When you plan for a road trip, you expect to spend a lot of money. Six weeks on the road means six weeks of paying for gas, eating out, staying in motels, buying souveneirs, paying admission to roadside attractions... I never expected our trip across Route 66 to be cheap. But I also didn't expect to spend $400 before leaving Los Angeles. So a few reminders for future excursions:

• You don't drive across the country without knowing that your car's in good shape. Not only does this mean waking up at six to drive to the car dealer, where you'll spend two to three hours listening to the sounds of power nut-tighteners and the loud cheers of salesmen (all men, not a single female at Carson Toyota) pumping themselves up for the day, but you'll also be more than $250 poorer - for what? An oil change and some extra air in the tires?
• Film isn't cheap. The digicam had spoiled me - who knew you could spend $100 on film in a single trip to Target?

Got our first glimpse of Route 66 yesterday... wasn't anything special. In almost every way, what we saw was exactly the opposite of what you expect from Route 66. Colorado Blvd. is anything but run-down, desolate, sparsely populated, unused - it's your normal congested L.A. road. But it is forgotten. Nowhere was there any indication that we had just turned onto a road that, for a good portion of the previous century, had been a major artery to the West. The number "66" wasn't on any sign or business, only on our printout telling us where the old Route used to be. Even Rand McNBally, with its thousands of additions this year, paid no attention to Route 66.

A corner like this, though, is the kind of thing that started the Route 66 revival nearly ten years ago. We interviewed David Knudson, founder of the National Historic Route 66 Federation (1994), who, throughout our discussion, continued to stress that the worst possible thing could be for Route 66 to be forgotten. His inability to find the road on a trip west in '94 and his realization that this piece of American history had been forgotten seemed to be, as he tells it, the major catalyst for starting the Federation.

Two things about Knudson caught my attention most. First was the speed with which he became obsessed with the road. In 1961, he had traveled it and says he promised himself he'd do it again someday. Strangely enough, that day didn't come until 1994, when his father passed away only a couple of days after buying a new car. Driving back to California in that car, Knudson had his chance to look for Route 66... and couldn't find it. But the trip made such an impression on him that he sold all of his shares in his advertising agency to start the nonprofit organization. So, unlike many of the people we have interviewed, he shared no memories of the dismay he felt when 66 was decommissioned or of how it decimated the economy in his home town - he simply tells of two trips, 33 years apart, that captured his interest and refused to let go.

The other surprise was how Knudson spoke about the road. Most of his comments centered on marketing - how to sell the road. How to help communities remain economically viable and to continue to appeal to the foreign tourists. At times it seemed hard to tell if he was using the marketing to preserve the history of the route, or if he was preserving the route because he could market it. But that could just be his history in advertising coming through.

In any case, his efforts seem to have helped some parts of the road return to the minds of many Americans (and foreigners). But he feels the only danger to Route 66 is that it be forgotten completely. Yet he talks of the possibility of large corporations coming in and renovating properties along Route 66 for publicity. He speaks of a day when a Denny's will operate out of the shell of a fully-restored diner along Route 66? Where is the local flavor, the history of a Denny's, even if the building used to be family-owned? Is there a danger of Route 66 becoming overcommercialized, of turning into the "prepackaged" world that people who live and travel on 66 seem so determined to escape? How long can the Route be restored before it is destroyed in another way - no longer forgotten, but commercialized and devoid of the historic value that many now appreciate in it?

To Knudson, this doesn't seem a concern. As long as Route 66 is not forgotten, it is saved. But I recall again our first segment of 66 - Colorado Blvd - and I doubt that part of 66 would be any different even if there were signs telling everyone what it used to be. I had that sign... and to me it was still another busy street in Los Angeles. In my mind, this part of Route 66 has suffered a worse fate that being forgotten - its history has been paved over, with a little McDonald's set on top of it. Hopefully other less-populated sections of the route don't suffer the same fate as a result of the "revival."