The weather took a wild turn as I drove from the Grand Canyon, with flooding rain and harsh winds slamming my car as it crawled through the highway’s slippery trail.

Semi-trucks, heavy enough to handle the storm, weaved around my car’s right lane position, while my wipers tried failingly to weave a viewable windshield through the never ending splashes of rain.

For ten minutes I braved the storm on the highway because it was still the quickest route west, but in time I grew frustrated at the hopelessness of the situation. Why was I fighting through a storm? Wasn’t this supposed to be a vacation?

As these thoughts dripped through my mind I realized things didn’t have to be this way. An upcoming exit sign showed Route 66 was a few miles away. The slower road wouldn’t get me to my destination any faster, but it would certainly provide a less stressful route. Within a few miles I pulled off of the raging highway and emerged onto a quiet road that welcomed me with the gentle echo of rain drops. While the rain didn’t actually weaken, its impact diminished when it no longer had the highway’s traffic splashing water onto my car. The rain soon transformed into a managable piece of scenery.

The switch to Route 66 marked a turning point on my trip that reestablished the journey’s dominance over the trip’s final destination. While I ended up driving 25 miles per hour through a tourist loop dedicated to the American legacy route, I was still emotionally conquering the highway that was full of snow, rain, ice, and aggressive trucks. When I later returned to the highway to get to another area of Route 66, all of the weather issues were gone.

I’ll finish this post with a phrase written on a series of signs sprawled through a quiet section of Route 66:

You can drive
A Mile a Minute
But there is
No future in it
Pause! Avoid That
Rundown Feeling

P.S. On my excursion from the snow I stopped at the Route 66 Brewery. It was closed, but the staff inside (playing pool) let me in and I picked up some souvenirs.