Category Archives: Route 66

“Every exit is an entrance somewhere else” – Tom Stoppard

It’s sad to see it go. Just as it was sad to see it go in 2004 and 2006. When I woke up this morning, just as I had woken up the mornings of the last day of 66 in 2004 and 2006, I imagined being able to spend time at Santa Monica pier. To gaze into the Pacific Ocean and recount my weeks on the Mother Road.

This morning when I woke up, I knew it was the last bit of Route 66 I’d see for awhile. I knew it was the last time I’d open my guidebooks and research the history of past alignments. I knew from here on out, things would be very different.

This morning when I woke up, I showered and loaded the scooter. The family who stayed next to me brought a pick up truck’s worth of stuff for the weekend. They had more camping supplies than I’ve ever seen anyone have. I had a Vespa’s worth.

I rode out of the campground to Daggett, where I left off yesterday. And in Daggett I wandered around, explored the small town a little.

Daggett was the last Route 66 town I would explore on this trip. From here on out, things are too hectic, especially on a Memorial Day, to do much more than ride.

I was told to explore Sante Fe Street a bit. So I did. On it I found the Daggett Garage, which has an amazing past. You can read it here. Very neat.

Yesterday, I said that Daggett wasn’t a good place to stop for the night. I take that back. Not that the KOA was wonderful or anything, but everything that came before Daggett and everything that came after Daggett were very different from each other. Basically, from Barstow on, it was very LA.

Not that there isn’t great stuff in Barstow and Victorville, there is. But the population increased and the ability to just pull over and take pictures decreased. It became less about doing and more about seeing. LA is basically all about seeing. Most cities are. The Route 66 that I like is very rural. LA has some great stuff and I think it’s a pretty ok town. But it doesn’t beat Daggett, California.

Barstow, which is basically Daggett’s parent city, has a bunch of motels and generally keeps a Route 66 vibe. It’s bigger than I remember it and on this holiday morning, traffic was dead, but that’s ok with me.

A lot of distance separates Barstow and Victorville.

Jack Rittenhouse says of this point -

You are now leaving the vast desolation of the Mojave and are entering a region in which many small towns lies close together. The nearby Mojave River provides enough water to enable shade tress to grow in these towns, although there is still bare desert between. The region is full of dude ranches, small farms, and “desert hideaways.”

Much of this is still true. These towns aren’t so small anymore. The shade trees are less, as is the amount of bare desert between. But mostly, this still holds true.

The towns of Lenwood, Hodge, Helendale and eventually Oro Grande, while still separated by desert, are basically run together. Upon this desert separation houses have been built and developments have popped up. This is no longer a lonely stretch of road.

One of the final Route 66 icons (going east to west, that is) lies on this stretch. The Bottle Forest.

Route 66 has a lot of weird. I like weird. And the bottle forest is weird. Elmer (aka the Bottletree Man of Oro Grande) has constructed a whole forest of bottle trees. Two years ago, we stopped and talked with him for a bit. But today I was more in the mood to get to Cajon Pass before the traffic returning from a crappy weekend in Vegas got there. More on that in a bit.

After a pretty huge cement factory, I came into Victorville. Over 30 miles had passed since Barstow. I was low on gas and thankfully Victorville provided. I think I would like Victorville. It still seems to hold onto some of its small town charm. Unfortunately, the city is moving in. Over 200 movies were filmed in Victorville. The town used to resemble a typical “wild west” town. Most of those movies were wild west movies like the Gene Autry picture, Twilight on the Rio Grande.

Even the Jazz Singer was filmed here. I think this might just be the last Route 66 town (again, going east to west).

All morning I had been dreading one thing. Actually, all throughout the planning of the trip, one very small stretch of road had me so terrified that I was happily going to go three or four hours out of my way to avoid a 10 minute chunk of interstate.

That chunk is Cajon Pass.

Cajon Pass drops a billion feet in only a couple miles. Ok, it’s not that bad. I think it’s a 6% grade. Which also is fine. However, the speed at which the kind folks going into LA take this pass is amazing. When I did it in a car, at 85mph, I was terrified.

I figured a scooter just couldn’t do it. I was told by locals to skip it. I was told by a guy at the campsite where I stayed the previous night that with the wind and fog and trucks, he wouldn’t do it on a scooter.

It’s always wise to heed the advice given to you by locals. But in this case, I did not.

I stopped at the Summit Inn, gathered some strength and tore out onto the interstate expecting to have to do 80mph just to stay alive.

The winds were picking up, the fog was thick and settling in, and the speeds of the motorists were amazing. Rittenhouse suggests that “sometimes it is necessary to use second gear for safety,” but these folks weren’t paying much attention it.

After about 30 seconds, an 18 wheeler passes me. He is going about 65mph, I had not yet picked up full speed. When he pulls in front of me, he slows down to about 55mph. And he was my front door all the way down the pass.

Thank you, unnamed trucker. Thank you for quite possibly saving my life.

Near the bottom of the hill is the exit for Cajon Blvd, Old 66. I take it and follow that (mostly) into San Bernardino.

You can read more about Cajon Pass here.

San Bernardino is where the LA portion of Route 66 is in full effect. From here on, it’s a city.

There are many relics of Old 66 along the way. And it’s definitely not something that should be missed, especially for the 66′r who wants to do Chicago to LA.

This time I was taking a slightly different alignment, going through Chinatown.

I got a little lost along the way, but managed to figure it out.

See, California is REALLY amazingly good at marking which roads are Route 66. However, they don’t seem to find it important to tell you when a road stops being Route 66. Like, when you have to turn left on whatever street to follow Route 66. They just don’t mention it. Thanks, California.

I’ve also noticed that California randomly has numbered exits. Some are numbers and some just aren’t. That’s an improvement, but it makes no sense at all to just do like half of them (though even that is giving California way too much credit). Seriously, fix this.

In cities, it’s pretty well impossible to pull over and take pictures of stuff. Even though there are a ton of red lights, it seems that there just isn’t enough time to pull the camera out of my pocket, turn it on, take the pic, turn it off and stuff it back into my pocket. So I decided to just hang it around my wrist and not turn it off. I would take a picture at every red light that stopped me.

I did this for quite some time and it seems to be a pretty fun thing. I wish I would have thought of this before.

I hate driving in LA. But riding a scooter in LA isn’t bad at all! I thought it would be worse. It almost makes me like the town. Today showed me a side of LA that isn’t all evil. I could probably live here… but wouldn’t. It’s just too big.

And there I was, only a few blocks away from finishing Route 66. I got a little sad.

Several minutes later and I found the archway over the entrance to the Santa Monica Pier. I pulled over the best I could to take a picture or two. The endings of the Route 66 journeys always seem anti-climactic. I’d love to get out and take pictures, visit the pier, like I did in 2006, but today that wasn’t possible. Much of the street was blocked off for Memorial Day festivities.

All I could manage was a picture taken practically over my shoulder.

There was hardly even time to think, “what will I do now?” Route 66 and Jack Rittenhouse have been my companions for nearly the whole of this journey. As I made that turn north on California Route 1, I thought, what will I have to guide me? What is the plan? Was Route 66 just my schooling to get me started? Is it up to me to guide myself, and you, the reader, through the rest of America?

Maybe.

It’s worth a shot.

So let’s get started, ok? From Ocean Ave, where Route 66 unofficially ends, I swung around to California Route 1 and took it north. My destination was Carpinteria, CA, roughly 70 miles up the coast.

For you long time readers of my blog, you might remember Carpinteria as the town where Nikki, Ashley and I stayed after finishing Route 66 and before heading onto Big Sur and visiting Cole.

My plan after Carpinteria? Heading to Big Sur and visiting Cole. Somethings are best left unchanged.

Route 1 is a twisty little road that appears and disappears with California’s amazing lack of signage. I was following it and suddenly, just before Oxnard, it was gone. Where did it go? I’m not sure. I stopped an asked directions and was told that it would start again, just stay on US 101. I did and it did and it was great to see the Pacific Ocean again.

Along Route 1, there are lots of places to pull off to view or swim in the ocean. I gladly took advantage of one about 30 miles north of LA.

I got off the bike and walked up on a rock. While I was up there, an asian woman in her early 20′s approached me holding a parking or speeding ticket. “Are you the ticket collector?” I wasn’t really sure why she was asking me, but I said “… no?” She tried to explain that she wanted to pay her ticket to me. Yeah, she thought that I was a cop. Why? Maybe it was the bright red scooter with Pennsylvania tags. I really have no idea why she thought I was the fuzz, but it was cute. She laughed, a little embarrassed, and walked away.

A bit farther up the coast, I pulled over to see an amazing art project along the side of the road. Someone had stacked up pillars of rocks. Some were miraculously balanced on top of each other. This was great. I’m glad I wondered onto it before they were knocked down.

Back on the 101 and a few miles later, I was in Carpinteria and then at my motel – La Casa del Sol! Definitely not the nicest joint in the world, but I’m a sucker for 40′s and 50′s era motels. Even if they are a bit run down.

However, I do want to start camping. Or at least staying with people. We’ll see how that goes.

And for those who are wondering, every exit is an entrance to somewhere else. The blog will keep going and I’ll keep posting. I can imagine that this will take on a slightly different feel, but it will still be here and I hope that most of you will keep reading if you like it.

Here are my pics from today.

Miles today: 264
Miles total: 4551

Special care must be taken when riding into the desert. The Mojave, which Route 66 runs through, is Death Valley’s kid brother. It’s dangerous. The last time I was through it, it was 115 degrees. That’s nothing to take lightly.

I made sure I had enough water. I unzipped the vents in my jacket and riding pants, I put on my summer gloves and wore only a tshirt under my coat. Sure, the temperature was only 55 degrees now… but soon it would rocket to a deadly cauldron of fire!

I rode out of town until Route 66 dead ended and took the interstate to where I could again pick it up. The searing sun overhead wasn’t either. However, some very lovely rain clouds coated the sky. The swelter that should be under my black riding jacket was missing, instead goosebumps coated my arms.

It’s ok, I thought, I’m prepared. Soon, it’ll be a billion degrees and I’ll be cool as ice.

The strange little town of Goffs was my first stop. And good. Because the traffic between the interstate and Goffs was horrible. I didn’t remember such a thing being so on other trips. But then I realized that I was also on US 95, which heads to Las Vegas, Nevada. That would explain the traffic. And when Old 66 and US 95 went their separate ways, all was better.

The distances in the desert are all very exaggerated. Things that seem small, are actually rather large. Things that seem far away take very little time to get to. There is not sense of proportion in the desert. What seems like it should only be a mile or so away is actually ten. This creates such a surreal environment.

And since surreal is what I’m after, Goffs fit the bill.

It has been a ghost town since well before World War II. Route 66 bypassed it in 1931. But a recent resurgence, the restoring of their original school, has put Goffs on the Route 66 map. The often bizarre outdoor museum/sculpture garden certain helps.

Folks definitely should come for the history. I’ve heard that the school is now a museum. But since it’s open by appointment only, I’ve never been in it. A foolish handy man had left the gate open, so I took advantage and walked around the grounds.

Old pieces of machinery were placed along the paths. A windmill dominated the dry, sandy landscape. Most of these things represented pieces of the culture history of the Mojave Desert.

The flattened VW Bug and the weird robot guy under a loading dock and surrounded by 1960′s gas pumps didn’t make sense, but somehow fit.

I’m sure there was much more to explore, but thought that I should be going. I mounted up and off I rode for… Fenner? Fenner wasn’t much of anything. But it did have a gas station, the last until Amboy.

Here is where some rain fell. Yes, even in the desert, I can’t escape the rain. It was only a drizzle and only lasted a few minutes, but it was enough to make the desert smell of spring. We have that in Pennsylvania too, after a rain storm in April. But here, it was amplified. I stopped the scooter and just took it all in.

In Fenner, I fueled up and bought a bag of chips. The gas, by the way, was $5.68 per gallon. I guess if you need gas, you’ll pay anything. I didn’t mind. I’m perfectly ok with gas being $10 per gallon. Maybe people would finally rethink how they travel.

Probably not.

I crossed the interstate after filling up, rode about five miles and then hung a left onto National Trails Highway. This was the post-1931 alignment of 66. It’s about eight miles long and I had to turn around, but that’s ok.

There’s not much there at all. However, I strongly suggest seeing this. The road descends from the interstate above an amazing desert valley. You can see fifty miles in any direction. Even with the low-hanging rain clouds, the view was unbelievable.

This alignment, like the pre-1931 alignment, pass through Essex after connecting.

Essex, for what it’s worth, is gone. Originally, it was a railroad water stop. But since diesel locomotives need no water… and since there’s I-40, Essex dried up.

That’s not exactly true. In 1977, the population of Essex was 35. All 35 residents wrote the Los Angeles Times and claimed to be the only town in America without a television. Johnny Carson got wind of this and invited all 35 of them onto his Tonight Show. A Pennsylvania company that manufactured television translating equipment donated the good and finally, in 1977, Essex discovered television.

This is a lonely road. Even on a holiday weekend, Memorial Day Weekend, cars are scarce. I took many of my pictures while standing on the road. I’d often cross without even a thought of looking. Out here, in the silence of the day time, you can hear a car coming from nearly a half-mile away. You can hear a train from several miles away. Sound, as well as silence, is amplified.

The road was less lonely for the regular travelers of Route 66 through the 40′s and 50′s. Several rest stops provided the denizens of the original Route 66 with a place to enjoy a lunch with their family – in the middle of the desert. The idea worked some of the time. Just not in the summer.

One of these rest areas, between Essex and Cadiz Summit, is still being used to house a handful of plaques explaining the history of Route 66, the natives and the land. In all too brief essays, you learn that this desert is and never was deserted. Thousands of years before Route 66, this land was lived on by ancient cultures, ancestors of the native americans, who also inhabited the area. Before any of them, gigantic pre-historic mammals like the woolly mammoth and saber toothed tiger called this not-yet-desert their home. And before that, dinosaurs of various enormities!

All this from a tiny, bullet-ridden plaque. And a bit of modern archeology revealed cement foundations that used to support the picnic tables at this very rest stop! Wonderful. Actually, it was pretty cool.

Far off in the distance, a train passed. It was barely visible. I took a picture and in it, you can hardly see that it’s there at all.

Along the road, from Essex to Amboy, for years now, people have left messages written with stone for the amusement of themselves and their fellow travelers. Mostly, it’s names, spelled out in your typical desert rocks. Sometimes, people brought their own stones, painting them bright blues or yellows, so that their own names would stand out above others.

This goes on for miles. In 2004, we did our own, spelling BunMonMou – the name of our trip ((BunMonMou stood for Bunny, Monkey, Mouse. I was/am the Bunny, Nikki was/is the Monkey and Ashley was/is the Mouse.)) In 2006 I looked for it as I did today. But it’s gone. Or I probably just missed it. There are hundreds along this road.

I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy seeing the thins I saw in ’04 and ’06 in ’08. One of the places I was looking most forward to was Cadiz Summit.

When we were there in 2004, it was a heavily spray painted building. In 2006, it was a heavily spray painted building with a couch and TV sitting out in front of it. I wondered how long that would last.

The answer is – they’re still there, in spirit. The TV has been hacked to pieces and is now impaled upon the several tires it once sat upon. Rise up, oh old tires! The couch has met a similar end, it’s broken and beaten carcass left to bleach in the sun, several yards from where it served as a prop for some artist somewhere.

The history of Cadiz Summit is even more spectacular than the graffitied remains. You can read a bit here. The pictures and stories are really fun. Does anyone ever check out the links I post in my entries?

Up over the summit sprawls the valley that holds the towns of Chambliss and Amboy. Much of this valley used to be used as an artillery range during World War II. Chambliss was the largest town between Needles and Daggett. It’s now, like most other Mojave towns along Route 66, a ghost town.

Chambliss is the home of the often photographed Road Runner’s Retreat. Every business in Chambliss is closed.

On the horizon, shortly after Chambliss I could see the Amboy Crater. The Amboy Crater looks like a cone volcano, not a crater. And that’s what it is, a cone volcano.

But before reaching this tiny volcano, and even before reaching the town of the same name, you pass three very important trees .

The bra tree, the boxer tree and the shoe tree.

All trees are what they seem to be. In the example of the bra tree, it is a tree filled with braziers.

The boxer tree is filled with boxers.

The most impressive, and the longest in existence, is the Amboy Shoe Tree.

I’m not sure how these came about, but every time I see one, I wish I would have brought an old pair of shoes.

But at the very least, I can admire the artistry and the surreality.

From the Shoe Tree, you can see Amboy, and more importantly Roy’s. Roy’s is finally reopened! And while it’s not a fully functional Motel Cafe, it does have gas. The prices aren’t ridiculously as high as you’d expect.

I was able to fill up and walked around the site a bit. A man in a forest ranger’s uniform who was packing a pistol was pumping gas. It was a bit odd and he almost seemed to be a volunteer, but who knows?

I had some ambition to make the three mile round trip to the top of the Amboy Crater. I wanted to. And the temperature was perfect for it – it was hardly over 75 today. But even though I stopped and contemplated it, I declined. Maybe someday I’ll finally do it, but not today.

The Amboy Crater is one of the most recently formed volcanoes in America. The most recent eruption seems to have happened around 500 years ago. The lava field is large, but not as large as the next volcano, just down the road.

I’m always impressed with the nothingness of Bagdad, California. At one time it was a huge mining town, specializing in copper, silver, borax and gold. Huge wagon trains hauled the stuff out of it back then. And even after the mines dried up, Route 66 kept Bagdad on the map.

Now, there is nothing left of it except for a tree. Just one tree. There are no foundations, no old buildings, no nothing. It’s gone, leaving a small solitary tree as a reminder.

The farther west you go on Old 66, the closer the interstate gets to you. At first you’ll see it in the distance, catch the flash of an 18 wheeler chugging down the highway. But as you near Ludlow, you are right along side it, like a frontage road.

As I pulled into Ludlow to grab a few pictures, ten or so motorcyclists on brand new Harleys with their brand new leathers were filling up at the gas station across the street from where I sat. A couple of them pointed and laughed at me on my little scooter. I motioned with my hand that they should laugh more and they stopped.

Now, what I don’t understand is this. I have, for the past twenty-six days, and 4,000 miles, ridden from Pennsylvania through some amazingly nasty weather, slept on the cold ground, shivering myself to sleep. But because I did it on a motorscooter, it’s somehow not as hardcore as buying a $40,000 bike, dressing up in $1,000 worth of leather and only taking your toy out on really sunny weekends?

I’m sorry, if you think what I’m doing is funny, then what they’re doing is unbelievably hilarious. Actually, what they’re doing is just moronic. They are morons. The real motorcyclists treat other folks on two wheels with respect. And while I’m not out here doing this for some weird respect kick, I find it sad that these poseurs have such tiny penises self-esteem that they have to compensate by laughing at me.

Ride on, weekend warriors!

Ok, so anyway. I crossed the interstate, riding along side it as a frontage road until I crossed it again on Lavic Road, so named because it’s the edge of the Mount Pisgah lava field. This field is huge. And Route 66 rides the outside of it and even dashes through it a bit near Newberry Springs.

Home of the Bagdad Cafe. The Bagdad Cafe used to be in Bagdad, way back a long time ago. It was where everyone from everywhere gathered. Well, when that closed, the legend continued until some guy made a move called the Bagdad Cafe. It was filmed in Newberry Springs at the cafe that would soon be renamed Bagdad Cafe.

I’d normally stop here, but there was a tour bus – and not wanting to deal with 60 people, I took a few pictures and rode on. The last two times through, we stopped and were the only ones in there. I liked that. But on this holiday weekend, that’s not going to happen.

Before I knew it, I was in Daggett. And this was my turn off for the KOA a mile or so away. Just like that.

I didn’t mean to plan the trip this way, but nearly every stop I’ve made has seemed natural. What I mean is, each segment was different than the one before it. The segment before Oklahoma City is vastly different than the one before it. So stopping in Oklahoma City made sense. Springfield, IL, Albuquerque, NM and even Amarillo, TX all felt this way. But Daggett isn’t a place to stop. Today, Victorville should have been where I stopped. But it wasn’t. It’s Daggett and it’s awkward.

Tomorrow is my last day on Route 66.
Tomorrow I will see the Pacific ocean and my 24ish day trek down the Mother Road will come to an end.

The trip then will take on a new life, a new meaning. But the thing is, I don’t know what that will be. And I don’t know how that will affect me writing this blog. I suppose we shall see.

Here are my pictures today.

Miles today: 187
Miles total: 4287