Once upon a time, what seemed like a lifetime ago, I was headed home with my friend Anna from Regis University in my trusty Honda Civic packed up for the summer. She was driving with me to her home in Thousand Oaks, CA on my way to San Jose and we were going to have some adventure going across the southwest of America. Never one to pass up a once in a life time opportunity, I wanted to drive the Devil's Highway: Route 666. Originally named US HWY 666 as it was the 6th branch off of the famous Route 66, I had watched Natural Born Killers one too many times to pass by this.
Heading west on I-70, we took US-191 though Moab down to a little (and I mean little) town of Monticello, UT. Gassing up at the Out West Fuel n Feed at the intersection of US-191 and US-666, we merged onto Highway 666 and I was down right giddy. We saw some serious road side diners, and "Devil's Highway" plastered just about everywhere to get tourist to stop on by. Empty sign posts were everywhere, no doubt liberated of their signs, much to my disappointment. After a day of driving, about 50 miles south of Cortez, CO, I finally found a sign. I'll leave the rest of what happened to this sign to your imagination. We continued on to Gallup, NM and hooked into I-40 and slept in Sin City for the evening before dropping Anna off in Thousand Oaks and spending a few days with her down in SoCal before I headed home to San Jose.
Sadly in 2003 they renamed this stretch of Americana to highway 491. But I'll always have a keepsake of that fun time in my life and a memento that will always hang proudly in my garage. read more
