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.

The Dixie Truckers Home in McLean, Illinois, off Interstate 55 and alongside what used to be Route 66, may not be the first American truckstop. But it’s definitely one of the oldest — and one of the most revered among aficionados of the old cross-country highway.

Opened in 1928, just two years after Route 66, the Dixie Truckers Home survived the federal highway’s decommissioning in the early 1980s and continues to serve as a home away from home for long-haul truckers and other road warriors and travelers.

If there’s a downside, it’s this: The original owners sold the Dixie a few years back and the new owners seem more interested in making the place a comfortable one for modern travelers than in preserving the old ambience (though they have opened up a Route 66 memorabilia room.)

That said, the Dixie is still worth a stop, if only to breathe in the diesel fumes from the idling big rigs and to reflect on how many drivers over the nearly 80 years have enjoyed a quiet moment here before hitting the road again.

Just one piece of advice: Think twice before ordering a fruit cup to go at the Dixie Truckers Home. It’s big and and it’s a bargain. But it throws the staff for a loop.

When the Route 66 Team visited this week, we watched as a hapless bus driver, who had filled up a 16-oz Styrofoam cup with fruit from the buffet, tried to pay for the item.

The trouble: The Dixie’s staff, apparently used to ringing up hamburgers, chicken-fried steaks and other artery-clogging fare, had difficulty understanding what the driver had served herself — and then had no clue how to ring it up on the computer terminal/cash register at the central checkout counter.

In the end, it took two Dixie employees about seven minutes to figure what the bus driver — whose passengers were boarded and were waiting to get to Kansas City — owed.

The grand total: $1.91 with tax.

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.

As the Route 66 Team traveled from Los Angeles to Chicago, celebrating Route 66 and the allure of the open road, we drove past a lot of reminders of the carnage that automobile travel entails.

Yeah, we’re talking roadkill.

Here’s a handful of the poor critters we came across during our the 2,500-mile journey.

You won’t find Times Beach on any up-to-date map of Missouri. And all references to it have been taken off signs on Interstate 44, the major east-west highway that replaced old Route 66 in this part of the country.

But 25 years ago, Times Beach, located about 25 miles west of St. Louis, was Missouri’s best known — the right word is notorious — city after the waters of the nearby Meramec River rose more than 20 feet above flood level, inundating homes to near ceiling level and spreading an oil that the city had sprayed on its unpaved roads.

Unfortunately, that oil, applied to keep the dust down, wiped Times Beach off the map.

The city contractor had used waste oil contaminated with a toxic chemical called dioxin. Even before the flood in late 1982, researchers were scrambling to figure out why animals in town had been dying mysteriously. But by the time the lab results came back identifying the culprit, the waters of the Merrimac had tuned what might have been a manageable clean-up into a full-scale environmental disaster.

Two days before Christmas 1982, the 800 residents of Time Beach received a letter from authorities: “If you are in town, it is advisable for you to leave and if you are out of town do not go back.”

In 1983, the federal government purchased the whole town. Over the next two decades, in fits and starts, the buildings were razed, the contaminated soil incinerated and the debris piled up and buried in what became known as the “town mound” (left).

Today, Times Beach is a memory. In its place is a 410-acre park run by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources that’s known as the Route 66 State Park. Though it bears the old highway’s name and features both the old Route 66 bridge across the Meramec and some portions of the original road, the park itself is essentially a nature preserve, with the town’s old street’s now serving as hiking and biking trails. The visitor center, located in a roadhouse inn, has memorabilia celebrating both the old highway that ran trough town and the 1982 flood that destroyed it.

A quarter of a century after one of the most notorious environmental catastrophes in U.S. history, there are encouraging signs. The Department of Natural Resources says the area is now home to healthy deer and turkey populations and other animal and birds have been sighted here.

And the town mound? It’s still there, covered in grass, but easy enough for the visitor to spot, eerily reminiscent of the Indian burial sites that dot the state.

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.

On the outside, Steve’s Sundry, Books & Magazines on South Harvard Avenue in Tulsa’s midtown neighborhood, doesn’t look like much. But just as you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, don’t write off Steve’s because of its modest curb appeal and its location in an aging strip mall.

Step inside, and you quickly discover why, in an age of Amazon.com, Borders, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million, locals love this quirky, 60-year-old independent bookstore.

It’s called Steve’s Sundry, Books & magazines, so it’s best to take things one by one.  

First, the sundries. Steve’s stocks all kinds of items you wouldn’t expect to find in a bookstore, including denture powder and a variety of products for the feet.  “As long as it’s legal and our customers want it, we’ll sell find it and sell it,” says Joanie Stephenson, the wife of Steve Jr., the founder’s son. The foot-care products — some of them hard to get — are there, Joanie says, because someone once asked for them and Steve’s obliged. Then area podiatrists found out and began specifically referring customers to the store.

Also in the sundry category, the old-fashioned soda fountain in the back of the store, which serves shakes and simple sandwiches all day.  Hence the store’s motto: “Whether it’s Shakes or Shakespeare, Steve’s is the Place.”  

“I swing by probably once every couple of weeks,” says 29-year-old Brian Wayland (left), a Tulsa social worker, who was having a shake blended up by Darren Whiteside, a Steve’s employee, when the Route 66 Team visited.

“They make a better shake than Braum’s (a regional ice cream chain) and there’s hardly ever a line.”  

The books lean heavily toward local authors, and books on Oklahoma history, and Steve’s hosts signings weekly for these niche authors. “Shoot,” Joanie says, “if somebody takes the time and the blood, sweat and tears to write a book, we’re happy to sponsor an author event.” 

That support for struggling authors has earned Steve’s the love of some not-so-struggling scribes, including Elmore Leonard, David Baldacci and Garrison Keillor, who have all made a point of doing signings here when they’re in Tulsa. 

And the magazines? Steve’s carries over 4,000 titles, giving it — according to Joanie — the best selection in Tulsa. 

All photos taken in Tulsa, Oklahoma on May 22 and 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.