Route 66 - the Mother Road

It's hard to drive unnoticed when you're behind the wheel of a Ford Mustang the colour of a mango. Not even in Los Angeles, America's capital of brash.

Truth be told, I wouldn't want it any other way. Our hire car may be turning a few heads but, on this day, our brightly coloured steed is our statement of intent. This is the City of Angels, where opportunity glistens and every new dawn is a chance for self-promotion, progress, discovery. Why drive anything less?

We have the rising sun in our sights as we join one of LA's fast-flowing highways and head east, ever east, towards America's heartland. Soon we'll be on the most famous road in the greatest nation on earth - Route 66, the Mother Road, America's main highway.

The Route 66 badge on stickers, licence plates, you name it.

There's a spiritual element to any American road trip. Journey down highways and back roads and it's impossible not to think of the early pioneers venturing west in their wagons. Route 66, when it was constructed, offered redemption, and not just for the soul. The 2200-mile long road from Chicago to LA became a ticket to freedom, a one-way ride to the promised land of California.

For millions of Americans, it's a treasure trove of memories, a direct link to the days of two-lane highways, malt shakes and drive-ins. It's a symbol of American innocence, ingenuity and determination.

Nowadays, though it lingers in the imagination, Route 66 has ceased to be a unified thoroughfare. Long, unbroken stretches of original asphalt can still be found, but Route 66 is essentially a discontinuous byway, an ill-defined soup of road fragments, overlapping upgrades, derelict road and Interstate access ramps.

Parts of Route 66 will lead you straight to a dead-end. Still others contain gems of the road. It is America's most famous road, even though it no longer exists.       

Chasing the sun

With the sun reaching higher in the sky, we point the bonnet of our Mustang through arid stretches of California's Mojave desert. We have just left behind Victorville, a town famous for the Westerns that were once filmed there, and the first of what will be many stops on our journey to Chicago. At a Route 66 museum and gift shop, we stock up on maps and information about the miles ahead of us and gawk at kitsch bearing the '66' badge.

Bar stool in the Route 66 Museum in Victorville, California.

We head for America's playground, Las Vegas. Though it isn't on Route 66, we can't bear to come so close to this temple of lights and glamour and not visit. It's our first night's stop.

The following day we sweep down into Arizona, which has the longest uninterrupted stretch of the old highway. As we drive along it, we spare a thought for the migrants who, decades ago, travelled in the opposite direction seeking salvation from drought. These were the years of the Depression and the Dust Bowl, when the topsoil in the western half of Oklahoma was thrown to the wind. Route 66 became a route of escape for these families who slogged westward in beaten-up old jalopies bearing 'California or bust' signs.

Their plight was immortalised in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. In it, Steinbeck refers to Route 66 as 'the road of flight'.   

We come to another crest in the road and I think about those early pioneers who forged west in their horse-drawn wagons all those years ago. We have the benefit of fast, air-conditioned comfort. But they had no such luxury. How they must have reached these peaks yearning to see the blue of the Pacific in front of them but finding, instead, yet another unyielding desert plain.   

The Arizona expanse is simply stunning. Huge skies sit atop the copper-coloured cliffs of the Grand Canyon and a crater where a meteor blasted a hole 50,000 years ago.

Meteor Crater in Arizona.

As we course along baked and rocky countryside, we play hide and seek with mile-long freight trains. When they disappear, the only other man-made objects to be seen are the telegraph poles that stand like sentries alongside the road. Their wooden arms entreat the clouds above, like the Joshua trees that pepper the land around us. This country is so diverse, so expansive.

At Oatman, we see a town that is a living, breathing relic of times past, an old Wild West town, complete with burros that step listlessly through dusty streets. From there, the road twists and winds around the steep inclines of Sitgreaves Pass, where the scenery challenges you to keep your eyes on the road.

Oatman, Arizona.

We drive onwards until we reach Winslow, where we stop and stand at the corner made famous by the Eagles' hit song Take it Easy. We get talking to a rancher from Wyoming who tells us he has the opportunity to work on a property in Western Australia, if only he can convince his wife and kids to pack up and move so far away. I detect a hint of envy that we are on such a journey of discovery. It's a reminder that few modern-day Americans, let alone Australians, get this chance.

All through Arizona and New Mexico, we see ghostly reminders of Route 66's heyday. During the 50s and 60s, Americans celebrated their newfound peace and prosperity by taking to the road, windows down and music blaring.

These were the glory years, when the highway became an artery of glitz and hustle. Neon signs beckoned drivers to stop and eat at Mom & Pop diners, malt shops and burger joints. The concept of 'fast food' was born. 

Motel owners got in on the action too. They adopted a 'whatever goes' approach to get people to stop and park their car for the night. If neon or a colourful painted sign didn't do the trick, then maybe a huge plastic sombrero, Angus bull, wigwam, or a car on a plinth would. Roadside signs sprung up everywhere telling people what lay ahead and entertaining them as the miles flew by.

Never was Route 66 more hip than when Bobby Troup immortalised it in song:

"If you ever plan to motor west
Travel my way, take the highway that's the best
Get your kicks on Route 66"

You still want to snap your fingers when you hear the tune. But Route 66's bustling years are easily behind it.

Everywhere along the Route can be seen old dishevelled motor inns, abandoned cafes and, periodically, the rusted hulks of forgotten petrol stations. It's as if an invisible hand has swept through and left these places deserted and ramshackle.

An old Plymouth wreck beside Route 66.

The real reason, of course, is more prosaic. When Washington decided to link America's major cities with Interstates, many of these towns were cut off. Hundreds of businesses dependent on traffic chugging along Route 66 were strangled in the process. The end finally came in 1984 when the stubborn residents of Winslow, the last town to be bypassed, lost a final legal challenge. Route 66 was officially decommissioned.

History you can touch

In places, it's easy to picture '66' during its bustling years. At Tucumcuri, New Mexico, we meet the owner of the Blue Swallow Motel, arguably the most iconic motel on the entire route. Bill renovated the motel, which is famous for its bright blue neon sign, in 2005. A self-confessed 'Chevy man', he tells us he had a large group of Corvettes come in and stay just the other night.

Elsewhere, mere apparitions remain. Cafes, motels and other gaudy spectacles still stand, but they are like pages from a history book.

Every now and then, we're fooled into thinking a place is still open for business. As we head for the border with Texas, we pull over at a service station bearing all the usual signs. But it's a shell. The place has been gutted and there's no sign of life.

A couple in a pick-up make the same mistake and pull over. "We love your Mustang", they say. They spot our California plates and ask us where in the Golden State we're from. We tell them we're from a little further away and that, sadly, the car is a rental.

Everyone we meet as we traverse America is friendly to a fault and quick to share a few words of advice. This wizened couple are no exception. When we tell them we're headed east, they warn us of an accident they just passed which was causing traffic delays. They take off in a blaze of dust. It's just another small meeting of travellers on Main Highway.

In the mornings, we follow the rising sun as far as Amarillo, capital of the Texas panhandle. Thereafter, Route 66 deviates increasingly north through Oklahoma.

Travellers scribble messages on this truck at the halfway point in Adrian, Texas.

The state calls itself 'Native America' on account of its natural beauty and its cultural roots. We pass rusty windmills, grain elevators and pastures dotted with 'longhorn' cattle and goats. There's no sign here of the drought which once blighted the state.    

There's a rich vein of Civil War History in Missouri and then we're in St Louis. Here, in the 'Gateway to the West', we crane our necks at the country's tallest national monument, the Gateway Arch.

Once over the mighty Mississippi, we guide the Mustang through the cornfields of southern Illinois.  We're on the final stretch. Where the prairie meets the Great Lakes, we enter Chicago, a city steeped in mob history and legend, and the cultural capital of the Midwest.

We quieten the rumble of the car's engine for the last time.

End to end

Through 2200 miles, Route 66 rolls and rambles, deviates and detours, stops and starts. It's a broken verge, a winding grade, a tumbling tumbleweed. It's a flickering neon sign at a late-night diner, a rusted chassis, a long-dry gas pump.

Across mountains, plains, desert and forest, it has carried folks on a voyage of discovery and salvation, and plenty more on a joy ride. It has taken them the opposite way too.

It may no longer be the quickest way to California (or Chicago, for that matter) - that honour belongs to the ever-so-efficient Interstate highways. But to anyone who has driven it, Route 66 is still "the highway that's the best".

Tour highlights

•       See miles of golden sand at Santa Monica Pier, California.
•       Be seduced by the beckoning lights of Las Vegas, Nevada.
•       Stand on the corner of Winslow, Arizona and 'take it easy'.
•       See the grandeur of the Grand Canyon, Arizona, with your own eyes.
•       Stay at the restored 1937 El Rancho Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico, where John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan all laid their heads.
•       Buy gorgeous native Navajo artwork in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
•       See cars buried hood-down in a wheat field at Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas.
•       Browse the biggest selection of cowboy boots you will ever see in Amarillo, Texas.
•       Stroll through the old-fashioned streets of Springfield, Illinois, childhood home of Abraham Lincoln.
•       Scare yourself silly with a visit to the stomach-churning Skydeck atop Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois.
•       Experience the Mom & Pop diners, cafes, bars and flickering neon of historic towns all along Route 66.

Get your kicks on Main Street, USA!

NRMA Members can cruise famous Route 66 in a Mustang convertible when they book on this tour, departing September 2009. Tour leader and Route 66 expert John Cruwys knows where to turn to see all the iconic sites between LA and Chicago, and where to stop for a great coffee or a stunning photo.
Included are return economy airfares, 15 nights in quality hotels, and 13 days car rental of a Mustang convertible (including insurance and unlimited mileage). Prices start from $9,998 per person.
Call NRMA Travel on 1300 053 052 or visit nrmatravel.com.au for more information and to book your place on this amazing journey.