This year marks the 75th anniversary of Route 66, and thus seemed an appropriate time to share my experiences traveling this fabled highway not that long ago. It was April 24, 1999, when I flew to Chicago, rented a Chrysler Sebring convertible and the next morning began a road trip I had been planning to take since I was a teenager.

My love affair with Route 66 began in the early 1960s when my brother and I would plant ourselves in front of the family TV set on Friday night to watch "Route 66," starring Martin Milner and George Maharis. Shot on location, the show was about two friends, Tod and Buz, who drove in a Corvette convertible from town to town along America's most famous highway, searching for adventure and enlightenment.

In the years that followed, I became more aware of the road's historical significance, and I have collected articles and books about Route 66 ever since. Before I recount the highlights of my journey, here's a brief "history lesson" about this long and winding road.

In John Steinbeck's 1939 classic novel, "The Grapes of Wrath," he wrote of the Joad family, who left Oklahoma in the Dust Bowl days of the Great Depression. Symbolic of thousands of real-life refugee farmers, the Joads traveled westward on 66, ultimately seeking work in the rich agricultural valleys of California. Steinbeck referred to 66 as the "mother road," and it has stuck ever since. More accurately, however, it also came to be known as the road of flight.

After World War II, thousands of GIs who had undergone their basic training in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California traveled this highway in search of warm climates and the "barbecue culture." For many, Route 66 served as the main artery to the promised land. One such individual was Bobby Troup (1918-1999), an ex-Marine captain and pianist in the Tommy Dorsey Band, who penned his musical road map, "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66," on his way to California in 1946. The popular recording by Nat "King" Cole was released that same year, one week after Troup's arrival in the Golden State. Nelson Riddle's theme music for the TV drama became a hit record in 1962. Here are Troup's lyrics:

If you ever plan to motor west:
Travel my way, take the highway, that's the best.
Get your kicks on Route 66!
It winds from Chicago to L.A.,
More than 2,000 miles all the way,
Get your kicks on Route 66!
Now you go thru St. Louie…Joplin, Missouri.
And Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty.
You'll see Amarillo...Gallup, New Mexico.
Flagstaff, Arizona: don't forget Winona,
Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino.
Won't you…get hip to this timely tip:
When you…make that California trip,
Get your kicks on Route 66!

Route 66 was commissioned in the summer of 1926 but was not fully paved until 1938. More than 2,448 miles long, it started in Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan, ending at the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles. It wound its way through three time zones and eight states.

Route 66 also came to be known as Main Street USA because it typically went into the center of each city and town it dissected. What is unusual about the road is that it did not follow a traditional linear course, but rather a diagonal one that linked hundreds of rural communities in Illinois, Missouri and Kansas to the city of Chicago, offering farmers an economical way to have their crops transported by truck.

Years later, however, the national interstate highway system would relegate the famed road to the pages of history. By 1970, most of Route 66's segments were replaced by modern, four-lane highways and in June 1985, it was decommissioned.

Today, America's Highway is gone, save for bits and pieces. But the scenery and the towns remain. Route 66 is as much a cultural icon as it is (or was) a national highway. It has become the inspiration of the quintessential road trip. And I couldn't wait to experience it.

It was in late 1998 that I decided to make the trek the following April, just shy of my 50th birthday. I planned on going alone, and secured the requisite OK from home. But an old friend of mine got wind of my plan and asked to come along. I agreed, on certain conditions: one being no cell phones and another that we're on the road by 7 a.m. every day. Barry accepted the terms, but ultimately defaulted on each.

I had from Sunday morning, April 25, until Monday, May 3, to complete the trip, since I was to fly home on the 4th. There's no way one can see everything Route 66 has to offer in such short a time, so I refined my list of the places where I wanted to stop. Still, it was impossible to predict with any certainty how long it would take to drive from point to point or how long we would want to spend at any particular spot. Consequently, we made no lodging reservations, vowed to take each day as it came, and made a pact to eat in local restaurants only - absolutely no fast food joints or franchises.

And so, on the morning of April 25, I got up, rigged the dashboard with my GPS and CD player, and suctioned the radar detector to the windshield. The command center was ready, the rag top was down, it was freezing in Chicago and the trip was on.

Our first stops are in the Illinois towns of Dwight to photograph the Marathon Oil Station, which looks much the same as it did when it was built in the 1930s, and McLean, where we tour the Dixie Truckers Home/Route 66 Hall of Fame.

The next day we enter Kansas, where Route 66 nips the southeastern corner of the state for about 16 miles. One of the neatest places on our journey is the town of Riverton, which features the Eisler Brothers General Store and some of the friendliest people you would ever want to meet.

In Texas, one of our "must" stops is Amarillo, home of the Cadillac Ranch, artist Stanley Marsh's uniquely American homage to Stonehenge. It is here, on a privately owned cattle ranch, that Marsh buried 10 finned Cadillacs in the ground in a parallel line at about a 60-degree angle. In a way, it's a fitting monument to the old highway that used to pass nearby. We smell Texas all the way down I-40 to the ranch. Walking to the exhibit, you have to watch your step - cow pies everywhere.

On the road again, we eventually cross the border into the "Land of Enchantment," New Mexico. We spend a little time in Tucumcari, which has some Route 66 establishments still operating - the Blue Swallow Motel and the Wigwam Trading Post, to name but two.

A particularly memorable part of the drive comes as we leave Ruidoso, descending out of the Sierra Blanca Mountains. It's a cold, clear night, the top is down and the heater is on full blast. We don't see another vehicle until we pull into the town of Socorro.

It's an eerie feeling to be a thousand miles from nowhere on the open road late at night. I select some music to fit the occasion - the Dire Straits' "Once Upon a Time in the West" - and Barry and I have a great conversation about Christianity and spirituality.

The next day, we head for Albuquerque and eat lunch at the 66 Diner, stopping later at the Continental Divide to shoot some pictures. Presumably, rainwater that falls east of the divide flows to the Atlantic, and water that falls on the west side flows to the Pacific. It isn't raining, and left to our own devices, we test the theory the best way we know how.

We cross the border into Arizona, and for me, this is where the trip really gets noteworthy. We visit the Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert, spending a couple of hours shooting pictures and video. The colors and rock formations are truly mind boggling; when there are clouds in the sky, the colors change dramatically before your eyes.

The next morning, 40 miles east of Flagstaff, we stop at Meteor Crater, Arizona's legacy from outer space. With the force of a multimegaton bomb, a speeding nickel-iron meteorite crashed to Earth nearly 50,000 years ago, creating a crater almost a mile in diameter, 550 feet deep and 2.5 miles in circumference.

Back on the road, we turn north at Flagstaff and head to the Grand Canyon, a mere 45-minute drive off of I-40/Route 66. Nothing can prepare you for seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. No amount of photographs, TV or cinema can do it justice. By the time we finish going from one scenic overlook to another, we are in a full-fledged snowstorm.

The longest original, uninterrupted stretch of Route 66 begins in Seligman (pronounced Sligman), and this was the part of the trip I was most looking forward to driving. It winds some 158 miles and features an adrenaline-inducing, canyon-curved route through the Black Mountains and Sitgreaves Pass. It's a spectacular drive, with two lanes, lots of switchbacks, no guard rails and steep cliffs with magnificent views.

According to a couple of the books I've read, a lot of the cars and trucks driven by the Oklahoma farmers that got this far didn't have the power to climb up and through these mountains in first gear. So a cottage industry was born: the locals drove the cars through the pass in reverse!

On the other side of the pass the road descends into Oatman, the neatest town on all of Route 66. Here, some of the locals still wear six-shooters, and wild burros roam the streets looking for a handout from any willing tourist. The city's claim to fame is the Oatman Hotel, where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard honeymooned.

After a final tourist stop at Hoover Dam, we finally reach the Santa Monica Pier early Sunday morning. With our remarkable journey at an end, we shoot a few pictures, have a celebratory brunch and reflect on our adventure.

It was, indeed, quite an experience to drive the same road that more than 200,000 refugees had traveled in hopes of finding a better life more than 60 years earlier. Route 66 is so much more than history, romance, adventure and amazing sites. It is a symbol of the spirit that pervaded this country following the Great Depression and World War II.

Horace Greeley said, "Go west, young man," and Bobby Troup advised, "Get your kicks on Route 66." I did - and I did. It was the trip of a lifetime.

Denny Cobb manages the Commercial Real Estate Division - Virginia for RBC Centura Bank. He lives in Virginia Beach. DCobb@Centura.com