Route 66. Highway of dreams since it opened in 1926. Best known to Californians as the road Steinbeck’s Joad family traveled to escape the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to seek farm work in the Salinas Valley. Its track fixed in memory, at least if you’re old enough:
It winds from Chicago to LA
More than 2000 miles all the way
Get your kicks on Route 66
Now, it goes through Saint Louie; Joplin, Missouri;
Oklahoma City is oh so pretty
You’ll see Amarillo; Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona (don’t forget Winona)
Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino….
In this centennial year, communities along the iconic route have been at pains to promote the idea of a Great American Road Trip — from Chicago to LA or the other way. But while there are a few places, like Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena and some major thoroughfares in St. Louis, where the original Route 66 is still a vibrant artery, over the decades the Interstate highways — I-10 east from Santa Monica to San Bernardino, California; I-15 from San Bernardino to Barstow; I-40 from Barstow to Oklahoma City; I-44 from OKC to St. Louis; and I-55 from St. Louis to Chicago — have eclipsed the old road, leaving only fragments here and there, and bypassing town after town that had depended on its traffic for their lifeblood. The promotional campaign for Route 66 has probably been most successful in Illinois, where the Interstate looks most like the Route 66 of the 1960s. Elsewhere the campaign looks like a game effort with disappointing results.
This summer I had a couple of different reasons to travel from my current home not far from San Francisco to my old hometown of St. Louis, and I decided to combine them and take the opportunity for a road trip. I chose a southerly track, including about 1650 miles — Barstow to St. Louis — of the Interstates following old Route 66. My car is an older Tesla, privileged due to its seniority with free supercharging, but handicapped for the same reason with modest (maybe 175 miles as a practical matter) range between charges. I’ve learned not to hurry on a road trip in that car, and on this trip in particular, the need for frequent charging stops had two virtues that compensated somewhat for the attendant delay. Charging requires frequent rest stops and pulls me off the Interstate and into towns more often than I might have chosen voluntarily.
My trip isn’t an odyssey — it’s a comfortable ride in a comfortable car. It’s a vacation. It’s an opportunity to see friends and attend events of my choosing. There’s no big drama here, but as Sherlock Holmes might have said, the journey has had some features of interest.
Monday, July 20, 2026. Home to Barstow, California — First leg, a mile and a half. I had a meeting in my office this morning, so with my car packed for the trip, I drove from home to work (I usually walk) and had my meeting. I started my trip for real just before noon (11:45 am), leaving directly from my office in Menlo Park, California.
The first real leg of my journey took me along a route familiar from many road trips to Southern California. Because of my starting point and the time of day, I left Menlo Park on I-280, continued south on CA-85, and joined US-101 just south of San Jose, headed for Gilroy. From Gilroy, as usual, I took the Pacheco Pass Highway (CA-152) and joined I-5 south just west of Los Banos. Carmen took me much of the way.
The speed limit on I-5 through the Central Valley is 70, but normally it’s impossible to maintain that speed. The right-hand lane, the domain of the 18-wheelers, runs at 60 to 65, while the left-hand lane runs at 75 to 80. That wasn’t the case today. Most of the cars seemed to keep to the speed limit. I didn’t see an unusual number of troopers; the slowdown seemed voluntary. It was due, I imagine, to the price of gasoline, $6 or more per gallon in much of California, especially near highways like I-5.
2:27pm — I stopped, as usual, at the Tesla Supercharger in Coalinga, just the right distance from home if I start out with a full charge. I walked across to Harris Ranch, where — also as usual — I had lunch while the car was charging.
Charged and fed, I continued as I usually do, but instead of crossing the Grapevine to the LA basin, I turned off at the Stockdale Highway (CA-58), abreast of Bakersfield. There’s a Tesla Supercharger in the freeway junction gas station/minimart parking lot, and I plugged in there at 4:31. The Giants were playing in Kansas City, so their game became my soundtrack.
The old Stockdale Highway crosses the Kern River west of downtown Bakersfield, and takes you into the heart of the city. CA-58 is now mostly freeway east of I-5, and I was through Bakersfield before I quite realized it. The landscape becomes more dramatic as the highway climbs the Tehachapi Mountains, traverses the Tehachapi Pass at 3,770 feet, and then drops into the Mojave Desert not far west of Edwards Air Force Base.
The highlight of this stretch is the Tehachapi Loop, an engineering marvel of the 1870s still in use today. In this spiral of railroad 1200 feet in diameter, nearly three-quarters of a mile of rail forms a kind of ouroboros-de-fer allowing trains to surmount the pass at a steady grade of 2.2%. A long enough train (and these days most of them are easily long enough) will coil above itself on the loop.
I was lucky. There was a long freight train on the Tehachapi Loop when I passed. The photo here isn’t mine, it’s from the website I just linked, but it gives an idea. That’s all one train.
I saw a lot of incredibly long trains in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Most were intermodals, strings of flatcars carrying shipping containers, likely between the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the interior. Some trains were so long that they had several locomotives mid-train to provide traction and stability.
Deserts are seldom so barren as we imagine, but the Mojave Desert has plenty of space for wind turbines and solar farms. There’s no agriculture there; once I left the Central Valley, cultivation became a notable exception to the usual landscape.
My first day out ended in Barstow, California, 401 miles on the day. Barstow, the penultimate waypoint mentioned in the Route 66 song, was where I joined the historic highway. Many towns along old Route 66 withered when the interstates bypassed them. Barstow fared better than many, probably because it’s the western terminus of I-40, and I-15 from LA to Las Vegas passes through it — it’s still a crossroads. The better parts of the town are near where the two interstates meet. I charged my car at the large Tesla supercharger station there, and had a terrific meal of a beef rib, green beans, and collards at a soul food restaurant (not at all busy, unfortunately) across the street.
Otherwise, Barstow is what an older generation of writers might have called a dusty burg. Maybe Raymond Chandler did. It was certainly hot enough. The place I stayed was the closest thing to a roadside motel of my trip. It was a franchise of a national chain, apparently a mom-and-pop business run by what appeared to me to be a middle-aged south Asian couple. I can only guess that they work endless hours to earn a modest living. One thing stood strongly to their credit: the place was full.
401 miles.
Tuesday, July 21, 2026. Barstow to Albuquerque, New Mexico — This was the longest day of my trip. I left early, 5:45am, fueled by my first-ever Dutch Bros coffee, because I was due in Albuquerque for dinner and I would cross a time zone line, costing me an hour. The payoff was a glorious sunrise over terrain that might have tempted John Ford to use it as a sunset in a Western.
From Barstow it was a quick run east, past Twenty Mule Team Road (which must run to a borax mine) to Needles, where I made my first stop. I had breakfast at the Wagon Wheel, which hadn’t been open many years the last time I passed through Needles, and which thrives, relatively speaking, tucked onto a narrow wedge of land between old Route 66 and new I-40.
Needles lies on the Colorado River, and a narrow strip of cultivated land along the river offers some relief from the desert landscape. I crossed into Arizona shortly after leaving town. There’s still water in the Colorado at Needles, but it looked like it might be dry at its mouth on the Sea of Cortez.
Next stop Kingman. The land began rising noticeably, and the desert gave way to a more rolling and somewhat greener landscape. Still arid, but no longer parched. My route didn’t give me much chance to see Kingman, but the town seems to be doing all right, maybe because I-40 goes through it, rather than around it.
East of Kingman, the landscape becomes a little greener, even as the elevation rises. I was now entering the region of the Arizona summer monsoon. Rising, warm air draws humid air from the Sea of Cortez. The rising elevation of the land forces the air upward, causing it to release some of its moisture as rain. For several weeks this summer, the weather forecast for Flagstaff, Arizona, has included a chance of thunderstorms nearly every afternoon. Some of the terrain on I-40 in Arizona is rather dramatic, sweeping curves following the contours of steep, rocky cuts.
Next stop after Kingman was Williams, Arizona. Old Route 66 is Williams’s main street, but I-40 bypasses the town. Williams does well anyway, probably because one of the main roads leading north to the Grand Canyon meets I-40 there. While I was stopped to charge my car, I stopped into a large, well-appointed craft distillery, not to have a drink, but to use their restroom and buy a bottle of their local rye whiskey as a host gift for my brother.
East of Williams I-40 passes through Flagstaff without seeming to and continues past Winona (“Don’t forget Winona” is more like, “Hey, you forgot Winona!”) and then Winslow. If you want to stand on a corner there hoping a girl (my Lord) in a flatbed Ford slows down to take a look at you, you have to get off I-40 and take old Route 66 through town. Otherwise you just flash past on the interstate.
My next stop was in Holbrook, Arizona. The charging station was tucked behind a fast food joint (excuse me, “quick-service restaurant”), so I can’t tell you about the town. But what happened east of that stop was I caught up with the monsoon. For thirty or forty miles I had heavy rain and wind with occasional lightning. Traffic outraced the storm, and I emerged into the sunshine a few miles west of the state line.
Gallup, New Mexico displayed plenty of evidence of the recent rain. I walked from my car over to a truck stop in search of something to drink. You could call the storm a gully-washer, and I crossed a bridge over a regulation gully rushing underneath. The brown water carried detritus of both wet and dry spells, so I guess the rain was welcome.
The truck stop, the ONE9 Travel Center, was interesting, too. It’s on old Route 66, but it’s interesting as a business, too. It seemed to me its owners, operators, or whoever it was had thought through how to make your truck stop a favorite among professional drivers. It carries a range of accessories and simple parts that I assume are useful to truckers. I’ll also assume the selection of snacks and drinks on offer reflects experience with truckers’ tastes. Since many over-the-road drivers, especially independent operators, overnight in bunks arranged in the backs of their cabs, showers are a big draw. It looked to me like the traffic patterns for maneuvering big rigs in and out of the place are sensible and efficient. But most of all, this place is CLEAN. That cleanliness made the stop more pleasant for me; how much more for people whose jobs take them to all manner of such places?
I saw freight moving all across Arizona and New Mexico. There were still the long intermodal trains, but also a goodly volume, seemingly about normal, of heavy trucks on the road. What was missing were private passenger vehicles. In those states, it looked like the Great American Road Trip is a bust. Nearly everyone on the road traveled at right about the speed limit, 75 miles per hour most of the way.
My clock changed as I crossed into New Mexico. So did the landscape, becoming the classic New Mexico of red sandstone cliffs and scrub vegetation. The traffic — mostly trucks, unusually few cars, and everyone doing 75 — continued as before.
After a last charging stop in Milan, New Mexico, I had a clear run into Albuquerque, which sits in a valley straddling the Rio Grande. The approach gave me a clear view of much of the city. Like the Colorado at Needles, the Rio Grande nourishes a narrow strip of cultivation. My Albuquerque friends had recommended for dinner Campo, the restaurant at Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm. I stayed there, too. The inn is a complex of buildings rustic on the outside and beautifully appointed inside. The farm — part of that strip of cultivation along the river — specializes in lavender. We had a wonderful dinner, and the stay seemed ideal after my long day on the road. I would happily stay there again.
645 miles today; 1646 total so far.
Wednesday, July 22, 2026. Albuquerque to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma — Yesterday was such a long day, and Los Poblanos so pleasant, that I didn’t feel like racing back out to the road this morning. I woke up early anyway, and by 7:15 I went looking for breakfast. Too bad — breakfast starts at eight. But the morning was pleasantly warm, and I had a little time, and the heated, salt-water swimming pool opened at seven, so I started my morning with a few leisurely laps.
What a treat! Refreshing and invigorating. A shower, a relaxed breakfast, and I was ready to take on I-40 again.
The ride into Albuquerque had been a long descent, and the ride out was a long climb. It was a little more — interesting, let’s say — than usual because heading uphill I passed an unusual group on the road. It was a convoy of vehicle, with outriders warning us civilians that they were escorting an oversized load. That’s not so unusual, but in this case the payload was a giant wind turbine blade, significantly longer than the truck carrying it. The truck had a sort of rear trailer extension to hold the length. The freeway has three lanes in the uphill direction, and the escort vehicles positioned themselves so that their wind turbine could have full use for two of them. Was it annoying? Not after I passed a sign (always there) warning of dangerous crosswinds. It occurred to me that getting past a truck carrying an object designed to move in the wind through a dangerously windy area is a really good idea, but the maneuver itself requires a measure of circumspection. I managed it at length.
The hotel had provided EV chargers, so my first stop, after a long stretch of classic New Mexico landscape, was at Tucumcari. It was one of those stops located away from anything other than fast food and truckers’ services.
I pushed on into the Texas panhandle. My clocks changed again, and so did the terrain. The desert fell behind me, and high prairie took its place. The land flattened out, broadened out, and opened up. Larger-scale cultivation appeared for the first time since I had left the Central Valley in California. No wonder the Joads had to travel so far to find farm work in the 1930s.
The sky broadened too, into the blue dome of the firmament itself. High cumulus clouds floated above like a fresco of the fluffiest, whitest sheep. The day was just humid enough that near the horizon — the 360-degree horizon — the clouds dissolved into an indistinct blue curtain. The effect was of sitting under a miles-wide dome supported by silken walls and decorated with clouds overhead.
I rolled under the blue dome into Amarillo, Texas. I-40 became a typical urban Texas highway: wide, with a large and constantly fluctuating number of lanes, flanked by parallel access roads feeding the numerous exits on each side. My goal was a charging stop just off the access road for the eastbound (my) direction. These EV charges took up one side of the enormous parking lot of a Buc-ee’s.
US television coverage of the recent World Cup featured a number of vox pops and extended segments describing the reactions of fans coming from overseas to what they encountered in America. A favorite theme was their blank amazement at Buc-ee’s.
I had never been inside a Buc-ee’s. Now I had some time, and besides, I needed something to eat and drink, and a restroom — not necessarily in that order. I could rationalize that I wasn’t just indulging my curiosity. So indulge I did. I went in.
What a place. First, it’s huge. Costco huge. Unlike Costco, though, Buc-ee’s sells hardly anything you’d call essential. Buc-ee is high priest to Acquisita, goddess of the impulse purchase. Oh, there’s lots of food at Buc-ee’s: dozens of varieties of beef jerky, snacks of all kinds, a prominent section set up as an ice cream and fudge parlor, sandwiches hot and cold, and on and on. Soft drinks and bottled waters in all shapes and sized. Then there’s the merchandise: T-shirts, plush toys, pins — many bearing the image and likeness of Buc-ee’s bucktooth beaver mascot — all designed to seem irresistible in the moment, and to be consigned, forgotten, to the attic or the trunk of the car the next day.
I must not quite fall into Buc-ee’s target demographic, because all I bought was a brisket burrito (better in concept than in execution) and a Diet Coke. The burrito, wrapped in paper, sat under a heat element so that when you picked it up, it was ready to go. I duly ate it in the car before taking to the road again.
One of the advantages of an electric car is that you can sit in it while it’s essentially turned off and run the air conditioner (or the heater, but that hasn’t been a consideration on this trip) without asphyxiating yourself. Good thing, too, because sitting on the asphalt outside Buc-ee’s in Amarillo, the thermometer read 103.
I pushed on, aiming for Oklahoma City. A non-cancelable hotel reservation is a pretty effective incentive. The prairie got prairier. The heat got hotter. Texas got more — well, it got to be like Oklahoma. My next stop was in Shamrock, Texas. Shamrock is a town that seems to have been something when Route 66 ran through it, but now hangs on by its fingernails because it’s kinda near I-40. Now, not long before I reached Shamrock, I did see on the parallel access road, which at that point was the old Route 66, 1940s pavement and all, a vintage station wagon heading west, apparently aiming for Amarillo; Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona… You could bet they were going to remember Winona.
Shamrock is mostly a tired old burg, or at least it seemed so in triple-digit heat. They made their bargain with Elon’s minions: we’ll give you a spot for a supercharger because we want Tesla drivers stopping in our town with time on their hands.
That’s me.
The charging station is in the parking lot around the corner from one of the great dreams of the towns along old Route 66, the U-Drop Inn.
Just beyond the left rear fender of that old truck is now a Tesla supercharging station. So we have an art deco gem from the heyday of Route 66 hoping to attract customers because they’re next to an EV charging station. I was happy to buy an unsweet iced tea (it was way too hot for coffee) and even a coffee mug as a souvenir marking the occasion, and maybe most Tesla drivers charging there buy something too, but is it enough to keep a community alive? If the community is strong, it helps. If the community is too weak, trade like that can’t rescue it.
I don’t know which way Shamrock is going. But I admire the young, new proprietor of the U-Drop Inn. She stayed open a few minutes past closing so I could buy my tea and my mug — that’s basic business sense. But then she said she and her husband bought the place a couple of years ago, and they’re trying to make a go of it. The U-Drop Inn is a cheerful place, and I’m glad I found it. God bless and good luck.
Not far east of Shamrock I crossed into Oklahoma, and the landscape changed again. It became noticeably greener, and here and there I passed fields with cylindrical rolls of hay ready for baling and storage. I somewhat miscalculated my charging strategy, and needed one more brief stop, in Calumet, Oklahoma, to reach Oklahoma City, my stop for the night.
I had chosen a Marriott-affiliated urban hotel in OKC, and was dismayed to discover (I could have checked, I suppose) that they don’t offer EV charging — table stakes in the higher-end hotel game by now, I had thought. So it was a good thing that I had made that extra charging stop.
I treated myself to a drink and a bite in the hotel bar. As I sat there, I noticed a lesion or irruption of some kind on my left forearm. Yikes! I’m 1500 miles from home, and is this a sudden appearance of a melanoma or something? I thought back on my day and realized to my relief that no, it was a burn. When I reached for that brisket burrito at Buc-ee’s, my arm brushed against the heating element under which it was staying warm. Just a minor injury; it’ll heal. 604 miles.
Thursday, July 23, 2026. Oklahoma City to St. Louis, Missouri — The lack of EV charging at my hotel cost me an hour’s sleep: I had to get up early and find a charging station in Oklahoma City before I could start out. Somehow the only place for coffee nearby was a drive-through place, which didn’t help me with my car parked. I was a little cranky when I left OKC.
East of Oklahoma City, I-40 heads to Little Rock, Memphis, and Raleigh, terminating on the Atlantic Coast at Wilmington, North Carolina. It’s I-44 that picks up the track of old Route 66, northeast toward St. Louis, Between OKC and Tulsa, my first stop, I-44 is a toll road, the Turner Turnpike. On this stretch, really for the first time since about Barstow, cars and trucks were about equally numerous on the road. Along the way I passed a reminder of the original civil defense impetus for the building of the Interstate highways; a convoy of military vehicles, apparently transporting ordnance — at least most of them displayed signs warning that they were carrying explosives.
I didn’t see much of Tulsa — just a charging station in a parking lot adjacent to a Whataburger fast food joint (I keep doing that!) quick-service restaurant. At least I was able to buy my coffee there. I pushed on from Tulsa, still on I-44, now called the Will Rogers Turnpike. As I moved northeast, the scenery became still greener and more forested, and a little hillier too. I knew I was near the northeast corner of Oklahoma when I saw a billboard advertising “CHEAP MISSOURI SMOKES — BLACK MARKET FIREWORKS — EXIT 4, JOPLIN MO” a few miles short of the state line.
I-44 crosses into Missouri (they say “Missourah” in this part of the state) almost within sight of the Oklahoma-Kansas line. In Missouri the land becomes still more forested, and the Great Plains give way completely to a lovely, rolling landscape. I grew up in Missouri, but it took me a couple of dozen miles to remember how to drive on the Interstate there. The trick is to manage the rolling hills by passing the trucks on the upward slope, realizing that if you miss on one hill, you won’t have to wait long for the next one. Driving on I-44 also brought back pleasant memories of trips to high school debate tournaments in Springfield and Neosho half a century ago.
I stopped at a charging station labeled Joplin, Missouri, actually located a couple of miles south of the town. Joplin seems to have survived the transition from Route 66 through town to I-44 a couple of miles south by growing toward the Interstate. The stop was adjacent to what amounted to a large roadside quick-stop market, where I picked up a pleasantly palatable salad and could sit comfortably at a table eating my lunch and planning the rest of my day. But I knew I was in Missouri — near the cash registers was a large display of liquor, just what you want on a long drive.
I didn’t stop in Springfield, the principal city of southwest Missourah, but I had the chance to slow down through a significant highway construction project there. Thanks to modern navigation technology, I had plenty of time to dread — and to plan for — a long delay through another major project just north of Fort Leonard Wood. (In Missourah, and in Missouri too, where I’m from, they say “Lenerdwood,” with the emphasis on the first syllable.) I made the best of it, snaking through some local roads, backed up by drivers attempting the same evasive maneuver, got through the delay, and made my final charging stop. St. Robert is the town soldiers from Ft. Lenerdwood go to when they go into town. Another rest room stop, another Diet Coke, the usual wait for the car to charge, and I was on my way.
One notable difference I observed in Missouri, aside from the rolling terrain and the liquor in the roadside convenience store, was the traffic mix. It more normal, with cars outnumbering trucks. Speeds still stayed close to the limit, but it was more the way I would expect for a summer road trip.
I was due for dinner in St. Louis with my brother at 8pm, and despite the delay west of St. Robert, I arrived at 7:19. Although it has been many years since I last approached St. Louis from the southwest on I-44, I found the sights surprisingly familiar, and when I exited the Interstate onto Kingshighway Boulevard, seeing the old viaduct there gave me an unexpected jolt of pleasure.
My distance for this fourth and final day was 502 miles, and from my house to my brother’s 2,150.
Tuesday, July 28, 2026. Epilogue — Having driven from the San Francisco Bay Area to St. Louis, I couldn’t resist adding one more state to my Route 66 kicks. I crossed the Eads Bridge (pictured below — the river is the Mississippi, and the sculpture commemorates the return of Lewis and Clark from their expedition in 1806). The east end of the bridge is in Illinois, my seventh state on the trip.
A century ago Route 66 opened a path from the Midwest to California. How many hopes and dreams has it stimulated, advanced, frustrated in a century. There’s no way to know. Only remnants remain of the original road, but the route: I-55, I-44, I-40, I-15, I-10 from the Chicago Loop to the Santa Monica Pier, remains a key artery for commerce and travel. Some of the towns along the way are still thriving, some are struggling, and some have vanished altogether. And there are still people along the way clinging to Route 66 as the highway of dreams.
This post was originally published on Dr. Tiemann’s substack, Medium of Exchange. You may subscribe for free to receive occasional articles like this direct into your inbox.
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