audience of over two million followers collectively across Instagram, Tik Tok and You Tube. Research is a big part of their process, because they are scouring places that often don’t have well-kept websites. The challenge of the Lincoln Highway trip was to locate specialized destinations in a road trip that lasted less than two weeks. “I was a little nervous like, are we going to find anything that is very interesting?” Margaret said. “But there were really cool and kitschy spots that we did get to document, both like overnight stays and even just museums.”
A favorite Lincoln Highway destination was the Archway Museum in Kearney, Nebraska that documents the trail of the Great Platte River Road. Scenic highlights included preserved roadside monuments that pre-dated the idea of billboards. “We got to sleep in a giant shoe-shaped house that someone built along the Lincoln Highway,” Margaret said.” We got to stop at the giant coffee pod that used to be a café and that’s now being restored. We also got to sleep in a giant grain bin in Iowa.” Some of what they found was the result of preservation efforts to document the history of the highway and its century-old culture. “There are these really big roadside kind of monuments that you can sleep in and interact with.” Another highlight was the ritzier Stein Eriksen Lodge in Park City Utah that Margaret said felt like being inside of a snow globe. Part of the fun of the trip was the people they ran into along away. “In the Wyoming area, you go so long without even any exits, so then when you do find a community or a culture, I feel like it’s so much more connected, because they're more isolated. I think places like that are really fun to visit and to ask people about the city.”
They documented their experience using both a Sony DSLR and iPhone camera. In total, their ten-day trip spanned 14 states and covered 3,389 miles. After they wrapped up the drive late last year, they were already wondering how they could go do it again. “How could we actually make this trip twice as long, because I want more time,” Margaret said. “There’s so much to see.”
Photography by Margaret and Corey Bienert.