8th of June 2003

We had just completed one of the most spectacular drives I have ever been on, Highway One, down the Pacific Coast of California from San Francisco to Los Angeles. This is a truly monumental scenic drive. We drove the highway from Cannery Row in Monterey, through Pebble Beach and Carmel, staying at Morrow Bay (a fishing village just past Hurst Castle) and then down through Santa Barbara to Ventura for the next night.
We spent an hour or two in a little restaurant at Ventura (killer clam chowder), planning what was to be a very long and busy first day of Route 66. It was then back to our beach side motel, for a couple of Bud Lights on the verandah. Sue had a few of glasses of the white wine which we picked up from V. Satui winery in the Napa valley. California is fantastic on summer evenings, and with daylight saving, the sun sets at about 9:00 p.m.
We were up early on Sunday morning, packed and on the road by 5.30 a.m. It was not quite light, and the Pacific coast was shrouded in a heavy fog. We wound our way down the last part of highway one, through Lajola and down to Malibu beach. We bought some coffee and donuts from a corner store, and watched the surf board riders in the eerie, foggy dawn. We have it lucky in Queensland. Even in the middle of summer, it is fog and wet suit conditions in the early morning in California.
Next was a drive up Sunset Boulevard to Will Roger’s Ranch. The ranch is now a national monument, and at 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, it is only visited by joggers, hikers and mad people from Australia. Will was an American icon, an actor, comedian and an adventurer who died in an aircraft accident in 1935. He figures large in the folklore and history of Route 66. (Later on in the trip, we drove down the Will Rogers Highway, through Texola on the Texas border.) We walked around the ranch in the misty morning dew, visited the stables, polo fields and generally marvelled at the tranquility of the valley where Will made his home. Although he starred in sixty movies, he did not make his home in Hollywood.
It was then just a few kilometers further on to the start of our trip down Route 66. Santa Monica pier. We searched around the amusement park and found the carousel which featured in the Paul Newman and Robert Redford movie, The Sting. It is still in use. We then walked to the end of the pier, took some photographs of ourselves at the Western most point of Route 66 and then started our journey East.
We left Santa Monica Pier at a little after 9:00 in he morning. The fog had lifted, and it was going to be another searing hot day. This was one of the very few times that we intentionally did not take the oldest Route 66 we could find. Instead of taking Sunset Boulevard, we took the 1940 “new alignment”, through the Arroyo Seca tunnel and up the Santa Monica expressway to Pasadena. We were there in half an hour. We were told that the journey up the original Route 66 of Sunset Bvd and Foothill Bvd through suburban Los Angeles takes eight hours with almost no traces of the old Route 66 remaining to be seen.
From Pasadena, we joined Colorado Boulevard and then Foothill Bvd. Just out of Pasadena we passed our first shield “Historic Route 66”. There would be hundreds more of these. There are really not a lot of points of historical interest in this first section of the Mother Road. We crossed the Colorado Street Bridge, spanning the Arroyo Seca river from Pasadena to Eagle Rock. It is the oldest bridge still in use on Route 66, and was built in 1913, before Route 66 was named. We then called into the Aztec, a famous pub, built in 1922 and restored by the Californian Route 66 society. Near Monrovia, we checked out an abandoned but preserved vintage Phillips 66 service station, On the outskirts of L.A., near Rancho Cucamonga we visited two historic watering holes, the Sycamore and the Magic Lamp. This second building is pure American fifties kitsch and is completely covered in sea shells. We then called in for lunch at the Thomas winery. This is the oldest winery America, very early 1800s. The original barrel storage building is still used as a pub, and the shell of the old winery is still standing, if somewhat dilapidated. Very cute. We tracked on, amazed that it had still taken us eight hours to travel across Los Angeles.
From Rancho Cucamonga, the urbs begin to recede. We pass through miles and miles of shopping centres. We stop in at the Wigwam Motel. This the second one of two 1950s curios to be built on Route 66. We were going to visit the Rialto in San Bernardino, where Will Rogers played his last audience, but the we have a long way to go and time is rolling on.
Just before San Bernardino, we turn left into Mount Vernon Avenue, drive under the Interstate Highway (which has been running parallel to us since Pasadena) and it as if we have fallen through a hole in the hedge. The road suddenly becomes a pot holed two lane concrete pavement. There are abandoned service stations, and buildings everywhere on both sides of the road, and there is no traffic. As we drive up the road, we notice the thump-thump on the tyres as we cross the joints in the concrete road. This tell-tale sound and the scenes of utter abandonment will be with us for several thousand miles, constantly reminding us that we are on the old Route 66.
We wind our way through some very scenic hills and valleys, crossing under the Interstate several times, before we start the long climb up to Cajon Pass. As we travel up we are forced to join the Interstate, which is built right over the top of the old Route 66. At the top Cajon Pass, 4,600 feet above sea level, we pull into The Summit, a watering hole established in 1952, and still going strong. This establishment, built on the site of a previous servo, and is much as it was many years ago, complete with myriads of rusting hulks that could go no further, and a workshop which has tended to more boiling radiators than imaginable. We buy some of their famous Cinnamon Loaf, wander around the remnants of nearly a century of motoring history. Time is getting on, and we are soon back on the road, and rolling down towards historic Victorville.
Victorville was a huge air force base during the second world war, but now it is the same as everywhere else on Route 66, semi-abandoned. We drive down Main Street, turn left into famous D Street where we pull into the Victorville Route 66 Museum. Sue has always been interested in horses, and as a young girl, was a Roy Rogers fan. Unfortunately Trigger, and all of the other Roy Rogers memorabilia had been moved to a new museum in Branson a few months earlier. We spend a couple of hours with the museum owners, it is a red hot, dry afternoon, and the time just melts away as we listen to stories of the Oklahoma dust bowl years, the post war years and the fifties. We reminisce about the television show with George Maharis and Martin Milner, we are impressed with the work of the Route 66 association and their restoration work. We have to go. Reluctantly we bid farewell, and travel on.
We reach Barstow at about 8:00 p.m. where we book into the El Rancho motel. This is a famous motel, built in the 1940s out of railway sleepers. The motel was built when the Santa Fe Rail Road was at its peak. Like so much of historic Route 66, the motel has fallen on hard times, but we persevere. The manager found us a room with air conditioning that sort of worked. After a quick trip to the local bottle shop, we sit outside in the 100 degree plus heat and sink a few Bud Lights. There are only four rooms in use. Night falls, and we drive over to the famous seventy year old Idle Spur Restaurant for a great steak dinner. Of course, we are never far the Interstate, and Barstow is on the way between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Most travellers who stay overnight choose the Holiday inn and Best Western style motels, and Dennys style eateries at the Interstate exits. We prefer the old roads, old town centres and historic venues in preference to the modern fast lane. We are back in the motel by midnight, after a very long day.
Tomorrow, we will start off at the Barstow Railway station and Route 66 museum, and then we really get back some old abandoned parts of Route 66, when we visit Newberry Springs, The Baghdad Café (where the movie of the same name was made), Ludlow, Amboy, Goffs on the pre-1937 part of Route 66 and some very desolate places in the Mojave indian reservation on our way to Needles and historic Oatman. We need to be in Kingman by Wednesday night. We note with interest that next week the Corvette Caravan will be driving down the interstate from Los Angeles to Kingman in one day.