Modern Insights Along Historic Route 66

It's great to be back in San Francisco, after a three-week vacation — where I flew to Chicago, and then drove all the way back to California via Historic Route 66. When I was a child growing up in Chicago, I learned of the great “Mother Road” that takes you from Grant Park to the Santa Monica Pier — and it was my dream to drive all of its 2,448 miles. It's the road that Okies took during the Great Depression to find jobs in California, and in the 1950s and ‘60s it came to symbolize America's move west to the Sunbelt. And the fact that Route 66 no longer exists (the U.S. Highway System had the road de-commissioned in 1985, because the Interstate made it obsolete) made this trip feel like a real adventure. I blogged every day, and learned a lot of things along the way — some profound, some of them just plain obvious. Here are my top 10 insights from driving Route 66, as we leave Chicago for Los Angeles.