Great radio stations for climbing road trips?!

I'm hoping that I'm not the only one on MP who still sometimes listens to the radio on long climbing road trips. It feels like most stations recycle the same hundred overplayed songs in a given genre, play nationally-syndicated garbage, and are owned by radio.com or iheartradio... I'll take Spotify over these anyday. But hidden among the airwaves are also local stations whose DJs can be trusted to expose you to great music you've never heard before (or at least would never have thought to stream), maybe give you a good laugh, and help while away the driving hours.

I would love to learn about folks' favorite 'hidden gem' radio stations in different places that I/others can tune into when passing through. Maybe just post up with the station's frequency, call letters, a little description, and its approximate broadcast range? Any genre, no broadcast range too small. A few of mine:

KPIG, 107.5 (Freedom, CA) - blues, rock, and folk, along with random comedy sketches and strange fake ads mixed in with real ads. Covers Santa Cruz, the Monterey Bay, and the north half of the Salinas valley.
KSCU, 103.3 (Santa Clara, CA) - the student radio station from Santa Clara university. Genres vary wildly with different DJs, but I enjoy most of them and there are no ads. Only reaches within 15 miles or so of Santa Clara / San Jose.
KRHV, 93.3 (Mammoth Lakes, CA) - a good local rock (truly all kinds of rock) station for the Eastern Sierra. Supposedly reaches from Lone Pine to Bridgeport but is patchy in some parts.

My Favorite FM station is in southern NM, hosted by NMSU. It plays a lot of indie rock&pop and alt RnB&hip hop in the rare middle ground between overplayed junk and obscure noise. Whether you're climbing in the Organs, or just driving from Hueco to Tucson, give it a shot. 91.5

Best of all, their call sign is KRUX.

KPIG is great- but not for any serious road trip, as its span is so limited. I suppose that's true of any station with actual, live, thinking DJ's, though. 

A favorite activity with my longtime climbing partner (who was also an ardent audiophile) was channel surfing up and down the dial- when a song came up, one point was for correctly naming the song, another point for naming the band, and the trifecta was naming song, band, and the album it was on. Kept us busy for hours, was great fun, and learned/reinforced a lot of music data in the head.

MattH wrote:

My Favorite FM station is in southern NM, hosted by NMSU. It plays a lot of indie rock&pop and alt RnB&hip hop that's not overplayed but is still super listenable (a hard middle ground to find). Whether you're climbing in the Organs, or just driving from Hueco to Tucson, give it a shot.

Best of all, their call sign is KRUX.

Really nice to hear a shoutout for KRUX. Loved that station while an undergrad in LC thirty five years ago. My then housemate dated one of the DJs, who was also a punk club DJ in El Paso 

95.5 Mountain Chill Telluride, CO. It comes in over here in Monticello as well.

KRVR 105.5 out of Copperopolis is fun includes live DJ. Music from 60’s -80’s . Their motto: Where the good songs went. Always hear at least one I haven’t heard in years.

89.3 MPR The Current

A public radio music station out of Minneapolis/St Paul and rebroadcast around Minnesota.  I tune to it every time I pass through the Twin Cities.

99.9 kuaa in SLC is just fantastic! Super eclectic and interesting music.

My regular "commute" is Boise to City of Rocks, several times per year. My 2016 Honda CRV has a cd player, so we sometimes bring along an audiobook (checking out several from the library to choose from), especially when the stay at COR is longer than 2 or 3 days. Even those trips back and forth to Almo add up! My climbing partner and I have gotten through several books on trips, one trip we enjoyed one enough we probably made up a few excuses to go to town, lol!

Radio stations, NPR, a little, but there's still a whole lot of empty air out there, here in Idaho, and COR is 3 to 3.5 hours (construction is semi perpetual) each way. It becomes a button poking search for....anything you can stand. That said, not on road trips, because I'm not roading Saturdays, but, KBSU is the public radio here (a couple locations on the "dial", but 91.5 is in the ball park), and a long running local program is Private Idaho, a wonderful curated music program that's wanders all over the place. Highly recommend it! It's on what is normally the classical music feed, 2 stations lower (90 something?) then the main news feed. A spanish station in between. 

I confess, I'm a big fan of Science Friday on NPR. 

H.

Agree with the Science Friday rec. 

Also, This American Life, NPR. Not a radio station, this, but another great radio show… I think you can download them as podcasts for a long trip. 

THE Q 94.5

ITS DIFFERENT HERE 

Your CD's. . .

KEXP 90.3 Gets some good coverage around Seattle Washington. Pretty indie but its got a good mix. It was actually the first station to air Nirvana and Sound Garden way back when. Depending on the hour/DJ you can find pretty much anything. Also, you can download DJ podcast from the interweb if you're not in the area.

On winter ski &ice climbing trips across Nevada ,Utah,and to Canada  , we loved XEF-AM ,Ciudad Acuna & Wolfman Jack .

Misha Sweeney wrote:

99.9 kuaa in SLC is just fantastic! Super eclectic and interesting music.

I just tuned to it. Nothing but static here in Sandy. 

Sirius satellite radio is great!  You never outrun the station signal.  You get the same stations no matter where you are.

Steve Williams wrote:

Your CD's. . .

I have destroyed countless CD's due to scratching by the dirt in cars.