Twelve days and more than 2,500 miles ago we left Santa Monica, California, bound for Chicago along old Route 66. That journey ended today as weve arrived at our destination.

We just had lunch with our boss (Midwest Bureau Chief Peter Bohan, upper right) at Lou Mitchells, the last of our trip.

This famous diner almost right at the eastern end of Americas Main Street and is renowned as a starting point for taking Route 66 westward almost everyone else goes west.

Linda Carnes, one of the waitresses here, said to say hello. She said the last time they put me in the paper, I got hate mail.

Sheri Wasberg, one of the longest serving waitresses here, also sends her love.

Anyway, back to Route 66

We expected to see and experience many things and to meet some interesting people, as there is a lot of America in between the West Coast and the Windy City.

Our expectations have been exceeded. Weve spent time on American Indian reservations, talked to firemen in Flagstaff, police officers in Albuquerque, cowboys on vast feedlots in Texas, Christians in Oklahoma and a sinking town in Kansas.

Weve seen Route 66 monuments and museums to last a lifetime. There have been towns on the way that still make somewhat of a living from old Route 66 and others Tucumcari, New Mexico, or McLean, Texas, stand out as prime examples that have seen their businesses curl up and die after Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985.

And all throughout weve met people who were friendly and willing to talk or help us on our way, have their picture taken and answer inane questions from two foreign journalists wending their way across country in a tiny vintage car.

Without them, few of the stories on our blog would have been possible.

We return to Chicago with mixed feelings. Its good to be home and it will be even better not to live out of a small bag or sleep in motels. The bad news is how much we’ll miss roaming around the country.

Route 66 is Americas ultimate road trip, with a broad cross-section of scenery, people and issues across a large chunk of the country.  Its been an amazing ride, hope you enjoyed it too.

This bridge was once the point at which Route 66 crossed the Mississippi River at St. Louis. Now there is a picnic table near the middle and the closest you can get to being run over is by a short-sighted cyclist.

This is the Chain of Rocks Bridge named for a seven-mile stretch of rocks under the water stretching north of St. Louis which once carried cars and trucks over the river on their way east or west.

Built in 1929 as a toll bridge, it is roughly 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) in length and has a 22-degree in the middle of the river to enable navigation. From the late 1930s until the completion of the New Chain of Rocks Bridge just a little further upriver for Interstate 270, this bridge carried all Route 66 traffic.

It was closed in 1967 and its fate remained uncertain until 1998 when it began to be used for hiking and biking trails. Apart from the picnic bench, there is also a marker to indicate the Missouri-Illinois state line in the middle of the bridge.

It is an odd experience walking across this bridge, which is just wide enough for two lanes of traffic. This was once a highway, part of Route 66 and to walk on it now seems slightly out of place. Though probably that feeling goes away if you hike or bike here regularly.

It is also an exposed walk across the water, so if its a windy day youll certainly feel it, especially on a bike.

If like us you travel Route 66 the wrong way round the vast majority of people take the trip west for the true highway experience then once you leave Los Angeles there are no major cities until you reach St. Louis in Missouri.

And the traffic on the roads reflects that. There is nothing reminiscent of the broad, clogged highways of Los Angeles until you reach St. Louis though even then St. Louis is nowhere near as busy as Los Angeles.

It’s true that Albuquerque in New Mexico, Amarillo in Texas, plus Oklahoma City and Tulsa in Oklahoma are also on the route.

But these are medium-sized U.S. cities and while the traffic on the Interstate system that run through and connects them are busy with traffic, this is nothing compared to St Louis, particularly during rush hour. There are also plenty of wide open, sparsely populated spaces between these cities.

Some 3 million people live in St. Louis and the area surrounding it and it shows, with some five-lane highways that are solid.

This scene is particularly striking because for the intervening 2,000 miles of highway there is simply nothing to compare with the massive press of humanity of around Los Angeles until you get here.

Less than 20 miles east of Lebanon, Missouri on old Route 66, there is a section of no more than a couple of miles that gives travellers a glimpse of the iconic highway as it once was.

First, you come across one of the metal arched bridges that are often associated with old U.S. and in particular Route 66.

Its old, portions of it are rusting, but its solid. And an awful lot of fun to cross.

Only a mile or two further along the road you reach the small town of Hazelgreen, which has a population of around 4,000.

Not much of the town is visible from this portion of old Route 66. But near the top of a rise an old gas station appears, which has clearly not been in use for many years. Much of it is covered in creepers so it’s probably more  visible in winter crumbling and rusting away. It’s not impossible to imagine it back in the day, pumping gasoline for people travelling east or west along Route 66.

Well worth the detour.

If youre driving west along Route 66 and still do not feel satiated by the two museums dedicated to the highway in Oklahoma, you could do worse than stop in at the museum in Lebanon, Missouri.

It is smaller than the other two, so there is less to see. But there is a mock old-fashioned gas station, an old diner and a rather shabby looking fake motel room, plus two Route 66 armchairs that any true aficionado of Americas Main Street might eye with envy.

And what this museum lacks in size it makes up for in generosity. Thats because this museum is free of charge, courtesy of the people of Laclede County, to which Lebanon belongs.

The museum has been housed in the local public library for the last three years and the librarians here said that the local populace had decided that it would be best to share their Route 66 heritage with travelers free of charge.

There is a donation box, should you feel inclined to thank them for this kindness.

As we travel through America along Route 66, there is so much that we see that simply dont have time to write about. We thought that we could at least share some of what we see that stands out, impresses or amuses us on our journey, so readers can see more than just the blogs we write at the end of each days travelling. Below is a selection of shots from our trip from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Lebanon, Missouri, including a trip along Kansas 13.2 mile section of the highway.

Clockwise from upper left: New oil derricks on the Osage American Indian reservation in Oklahoma, ready to take advantage of the upsurge in drilling and pumping that makes sense because of high oil prices; The Main Street Deli used to be the Citizens State Bank of Galena and this is the old safe, tastefully decorated; a young gentleman shows of his basketball moves while crossing the road outside ; the back of the Green Parrot, a bar that was thriving until July 2006, when a sinkhole from an old lead mine opened up and shut the place down. Old lead mines occasionally swallow up old parts of town; an old abandoned locomotive, tucked away behind Main Street in Galena, Kansas; one of many signs in southwestern Missouri luring tourists to Branson, a blue-collar resort near the border with Arkansas. After seeing billboards like this, we decided not to go.

Photos Nick Carey/James Kelleher May 23, 2007

Like a number of towns along what was Route 66, the motels here in Lebanon, Missouri thrived on the through traffic. And like many of those same towns, when Route 66 went away the motels were among the first to suffer.

Here in Lebanon they line old Route 66 away from the center of town, on what feels like a near-forgotten stretch of road. The signs are faded, but they are still in business.

This is in part because unlike some of the other towns along the way such as Tucumcari, New Mexico where many of the motels have gone under because of the loss of Route 66 when it was decommissioned in 1985 Lebanon has a lot of tourists who come to this area to go fishing.

While not necessarily the biggest spenders, anglers do contribute to preventing the motels here suffering the fate of others in towns not fortunate enough to have something else to fall back on.

                                   
This town was made for lead and named for lead. Occasionally, bits of it still sink into the ground because of lead.

This is what made this town what it once was, said Ken Oglesby (left), 52, owner of the Main Street Deli in the center of town, shaking a small glass jar nearly full of small scraps of bluish-grey lead.

From time to time, tunnels in the mines that used to produce it collapse and take parts of Galena with them.

Lead was discovered here in the very south-eastern corner of Kansas back in the spring of 1877 and before long mining companies moved in and settlement sprang up almost overnight. Called Galena after the lead ore mineral of the same name, this town grew rapidly to reach 30,000 people by 1898, plus more than 250 active mines.

Galena also apparently received an extra boost from the opening of Route 66 back in 1926.

But during the mid-twentieth century, the lead and zinc was mined out in the area and Galena went into decline. And in 1985 Route 66 was decommissioned.

Today, the population numbers a little over 3,000 and not all of the town’s on solid ground.

Just up Main Street from Oglesbys delicatessen stands the Green Parrot (right), a bar that up until July 2006 did fairly brisk trade here.

Then this sinkhole started to open up behind the bar, said Eric Durbin (left), 25, doing renovation work on an old eatery down the street.

They kept the bar open for a while, but the sinkhole kept growing until it became unsafe to work there, he added.

The Green Parrot is now surrounded by a bright, orange plastic perimeter warning people to stay out. While the front of the building seems normal, the back wall has literally fallen off and the rear portion of the building is tilting toward the sinkhole. More of the former local business will slide into the sinkhole, the only question seems to be when.

This happens once in a while, Durbin said. I can recall at least three times in my lifetime. When it happens we just try to fill in the holes and carry on.”

There are, or were, only a few miles of old Route 66 in Kansas, down in the far south-eastern corner of the state, but this short stretch of road is considered by many fans to be about as close to the original state of the road as you can get.

But be advised to take a good map with you and watch where you are going, as the dozen or so miles of Route 66 still here 13.2 miles, to be precise is also notorious for getting people lost.

The highway passes through pleasant, green wooded, farmland and small towns like Baxter Springs, Riverton and Galena (pictures on left), all exuding a faded rural charm.

If you come to this part of Route 66, you have to stop at the Bush Creek Marsh Arch Bridge (right), which is between Baxter Spring and Riverton. This is the only remaining Marsh Arch Bridge left on Route 66.

For many years it was called Graffiti Bridge because of the names scrawled and painted all over it. But it has obviously recently received a fresh coat of paint, so for now it is graffiti-free, though who knows for how long.

On June 2 1907, the Osage American Indian tribe divided up the land on their reservation, an event that had held up Oklahomas bid for statehood for a decade. This June 2, the tribe will open an exhibition on those who received that land.

The allotment of 2,229 plots of land to divide up the reservation, which the Osage had bought in 1870, was eventually forced by an Act of U.S. Congress in 1906 to bring the tribe in line with the rest of the aspiring would-be state (Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907).

Kathryn Red Corn, director of the Osage Tribal Museum here, says she has spent eight years collecting photographs and information on as many of these people as possible. She describes the process here

I had hope to reach 1,500 people by the time the exhibition started, but we have so far only managed around 1,400, she said. She said that when locals come to see the exhibition that maybe some of them will be inspired to seek out other photographs.

Red Corn opens a book of black and white photographs and points to the very first entry, allotment No. 1, which shows Tom Big Chief plus his Indian name Pah-hu-ska, which means White Hair and which gave this town its name - in traditional dress with three members of his family.

Flipping through the book, she reaches a sepia-tone photograph allotment No. 660, Clarence Gray, and Red Corns face breaks into a bespectacled grin as she introduces the man who happens to have been her grandfather.

We want the tribe today to know who these people are and wherever possible to find out what happened to all of them, Red Corn said.