Start: What an amazing day. Much of this day was to be spent on the road in solace, untested by traffic congestion and red lights. But the hot sun would be the biggest obstacle of the day, so we stocked the car with a cooler of ice and water.

The “Long” part: The road really started to take shape after that. Very long stretches of road expanded past the horizon under a perfectly blue sky. We passed many abandoned gas stations, motels, and some forgotten towns. At one point, we found one of the original spans of the route that no longer was maintained and was not clearly visible on the maps. Parts of the road had been washed away, and much of it was broken, but those are the little surprises we are hoping to find all along the way!

“And”: After leaving California, the road took us through Oatman, AZ. This old mining town turned Wild West with gunfight reenactments and wild donkeys roaming the streets. It’s a total tourist trap and COMPLETELY worth visiting. But the REAL attraction is what we were about to find a few miles to the east.

The “Winding” part: To the east of Oatman is Sitgreaves Pass, the longest tangled string of hairpin turns and steep mountains that we have ever seen. Incredibly beautiful mountain faces towered over us for a good hour (we stopped frequently to take pictures, lots of pictures). It’s a drive that can not be described in a few short sentences, so you will just have to save your money and rent your OWN convertible. TOTALLY worth it!

Stop (many, many stops): Once clear of the mountain we continued east through more populated areas. Here we began to see the nostalgic sites of Route 66 with little soda fountains and neon motel signs, just like you would find in a book. My parent’s youth still lives in places like Kingman and the Hackberry General Store.

We made it to Holbrook, AZ and are about to head out to, well, to somewhere. We are close to the Painted Desert and Petrified Forrest, but we might just stick to the road.

Day 01: We started by meeting in LAX, then rented a CONVERTIBLE. We drove to the starting point, Santa Monica Pier, and had dinner at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. We took in a few street performances (we met one street dancer who we considered joining our breakdance crew – see his MySpace page at Flex81@Yahoo) and Timm bought himself two cotton candies (one pink and one blue). Then we spent the next two hours looking for Route 66. I still can’t understand; we have one Route 66 fanatic, two books, and a Garmin GPS unit and could NOT find a Route 66 sign in Santa Monica. We must be confused.

So we proceeded to find a special shop for Timm who wanted to buy something for the trip, it was closed. I then decided to head to the next three known addresses (from one of the books) to get back onto Route 66, and finally found one in Pasadena (we must have taken a bigger detour for the shop. The sun had set but we were ON OUR WAY. A little tired and disappointed, I asked Timm to do the rest of the driving. I told him “the book” said we should get off I-15 just a bit north of Devore, CA.

THERE IT WAS, what we had always imagined the road had become. It was a deserted two lane road with five foot road paintings in the middle of the lanes indicating that this truly was the road of the past.

We passed old forgotten mailboxes and noticed that another road was adjacent to ours, and it was blocked off and neglected. It was sad and cool at the same time. We got out, looked at the stars, and marveled at how much this reminded us of a scene from “Cars”. We were stoked!

That only continued for about 10 miles, but it was worth the wait.