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Getting our Kicks on Route 66
Dec. 30th, 2022 11:41 am5 Days in the Desert travelog #21
Newberry Springs, CA - Mon, 26 Dec 2022, 3pm
After lunch we crossed down from the I-15 corridor to the I-40 corridor, heading out to Pisgah Crater. Rather than cruise along I-40 with the truckers we opted to drive Route 66. The two roads run parallel in this area, sometimes lbarely 50 feet apart.
Route 66 is in some ways even more sedate than I-40. The road isn't as flat, and the speed limit is lower, but it's even less crowded than the already pretty calm I-40. In fact Route 66 is so uncrowded that we were able to stop in the road to take pictures!
What's the fuss about Route 66? It became part of American culture in the mid 20th century. The road, built in the 1920s, connected Chicago to Los Angeles. It factored into people migrating west during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era; it was name-checked in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. From 1945 through the 1960s it came to represent post-war optimism and the American freedom of mobility, where one could just pack a few bags and drive 2,500 miles away without papers or plans to start a new life.
Today Route 66 is an artifact of a bygone era, a thing still worshiped by aging Baby Boomers but little more than a curiosity to younger generations. The road's use was overtaken starting in the late 1960s with the built-out of the interstate highway system in the US. It was officially decommissioned in 1985. By then businesses that flourished with travelers in early decades were already drying up. The classic Pixar movie Cars tells this story.
BTW, no, Newberry Springs, near where we took this picture, is not the pattern for Cars's fictional setting of Radiator Springs. The movie's setting is explicitly in Arizona; and the red-rocks landscape reflects that. Plus, Newberry Springs is way tinier than Radiator Springs. It's basically two gas stations on I-40.
Newberry Springs, CA - Mon, 26 Dec 2022, 3pm
After lunch we crossed down from the I-15 corridor to the I-40 corridor, heading out to Pisgah Crater. Rather than cruise along I-40 with the truckers we opted to drive Route 66. The two roads run parallel in this area, sometimes lbarely 50 feet apart.
Route 66 is in some ways even more sedate than I-40. The road isn't as flat, and the speed limit is lower, but it's even less crowded than the already pretty calm I-40. In fact Route 66 is so uncrowded that we were able to stop in the road to take pictures!
What's the fuss about Route 66? It became part of American culture in the mid 20th century. The road, built in the 1920s, connected Chicago to Los Angeles. It factored into people migrating west during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era; it was name-checked in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. From 1945 through the 1960s it came to represent post-war optimism and the American freedom of mobility, where one could just pack a few bags and drive 2,500 miles away without papers or plans to start a new life.
Today Route 66 is an artifact of a bygone era, a thing still worshiped by aging Baby Boomers but little more than a curiosity to younger generations. The road's use was overtaken starting in the late 1960s with the built-out of the interstate highway system in the US. It was officially decommissioned in 1985. By then businesses that flourished with travelers in early decades were already drying up. The classic Pixar movie Cars tells this story.
BTW, no, Newberry Springs, near where we took this picture, is not the pattern for Cars's fictional setting of Radiator Springs. The movie's setting is explicitly in Arizona; and the red-rocks landscape reflects that. Plus, Newberry Springs is way tinier than Radiator Springs. It's basically two gas stations on I-40.
