By Charly SHELTON

Last week, I teased out my recent trip along the western part of Route 66 that runs from Pasadena to the eastern edge of Arizona. With a storied history uniting the country along one road, the eventual decline and then the revival in its popularity, this road is an American icon. All Americans should make the entire trip at least once in their life. The Mother Road is still alive and kicking in many little towns strung along what was once Route 66 and these provide endless hours of enjoyment and stories.

Many of the shopkeepers and diner owners are original family owners who have taken over from their parents or grandparents who ran the business in the heyday of Route 66. Many share stories of growing up in that place and time, giving a personal touch to the history of the highway. There’s lots to see along this stretch of road: there’s Oatman, Arizona, the old west town just over the border from California that is overrun with friendly wild burros, and Seligman, Arizona, the place where the rebirth of Route 66 began with a barber’s attempt to save his town. There’s Amboy, California, more of a wide spot in the road than a town proper, it boasts a single gas station with an abandoned motor lodge and fantastic neon sign – all set in the pale sands and dark rocks of a lava field from nearby Amboy Crater, a volcano that exploded and lost its top 10,000 years ago, covering the whole area in pahoehoe lava rock.

For myself, I am a photographer, so shooting all the way along the trip was incredible. Old neon signs light up at night, there are classic cars parked everywhere in the tourist-stop towns and, aside from Route 66, the land is gorgeous. Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert are right along Interstate 40, the modern iteration of Route 66, and the Grand Canyon is just 45 minutes off the highway.

The beauty of the desert has always been something dear to me, and I’d rather be out in the open desert than anywhere else on the planet. When we pulled off the highway outside of Holbrook, Arizona, we were looking for a place called The Dinosaur Farm, advertised by billboards along the highway. We found a dead end, a blocked off road and an abandoned warehouse-sized former attraction that is boarded up. So goes the story for many little roadside amusements that were bypassed by the interstate. But as we walked around, we found something more beautiful than a roadside curio shop – we found a frozen moment in history, locked off from the crush of traffic and left to be reclaimed by the desert. The former Dinosaur Farm has cacti growing through the fence and twisting it apart. There are sun-bleached bones of an animal, picked clean by buzzards at some time. The rocks littering the ground, upon further inspection, were actually petrified wood ranging in size from giant logs to small pebble shards. What once must have been a driving tour into the desert is now just a big entrance portal that leads from broken old pavement into open desert with purple mountains beyond – the Entrance to the West. As I stopped to take a picture of this Entrance to the West, a coyote came out onto the high ground and paused for a moment for me to take his picture before scurrying off back into the desert. This epitomizes the trip along Route 66 across the Southwest – a mixture of natural beauty and grandeur with old remnants of what once was and, in some places, still is.

I highly recommend this trip. It’s cheap, it’s fun and it’s a magical place. But go before summer sets in or late into fall. This land is inhospitable during the summer and fall months. For more information, I suggest picking up any of the fantastic guidebooks on Route 66 with history and driving directions. I used “Travel 66” by Jim Hinckley, and have been very pleased with it.