Hitting the road? Book a Route 66 Airbnb to make your rest stops a little more elevated. From the starting point in Chicago right through the end in LA, these 10 properties are on our wishlist.

🇺🇸The Wild West never died, it just traded horses for pickup trucks and a burnt-out van Train robbers jammed a burning vehicle onto the BNSF track near Route 66 in southern California, forcing a massive freight train to grind to a sudden halt. After looting, a convoy of getaway vehicles scattered into the Mojave Desert, leaving zero arrests and an empty paper trail… Infamous train robber Jesse James is taking notes. Writer: Bri

So this 1932 Chevy Confederate Landeau Phaeton is another vehicle. I just saw that is going to travel 200 miles on route 66 for a old car convention. The owner said only 1600 of them were ever made. This one’s been completely redone with power steering.

He refused to give up on his bike or his dream. 🚴 After an earlier attempt at a cross-country ride ended in Chicago, viral Japanese cyclist Ryo Murata returned to finish what he started. Now, he's making his way through Southern California toward Santa Monica, spreading joy and inspiring people along Route 66.

In a rice field two hours outside Tokyo, there is a 1957 American diner. Chrome stools. Red booths. A jukebox. A neon sign that says OPEN and buzzes like an angry bee. A Route 66 sign out front, hand-painted, slightly crooked. It was built by a 77-year-old Japanese rice farmer named Mr. Kamata. He has never set foot in America. In 1957, when he was eight, a traveling movie came to his village. They hung a white sheet on the wall of the school gym. The movie was American. There was a diner on Route 66. A waitress poured coffee without being asked. A man in a booth said, "What'll it be, pal?" Mr. Kamata decided, at eight years old, that this was the most beautiful place on earth. He farmed rice for fifty years. He saved for forty of them. At 68, he built the diner himself, from photos in old magazines, on the corner of his own field. His English is entirely from 1950s movies. Every customer is "pal." Every woman is "doll." When you leave, he says, "Drive safe, pal. Watch out for the fuzz." He has never seen the fuzz. What the fuzz actually is remains a mystery to him. His menu is his best guess. The "hamburger" is a Japanese hamburg steak between two grilled rice patties. The "cherry pie" is made with Japanese cherries and considerable optimism. The "milkshake" is soft-serve ice cream, stirred very hard, by a 77-year-old man, with real effort. For years, he got about three customers a day. Mostly grandmothers from the village, who came because he was lonely, and who ordered green tea. Then, four years ago, an American Air Force family got lost on a road trip and saw a Route 66 sign in a rice field. The father thought he was having a stroke. They went in. Mr. Kamata said, "What'll it be, pal?" The father ordered everything on the menu. He posted one photo. Within a year, Americans stationed all over Japan were driving out to that rice field on weekends. Pilots. Sailors. Teachers. Families with kids in car seats. And here's the thing. Nobody has ever corrected him. Not the rice burger. Not "the fuzz." Not the milkshake that is clearly not a milkshake. Every American who eats there says the same thing: "Best burger I've had in Japan." They are lying. Mr. Kamata knows they are lying. He loves them for it. Instead, they started bringing him things. A real Oklahoma license plate from 1962. A Coca-Cola sign from a closed gas station in Missouri. A cherry pie recipe from somebody's grandmother in Michigan, handwritten, with a note: "Real cherries, sugar. Trust me." A sailor's dad in Arizona mailed him an actual Route 66 shield, the metal kind, off a real highway. Customs called Mr. Kamata to ask why he was importing a road. The walls are covered now. Items from 41 states. Last spring, a retired Air Force master sergeant named Boone, from Enid, Oklahoma, sat at the counter and asked Mr. Kamata where he'd go if he could go anywhere. Mr. Kamata answered before Boone finished the question. "Route 66. Chicago to the ocean." Boone set down his coffee. "Pal," he said, "you're 77. What are we waiting for?" The regulars passed a jar. The jar became a fundraiser. The fundraiser was full in four days. This September, at 77, Mr. Kamata boarded his first airplane. Boone met him in Chicago with a rented convertible. Red. Of course. They drove all of it. 2,400 miles. Illinois. Missouri. Kansas. Oklahoma. Texas. New Mexico. Arizona. California. Word had gotten out. Somebody had posted the trip. In Missouri, a diner had his name on the marquee. In Oklahoma, a gas station owner filled the tank, checked the oil, cleaned the windshield, and said, "Fill 'er up, pal," just so Mr. Kamata could hear an American say it. In Texas, a man drove 90 miles to give him a cowboy hat. In Arizona, a whole motel parking lot came out to wave. And in a little Oklahoma town, at a diner that has been open since 1946, an 89-year-old woman came out from the kitchen. She had worked that counter in 1957. She was 20 then. She poured him a cup of coffee without being asked. Then she leaned on the counter and said, "What'll it be, pal?" Boone says Mr. Kamata couldn't get a single word out. The waitress ordered for him. The whole diner pretended not to watch. Every last person in there was watching. Two weeks after Chicago, they reached the ocean at Santa Monica. The last sign. End of the Trail. Mr. Kamata stood there in his cowboy hat, staring at the Pacific. Somewhere across all that water was his rice field. Boone asked him how it felt to finally be in America. Mr. Kamata thought about it. "Seventy years, I have been in America," he said. "Today, I arrived." He's back in his rice field now. Same diner. Same jukebox. Same angry neon. He changed only one thing. The cherry pie is made with real American cherries now. Michigan, by mail, from the grandmother's daughter. The burger is still a rice burger. The Americans voted to keep it.