Route 66: Views From The Great American Road

"Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me. - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 1(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"I was beginning to get the bug like Dean. He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Ch. 1(photo credit: MapQuest)

"I thought of my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing-about. - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 3(photo credit: Thinkstock)

Cars at "Cadillac Ranch" on historic Route 66. As a tribute to America's relationship with one of it's favorite automobiles, a collective of artists called Ant Farm placed 10 Cadillacs, ranging from a 1949 Club Coupe to a 1963 Sedan, in a wheat field located west of Amarillo. Visitors are encourage to draw or paint on the cars. Cadillac Ranch is a popular stopping off point for tourists on historic Route 66 which stretches from Chicago to Los Angeles. (photo credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 3(photo credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

"The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 7(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"Rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 9(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"We fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess--across the night." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 9(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 12(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets god-awful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 13(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"The stars bent over the little roof. I was adventuring in the crazy American night." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 13(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?" - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 2, Ch. 3(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 2, Ch. 4(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"I want to be like him. He's never hung-up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out, he knows time, he has nothing to do but rock back and forth. Man, he's the end! You see, if you go like him all the time you'll finally get it." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 2, Ch. 4(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 2, Ch. 8(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one noble function of the time, move." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 2, Ch. 6(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 3, Ch. 4(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"All the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 2, Ch. 6(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there--and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 3, Ch. 5(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 3, Ch. 5(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"Our battered suitcases were were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 3, Ch. 5(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men's souls to joy." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 3, Ch. 10(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"What difference does it make after all?--anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth?" - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 3, Ch. 11(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"What's your road, man?--holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 4, Ch. 1(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"We were already almost out of America and yet definitely in it and in the middle of where it's maddest. Hotrods blew by. San Antonio, ah-haa!" - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 4, Ch. 4(photo credit: Thinkstock)

"Behind us lay the whole of America and everything Dean and I had previously known about life, and life on the road. We had finally found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of the magic." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 4, Ch. 5(photo credit: Thinkstock)