Day 8: 2,592 miles End of the Road..this one anyway.

At approximately 3:20 pm today we arrived at the Santa Monica pier the end of Route 66. The Route today was nearly all off of the Interstate which is great.  That's the good news. The bad news is that the Route goes thru the heart of LA on its way to Santa Monica which used to be a small rural community along the coast. We went thru Pasadena, China Town, Hollywood, Beverly Hills and a multitude of other "suburbs" that used to be bedroom communities that Route 66 passed thru on its way to the coast.  These communities wiith the exception f maybe of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, have completely lost their identity and so has the Route along this stretch.  It took us literally 7 and 1/2 hours to travel 150 miles.  Here are some photos from the travels up to and  thru LA..

This is the "bottle farm" between Barstow and LA..  Not sure the point or goal of  having a bottle farm but that certainly fits with previous "attractions." No rhyme, no reason.

This is a concrete pillar on one of the bridges outside of LAX up in the mountains.

This tower labeled Santa Fe but iti is actually in California and was built because of the Santa Fe railroad.






Here is a photo of one cool motel right outside of LA.   Still open and it looked very clean. Could you imagine pulling up to these with kids back in the day?








When we arrived at Santa Monica Pier we immediately looked for the 66 to Cali End of Route T-shirt  shop operated by Dan Rice perhaps the top promoter of Route 66 in the country these days. While his focus is on improving California's marketing of Route 66, he is an unbelievable proponent of the entire Route. He is a Made in America guy who truly, truly believes in the importance of thee Route to America's heritage and history. We were disappointed he wasn't there to meet us but his right hand man Henry was there and confirmed everthing about Dan that we had heard from Ramona and Bob from Lincoln, Mo, Kevin and Nancy in Tucumcari, Gary from the DX outside of Carthage and  Bill from Shea's automative in Springfield, Ill.. I am hopeful to meet Dan in the future and hope that Henry keeps his vigor about the Route.

Here is the sign from the outside of his shop and the style he is promotiing. If you stop by his little kiosk be sure to sign the guest book as they are trying to prove to the State of Californian that over 600,000 folks travel at least some part of the Route every year and a large number of them end up in California. From our travels, we can tell you he is not far off in his assessment.
     The Route is not just an American thing...we met folks from Japan, Austuralia, Scotland, Italy, France, Germany and New York(a foreign country in some eyes). One couple from New York had flown to Amarillo Texas and driven to Santa Monica. They rolled down their window on the Route in the middle of LA to confirm we had been on The Route. They had recognized the red mud on the side of the car(again sorry Angie..not my fault).  We ran into the couple again on the pier and talked to them like we were long lost friends.  They understood where we had been and understood why had wanted to go there in the first place.  This isn't the first or the last conversation like this I sense. If you have driven on Route 66 you get it.

Here is a photo of the three us on the Santa Monica pier at the official end of trail sign.


I really can't believe we are at the end of this road trip. 8 years or so of conversation and "you know what we should do" talk along with 8 months of actual planning and scheduling and the Route 66 Road Trip 2012 has for the most part come and gone. I'm not sure about the other two guys but this trip has affected me in a number of positive ways. 





First of all, there are simply things in life that you cannot control. When you travel the Route you see business after business that invested their livelihood into a dream only to have something completely out of their control undercut them at the knees...The interstate went in, no exit or too far from their business and End of Dream. Sometime that just happens.

Second, life truly is short and not only should you take advantage of opportunities to do these types of things, you should aggressively and proactively chase after them.

Third, life for all of us needs to slow down. I'm as guilty as the next person of being a bit of  a work-a-holic driven to achieve or succeed or whatever the standard is.  Every now and then(or as often as possible) you need to slow down and take the two lane scenic route instead of the "hell in a hand basket" 4 lane.  You never know what you will see or who you will meet or what you might discover.

The trip has been a blast. I would definitely do this or something like this again. I hope I have the opportunity to see some of the folks we met again and see how things continue to change on The Route. I get this feeling that more and more people are going to start appreciating these types of adventures. I truly hope so.


TJ