What to Eat

We know where we are having breakfast on May 27, 2029 -- in Chicago near our son's alma mater. After that, we are open to suggestions, and it seems that YouTube rising star Dylan Huynh has plenty for us. 

Pamela learned about his project in an article published by his partners at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. We are glad that this travelogue project is tied to supporting some of the remaining historic businesses along the route. We will be watching the videos and putting his recommendations on our map.

The article mentions something very interesting -- among young adults, nostalgia for the Mother Road is not about the road itself or old television shows, but about the 2006 movie Cars. Now it seems we should rewatch that movie, with our own road trip in mind!

Bourbon MO

We just learned about the Bourbon Hotel in the eponymous Missouri town. A local couple recently purchased it and is enthusiastic about learning its history and restoring the building. The photographs on the Facebook page they created suggest -- to this amateur -- that the building is structurally sound enough to warrant the extensive work they are doing inside.

Since our trip is still a few years off, there is a good chance it will be open for a visit by the time we pass through!

Our Ride

 

I hope the paint job on the right is not for production; I assume
this has something to do with obscuring some design details.

As we think about this Chicago-to-LA journey, a key question is the choice of vehicle.

Perhaps the route could have been traversed by public bus at some point in the past, and perhaps much of it could be today. But if ever a journey was meant to be completed in a car, it is this one.

In 2016 we purchased a 2008 Mercedes E350 wagon, which we call Gretel, especially when her GPS talks to us. Even though we got it for a good price, we could only justify the extravagance of such a vehicle because of its potential to last for many years. At 13 years and 210,000 miles, signs of wear are few (though occasional repairs can be shockingly expensive).

We can fully expect to still have Gretel when we take this journey in 2029. And a 2,000-mile drive stretched over several weeks might not warrant a new car purchase.

Still, it is not too soon to be thinking about using this trip as an opportunity to make a break with the internal combustion engine. Mercedes-Benz is doing so as a company, recently announcing that it will have all-electric models in every major category by 2025, with an entirely electric fleet by 2030. 

The company's plans are not limited to the production side: it is developing a network of charging stations that hopes will provide a "seamless" experience. That geographic aspect of the planning will be key to customer acceptance. 

This photo of Gretel was really about showing off the kayak.

2025 Update:

We live in Massachusetts, whose drivers are ranked 49th in their ability to avoid accidents. A couple of years ago, one of these specimens rear-ended Gretel while we were sitting at a traffic light. Since insurance companies are terrible, she was totaled and we were paid a few dollars ahead of her scrap value. We love the E350 wagons, though, so we applied that pittance toward a 2013 car of the same model that we call Angela Merkel. Unless fresh money falls from the sky or some other nitwit crashes into us, that will most likely be our Route 66 ride. Stay tuned!

Tulsa -- Greenwood Memorial

Image: from the Route66RoadTrip.com site

 Depending on which way we follow the route (Chicago to L.A. so we start with a big send-off from our kid and our in-laws, or the opposite? -- we have time to decide), Tulsa will be either a couple days ahead of or a couple days after the midpoint of the trip.  The real midpoint is at the Midpoint Café in Adrian, Texas. Check back in a few years for my review of the coffee.

In either case, we will need to spend some extra time in Tulsa -- both for the touristy things and to learn more about how the city is addressing its history as the site of the terrible racist massacre of 1921. I did not know of the attacks at all until I was well into adulthood. We as individuals and we as a country need to take some time to learn this part of our history and to take seriously its implications. 

The rampage took place just a mile or so north of the alignment of Route 66 through the city. 

Map image: from the Route66RoadTrip.com site

From a Frequent Traveler

A YouTuber named Let's Go Road Trippin' has prepared a nice overview of the Mother Road, supported by some online research and inspired by his own experience delivering mobile homes along the modern version of the route.

Through a 2020 Lens: Vicarious Explores

 

Train in New Mexico sunset. Photo: Luke Sharrett, NYT

The editors and photojournalists of the New York Times are providing a bit of a respite for those whose wanderlust has been severely curtailed by pandemic restrictions on travel, in the form of a series of lush, lonesome photo essays entitled The World Through a Lens. 

Although a maritime essay about British island-keepers was my first glimpse of this series, the chance for a virtual explore of the Mother Road is my first indulgence. (And yes, in Casa Hayes-Boh, "explore" as a noun is considered grammatically correct.) Among other things, this essay by Luke Sharrett (who, like me, grew up in northern Virginia) shows just how hard the elements have been on some of the old commercial signs. I wonder what a decade of further weathering will have left intact by the time of our planned odyssey. 

Lagniappe

For further self care, the 1957 recording of Ferde Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite by Eugene Ormandy & The Philadelphia Orchestra is the perfect audio to follow Sharrett's photography.

Musical Engineering

Between Tijeras and Albuquerque: Google Map

When we get near Albuquerque, the road itself will be our reward. A quarter-mile stretch of the Mother Road just west of Tijeras sings -- and with any luck will still do so when we are ready for our drive.

Carefully calibrated steel plates were used to crimp the asphalt into a musical rumble strip so that a vehicle traveling at 45 miles per hour will play the familiar melody of America the Beautiful (followed by a brief jingle to thank the project's financial sponsor). The work was completed by National Geographic in partnership with New Mexico Department of Transportation, as described in detail below.

As of this writing, a lot of the YouTube comments focus on the fact that the narrator talks over the music. I promise we won't do that, but I also think folks took this whole thing a bit too seriously. A video by Beth Thomas provides just the music and ambient road noise:

Pam learned of this treasure from Snopes, which also includes Jennifer Nalewicki's Musical Highway article in Smithsonian.

Lagniappe

This story brought the same phrase to mind for both of us: STEM to STEAM. With any luck, it will have run its course by the time we run our course (get it?), but probably not. STEM, as most people in education now know, stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, which is NCLB-era jargon for "most of the things we dropped when ill-informed school reformers focused too narrowly in reading tests."

Realizing that this still excluded the humanities, the "A" for "Arts" was inserted -- with some degree of success -- in order to attract some attention and funding to yet another area that the Clinton-Bush-Obama reformers had marginalized. See the work of reformed reformer Diane Ravitch for more background. See Google for hundreds of examples of this jargon in use.

Full disclosure: this is a game I both decry and play. The EarthView program I help to coordinate was moved into a STEM framework in order to sustain its support, and I always remind folks that it is a great example of STEAM.

End to End Preview

Facebook just reminded me that a year ago today, we posted this Route 66 Pregaming photo:

The Mother Road, as the song reminds us, "goes from Chicago to L.A." We did not realize until this day a year ago, that in Chicago, it starts directly in front of the Art Institute of Chicago, where our kid Harvey was attending the world-renowned SAIC. We were, in fact, in town to see his fabulous works in his senior BFA show.
Another wonder of social media: we learned that a friend and former student of mine was at the other end -- the L.A. part -- at the same time!

We've Been Advised

Perhaps this will be a mere footnote by the time we make our journey, but if the effort of Oklahoma legislators to dedicate a portion of the Mother Road in honor of the 45th president succeeds, we will have had plenty of time to figure out how to traverse that 13-mile section. Rainbow flags may be involved.

Bunking in the Bunker

The cave suite at the Grand Canyon Caverns inn boasts many superlatives -- a room that is the biggest, deepest, darkest and so on. It also has the potential to be the most expensive room we ever let, almost 2000 times the cost of the four-bit room mentioned in King of the Road. There would be space, though, for others to join us for this part of the adventure.

Sweet Reward

If When we reach the halfway point on our journey along the Mother Road, our reward will be a root beer bread pudding. It sounds painfully sweet, but Atlas Obscura says otherwise, and it never steers us wrong. This looks decadent, and will be more so when washed down with one of the 700 soft drinks on offer at Pops in Arcadia, Oklahoma.

Wardrobe: All Set!

We have been making preparations for this trip for some while, having found the perfect shirts for the journey back in 2014. Being careful not to wear them out ahead of time, we tend to reserve them for special occasions, such as visits to Westport Rivers.

Found far from Route 6, along Main Street
in Falmouth on the Cape of Cod.

Political Economy of Route 66

Geography is all about connections, and just as the Mother Road connects Chicago to L.A., the stories of the road connect it to the political and economic changes that shaped the twentieth century, particularly its music.

I had not really thought of it in these terms, until I recently heard a couple segments of Fugitive Waves, which examines the cultural legacy of Route 66 from several perspectives, including the the music inspired by its role as a route in the Dust Bowl migrations.

In the process of looking for the Kitchen Sisters podcast, I encountered another radio program about Route 66, also broadcast via PRX -- Route 66 Forever. In turn, I learned that this oral history is part of  Across the Tracks, hosted by the University of New Mexico.

With so much scholarship and journalism already produced, we are going to need all of the time between now and our own journey, just to read and listen to it all!

Mythique 66

Once again, I wish I had paid better attention in French class. I only took one semester, and it was during the lowest ebb in my study habits. The only things I learned were that I would never be good at spelling in French, that pronouncing plural words is supposed to stop a few letters short of the end, and that Pam Hayes-Bohanan would be the love of my life.

Actually, I did not learn that last bit until later, but it was in Dr. Stan's French 101 that we first met, and she still marvels that my attendance was sufficient to remember who she was.

Anyway, had I paid better attention to Dr. Stan and had I stuck with it for more than part of a semester (we had a generous pass/fail policy at our university, so I did get credit), then I might know what is being said in the sole entry (so far) on a blog known as route' mythique route 66. I found it only because it has the URL that I wanted for this blog, so my browser keeps "remembering" it for me by accident.

For my Francophone friends, enjoy this take on sur la route de la mère.  And perhaps someone can explain the "hb" in its URL.

Meanwhile, thanks to Google, I know that the banner refers to a Route 66 Foray -- I like the sound of that.

Banner from route' mythique 66.

32 Attractions

Let's hope that these 32 attractions are still findable when we make our journey -- especially the whale in Catoosa, Oklahoma! The Murder Bordello in Galena, Kansas also seems quite important, and reminiscent of our own local Lizzie Borden B&B.

Solar System Road

If, by the time we take our Route 66 trip, solar roads have become better known than the Mother Road, we will know that it started at a rest stop in Conway Missouri, where the first U.S. field test of LED-embedded solar pavement was recently installed.

By the time of our trip, the questions of durability and sustainability will have been resolved, though at this point we know not how.

End of the Mother Road

It was on this date in 1985 that the Mother Road was decertified. Many miles of the original Route 66 had been bypassed by or upgraded to interstate highways that are numbered according to their own distinct system. This was causing sufficient confusion that a majority of the states  along the route asked for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials -- which apparently decides these things -- to decertify the route. Meeting on June 27, 1985, these representatives of highway authorities from throughout the United States voted to end the Route 66 designation.

Memorials were built, of course, and even some of the petitioning states honored the historic route by designating some sections "Old U.S. 66." The New York Times told the entire story the day after the decision in the article "Final Chapter is Written for Route 66."  The article has a dateline of Duluth, Minnesota, which of course is not on the route; it was just the location of the annual highway meeting that year.

The most fascinating thing I learned from the article is that the origins of the route can be traced to a camel caravan led by Navy Lt. Edward Beale in 1857. Which is more surprising -- the involvement of camels or the involvement of the navy?

Camels are a far cry from the Chevy's and other classic cars that would eventually be associated with this route.

Lt. Beale and his camels are commemorated by the Beale Wagon Road Historic Trail, one of the features we have missed in prior visits to Kaibab National Forest in Arizona.

66 bookstores

It will be interesting to see how many of these are still in business when we make our "Mother Road" trip.

Dreaming

Wish we could go to L.A. to see this.
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/12/the-end-of-americas-love-affair-with-route-66/383335/

Puzzle Me This

... or: Tale of Two Road Trips

It is fitting that we picked up our Route 66 jigsaw puzzle as we were nearing the end of a briefer road trip to the mid-Atlantic. Any time we are headed home through western Mass or Central Connecticut, we are likely to stop at Traveler Food and Books, which I just call "Good Food Books" because the highway sign says something like that. With every meal, customers can choose a used book. Additional books, cards, and puzzles are also for sale. 

This restaurant is a few minutes from the Mass Turnpike, and a more interesting and satisfying meal than anything available at the rest stops! It even has bird feeders near some of the tables, with guides to the local birds. Visiting cool old places like this is exactly the purpose of our Route 66 project, so we could not resist purchasing a puzzle dedicated to the Missouri section of the Mother Road. When we got home, we realized that this is actually a new puzzle, published in 2013 by Sunsout Puzzles. It is one of at least three in the company's Route 66 series (hint to any of Santa's elves who might be reading).

Shortly after our purchase, we were delighted to have cousins visiting from Wisconsin, and nothing says "family staycation" better than a jigsaw puzzle. Especially a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle! Soon after our cousins arrived, we put the puzzle on the card table and started trying to get the unusual outline organized.

Appropriately, the signpost was among our first victories.

The puzzle helped quickly to identify the insomniacs in the family.

We were so pleased with the achievement that we dressed for the occasion!

The result -- some images to look forward to searching for in real life when we "take that trip" in 2029, and a map of part of the route.

1,000 pieces / 2 sides / 6 corners
6 concavities / 2 convexities 

Jigsaw puzzles are fleeting of course, like live theater. We decided to keep it around for about as long as it took to assemble it.

This car looks like it is going somewhere, but it is only going to the game closet ...
until the next cousin visit!

Lagniappe

When I posted some of these puzzle-in-progress photos online, a Tucson friend (and fellow geographer) responded with information about a friend of his (now deceased) who had used his art and cartography to promote preservation of  the old highway. Bob Waldmire was so widely associated with enjoyment of the Mother Road that he became the basis for George Carlin's character Fillmore in the movie Cars. Waldmire's web site is still maintained by his brother, and includes a cool map depicting all of his Route 66 postcards.

Interactive map is at Postcards of Route 66