Route 66 Motel

Route 66, the legendary American highway that originally ran from Chicago to Los Angeles, has been celebrated in movies, television shows and a 1946 song about getting "your kicks" that was covered by New Hampshire's own Aerosmith. The interstate system dried up traffic on Route 66 and roads like it. Many of the towns along it withered. But Route 66 has been rediscovered in the form of a "retro tour" designed to take travelers off the mind-numbing interstates and back on blue highways. The goal: to slow things down, celebrate history, stimulate the economies of towns bypassed a half-century ago and, with luck, save some of the iconic structures of the early years of the motel era.