Out here in John Steinbeck's "bright and terrible desert" is a dry wash with a remnant of an old concrete bridge. California rebuilt this section in the early 1950s when Route 66 traffic was very heavy. Now, everyone uses I-40 many miles away and this desert route is largely...deserted.

This mangled concrete and steel has been left like this for 60 years, and might be an unintended monument to those who Steinbeck chronicled in The Grapes of Wrath. That narrow bridge was used by several hundred thousand Dust Bowl Okies, Arkies and Texans who fled their unproductive and uninhabitable homeland for the chance of a new life in California.

And that's all it was--a chance.

Route 66 West: the Mother Road. Steel over Concrete. Keep the Faith. It can't be long now. We'll be through this desert soon enough.

Listen: We're even picking up Los Angeles on the radio.