With the luxury of a half century of hindsight I can now see that the quest began in the summer of '69. That was when I began trading hours of my life for money. That was the summer that I began working for Ed of Ed's Camp on a long abandoned alignment of Route 66 in...

Organized in early 1927, the U.S. Highway 66 Association was similar in nature to many organizations and businesses established before the creation of the federal highway system to promote roads such as the  Lincoln Highway and the National Old Trails Highway. The association had two primary goals; lobby to have U.S. 66 fully paved from Chicago to its western terminus at Seventh and Broadway in Los Angeles, California and the development of marketing initiatives to promote tourism on the highway.

I have been traveling the back roads of America since 1959. I have been tellling people where to go since 1990 (as a writer as well as through Jim Hinckley's America) and since at least 1976 as a manifestation of a low tolerance for stupidity, grifters, and...