The End of the Road

This is it. This is what we drove over 2,500 miles for. (I have the exact number, Avis lot to Avis lot, but I wrote it on one of the 66 maps, and stuck that inside the atlas, which Sherry stuffed into our checked baggage.)

This is the brass plaque at the foot of Santa Monica Boulevard and Ocean Avenue in Palisade Park dedicated to Will Rogers. Dedicated in 1952, I might add, just as US Route 66 was about to be tossed into the trashbin of American cartography.

Down and across Illinois we drove, across the Mississippi to Missouri, nicking Kansas the way your razor does when the blade gets too dull. Through Oklahoma to slice across the chunky top part of Texas. (Why do they call that a panhandle, anyway?) Straight across the deserts of New Mexico (USA) and Arizona (MST), across the Colorado River into California (where there actually was a Time Zone sign, not that it mattered, as Arizona doesn't observe Daylight time, so nothing changed) and down into Santa Monica, the land of tall, spindly trees that cast no shade, and this is what we found:

I guess all that's left for me to say, after 2598 miles and 103 gallons of gas is: I never met a road I didn't like.