Motel Monday - Route 66 Abandoned Beauty

"Make Waves" for sale through my Retro Roadside Photography shop on Etsy

My road trips are meticulously planned. I spend hours online sign hunting with Google Earth as my right hand. I make maps, I plan routes... When I drive several hours for a weekend of shooting I want to make sure I don't miss a thing. It's understandable, right?

Thank goodness it isn't possible to find everything on the internet. If it were, my trips would lack beautiful surprises like today's Motel Monday feature.

A friend and I were on our way home driving through the empty parts of Arizona on I-40 when we saw it. My jaw dropped. And as we passed my head turned. We took the next exit and back tracked. You don't miss a sign like this.

The motel is long since gone. The foundation sits about 100 feet away but all that's left is some old linoleum and hints of where dividing walls might have been. Another abandoned building sits several hundred feet west, but it's not clear if they were once part of the same property. I found no evidence of a pool, but it could have been filled in years ago.

I've passed this sign one time since and seeing it beside the highway made me smile. It's like an old friend waiting to welcome me back to Arizona. I hope it never leaves.

Happy Monday.

- Stefanie