How Bleak is Route 66's Future?

I'm finally getting around to reading the many, many back issues of magazines that I have accumulated.

The March-April 2008 issue of Preservation Magazine of the national Trust for Historic Preservation had an article by Ann Beattie featuring the photography of Edward Keating who has won a Pulitzer Prize for Photojournalism.

They are in black and white and, in my opinion paint a really bleak picture of the road as it appears today. Nothing but ruins and even the places doing well look bare and sparse.

It said that Keating had "spent many hours traveling Route 66, capturing its landscapes and historic architecture." Much of the the shots were in the west, which with its vast openness, tends to always look barren and bleak, especially in black and white.

Pictures were of the La Mesa Motel in Santa Rosa, NM, two pictures of ghost town Glenrio, Texas, the cross near Groom, Tx. and an abandoned motel and the ruined Triangle Motel in Amarillo, Texas.

Operating motels were the Munger Moss Motel in Lebanon, Mo, Western Motel near OKC,, Blue Swallow in Tucumcari (where the daytime shot did absolutely nothing for that wondrous old sign) and Route 66 Motel (formerly the Royal Palacio) in Tucumcari.

To believe these shots, Route 66 is on its last legs with an undeniably bleak future.

Personally, I have to disagree and Will Discuss the Subject Later. --RoadDog