Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch

When Elmer Long (pictured) inherited his father's bottle collection, he didn't know what to do with it. He thought and thought, "What should I do with these hundreds of colorful old bottles?" And then one day he decided to make a bottle tree by welding "branches" onto an iron rod. And then he made another and another until a forest of bottle trees grew in his front yard, which sits on Route 66 in California's Mojave County.

We stopped at the Bottle Tree Ranch in Helendale, where Elmer welcomes visitors. We talked a lot about Route 66 and the impact the interstates have had on the old highway. "People want to get to places quickly and so they hop on the interstate," he says. "But those interstates pass through nothingness. They have no soul. There aren't any towns."

Elmer was just the sort of quirky character I hoped to encounter on our road trip. I was relieved to find that people are out there preserving the past and holding onto the time when driving was about discovering the communities along the route.