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Leaving our campground in Joshua Tree National Park in Yucca Valley, CA, we traveled through Twenty-Nine Palms then took the Amboy Highway north to the Old National Trail Highway, in existence from 1913 to 1926, then subsequently renamed Route 66. With paving completed in 1938 from Chicago to L.A., this route was later coined the "Mother Road" by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. Passing through Essex and Danby, we noticed that the occurrence of plants in the desert diminished and all we could see for miles was sand and dirt. Near the old town of Amboy, there were salt deposits on either side of the road. Amboy once had a large chloride plant and was a major stop along Route 66. But the completion of I-40 bypassed Amboy and killed it as it did many other small towns along the old route. We passed several businesses, long since closed, but built on the dream of cashing in on the Route 66 traffic. Maybe they succeeded for a while but those days are long gone with little traffic now on this stretch. Back on I-40 through Needles, we found Route 66 again at Golden Shores and headed for Oatman.

Oatman is a wonderful little tourist trap town with 200 permanent residents and wild burros that roam the streets and eat carrots from your hand. A number of gift shops and restaurants line the main street (old Route 66). We had lunch at the Oatman Hotel where the dining room walls are covered with $1 bills (reportedly between $30-40,000 of them!). Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their wedding night on the second floor of the hotel and, of course, we had to go upstairs to see their room. From Oatman, we headed over Sitgreaves Pass, named for the gentleman who completed the first technical mapping of this region. The road signs warn that vehicles over 27 feet should not use this route because it is so narrow and winding. But did that slow old Jer down? Oh, noooooooooo. Never mind that Bubba is 36 feet long. Add Pearl and the tow bar, and we’re at least 58 feet long. But it was a breathtakingly beautiful drive and Bubba had no problems maneuvering it, thanks to Jerry’s top-notch driving skills.

As we traveled this route, we couldn’t help but think of those families in the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and even 60’s that followed this road west to California. Of course, the Dust Bowl (the drought that lasted from 1931 – 1939) precipitated the first western migration. The desolation and destruction of the dust storms in the Midwest, coupled with the Great Depression, caused many families to leave their homes to seek a better life via Route 66. Steinbeck described The Mother Road as "the main migrant road, the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down on the map from the Mississippi to Bakersfield, over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up the mountains, crossing the divide and down into the bright and terrible desert and across the desert to the mountains again into the rich California valleys."

This was the worst stretch of the trip in the early days, because of the steep grades. In fact, there are stories of locals who drove over Sitgreaves pass in reverse because it gave them more power to negotiate the steep grades. The scenery is spectacular as we reach the summit and I cannot imagine what all the migrants must have thought when they saw this for the first time. I can almost see the wide eyes of the children as Dad struggled to get the overloaded old "tin lizzie" over the pass. With all their belongings strapped on their vehicles and their hearts full of hope, over 200,000 people took what little money they could muster and drove this very same route, looking at this very same scenery, in search of their dreams. It gives me chills to think about it.

Unfortunately, only 16,000 found jobs and stayed. The other 184,000 were greeted at the Arizona-California border by an official sign that instructed migrants to turn back because they were not welcome in California. There were no jobs, no housing, and no hope of a better life than what they had left. They would gather in migrant camps, only to be driven away by the police who had been instructed to force them to move on. Can you imagine the fear, anxiety, worry and hardship these people went through? For all those who were forced to return home, it was tough going as they had spent all their money to get to California only to be turned away. The excitement of the trip was all gone as they retraced their route and struggled to make the last of their money stretch to get them home. And since we were traveling from west to east over Sitgreaves Pass, we saw the landscape as those who were forced to swallow their dreams and their pride, repack their cars and trucks, and head back home to admit their failure and start over.

Interestingly, Jerry’s mom, dad, and oldest brother were here during World War II when Papa was sent to Hayward, CA to work in a shipyard. They spent about a year in California before returning to Arkansas. Likewise, my family (including my oldest brother and his wife, along with my two other brothers and me) made this trip in 1953 to find our dream in the Golden State. We lasted only 29 days before my dad packed us up and took us back home to Tennessee.

We followed 66 to Kingman where we stayed at the KOA for a couple of nights and spent an afternoon following Route 66 from Kingman to Seligman, the home of the "rebirth" effort for old Route 66. Tomorrow, we meet our friends, Cheryl and Carl, in Las Vegas.

Happy trails to you . . . til we meet again!