It's eerie how quiet a place can be when the sound disappeared decades ago.

The BMW's engine was still ticking and popping as it cooled in the desert air. But beyond that the only noise was the scraping of my riding boots as I walked across the sandy ground.

I'd stopped because my fingers were freezing in the early morning cold and I needed to get my heavier gloves out of the saddlebag. But I'd stopped at this particular spot, just east of Barstow in the California desert, because I'd spotted the faint outline of a foundation next to the pavement.

Sunrise softly illuminated the old road, which aimed straight east, like an arrow poised to impale the new day. I could trace its course all the way to the horizon where I was headed. There wasn't another vehicle in sight.

Looking around, I began to pick out details that identified my rest stop as a combination diner, gas station and tourist court from a half-century ago. A driveway led from the road to a crumbling concrete pad where two gas pumps once stood. The foundation of the diner itself, now covered with sand and sagebrush, was right behind the pumps.

Another driveway veered off to the south, leading toward the remains of a half-dozen tourist cabins. The drive was bounded by rows of rocks, some of them still showing touches of red, white and blue paint.

The cabins would have faced east, toward the dawn, meaning that the travelers who stayed in them might have enjoyed the same awesome sunrise spectacle I was witnessing. Just above the horizon, the clear sky was already a warm yellow. But higher up, it ranged through orange and rosy red into deep blue.

Beneath that sky was open desert -- humbling to those of used to the neat, orderly patchwork of farms and towns back East. Aside from a low mountain range in the distance and the steel highway of the Union Pacific paralleling the road, there was nothing but pucker bushes and rocks as far as the eye could see.

I imagined the place as it must have looked in the '50's. I saw an oasis for an anxious Midwestern family that had traveled a little too far into the blackness of night on their long-awaited vacation trip west. I saw a welcome and familiar rest stop for a trucker piloting a Diamond Reo full of California vegetables to Tulsa, St. Louis or maybe all the way to Chicago.

Out here, in the middle of nowhere, this little tourist court must have been a neon-lit outpost, ready to welcome travelers:

"Fill 'er up, mister? High test or regular?" the attendant would ask over the buzzing of the pink neon "EAT" sign on the restaurant. I could almost hear the juke box offering up snatches of a Dorsey Brothers tune each time the door swung open. Inside, under the harsh fluorescent lights, the grill would be sizzling, silverware would be clinking, and a smiling waitress would be waiting with a pencil to scratch your order onto her green pad.

A small lizard scampered across the broken concrete, reminding me that I was in the 1990s, far removed from the era of tourist courts, the Dorsey Brothers, Diamond Reos . . . and for that matter, this old highway.

John Steinbeck called it "the mother road." It was the escape route, "the road of flight," for the Joad family in "The Grapes of Wrath" and for thousands of others they represented -- people who traded the barren dust bowl of Oklahoma for the lush promised land of California.

But Route 66 was much more than that. Whether you were headed west for a better life, for a family vacation or just for the experience of traveling, Route 66 was a part of the American dream. It represented freedom and adventure. Truckers, motorcyclists and even a couple of guys in a Corvette convertible on TV took "the highway that's the best" and got their "kicks on Route 66."

The road covered more than 2,400 miles from the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago to a Pacific Ocean beach in Santa Monica. Along the way, it traversed Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, linking hundreds of small and large towns along the way. In many cases, Route 66 created those towns, nurtured their growth and presided over their death.

The concept of the mother road was born in 1926. It was a vision of a paved highway that would connect the Midwest to the Pacific coast, replacing a network of roads that ranged from hard-surface two-lane routes to dirt paths.

The paving project took more than a decade, but when the final concrete was poured in 1937, Route 66 became the main street of America. Previously, a car or motorcycle trip to the West Coast had been an expedition. Now, it was within reach of almost anyone.

However, the seeds of Route 66's demise were planted only a few years after the road was completed. When Gen. Dwight Eisenhower got his first glimpse of the German Autobahn, he quickly realized the military significance of a limited-access highway system. When he was elected president in the '50s, Ike turned that idea into reality with a federal highway bill that fueled a nationwide freeway-building craze.

As sections of the interstate system were completed, Route 66 died a piece at a time. In 1977, when Interstate 55 was completed from Chicago to St. Louis, workmen removed the "End of Route 66" sign from the shores of Lake Michigan. The final death knell was sounded in October 1984, when the last section of Interstate 40 around Williams, Arizona opened. The mother road had been replaced by the superslab.

Like a lot of people, I was under the impression that most, if not all, of Route 66 simply doesn't exist anymore -- that it had been torn up or paved over or chopped into pieces too small to recognize.

As I found out, those rumors are wrong. Route 66 is still out there, if you know where to look. And so are the dreams it represented.

Tales of the mother road's dangerous parts were an integral part of the highway's folklore -- repeated and exaggerated by nearly everyone who traveled Route 66. But topping all the rest was the stretch between the California border and Kingman, Arizona, where old 66 crossed Sitgreaves Pass in the Black Mountains.

Back in the road's heyday, terrified flatlanders used to pay tow truck drivers to haul them and their cars over the pass while they covered their eyes and prayed. The story was that Route 66 didn't just double back on itself on the way to the Sitgreaves crest, it tripled and even quadrupled back on itself.

Guess what? It still does.

I ignored the advice I'd heard from a waitress at a coffee stop in Barstow ("That road's a mess -- you'd beat yourself to death"), and headed straight for this legendary stretch of road, which begins near Topock, Arizona. I didn't know exactly what to expect, but I figured that any road capable striking fear in the hearts of Dodge drivers in the 1950's might be just about perfect on a modern motorcycle.

It turned out even better than I hoped. Recently, this part of old Route 66 has been designated a Back Country Byway by the federal government, and it's been freshly paved. Of course, anyone who really wants to get from Topock to Kingman takes Interstate 40 today, so the GS and I had the brand-new asphalt to ourselves as we climbed toward Oatman, an old mining boom town that somehow manages to hang on despite two near-fatal busts.

Oatman was founded as a gold-mining settlement around the turn of the century, growing from a tent camp into a city of 15,000 people in the roaring '20s as miners dug millions of dollars worth of the precious metal from the surrounding hills.

But by 1940, the rich gold veins had begun to dry up, and with the outbreak of World War II, the federal government closed the mines as "non-essential to the war effort." Miners left in droves, freeing hundreds of burros which had been used to haul mining cars. Their descendants still roam what's left of the old town today, looking for handouts from tourists (and nibbling on the salty liners of helmets left by unsuspecting motorcyclists).

What kept Oatman alive through the war years was Route 66, which ran right down the main (these days the only) street in town. But then came the second blow, when the state relocated the road in the 1950's. An account in the Kingman, Arizona, Daily Miner newspaper notes: "One afternoon in 1951, traffic was coming steadily over Sitgreaves Pass -- then it was silent. Someone rushed to Oatman with the news that they had cut the ribbon the new section of U.S. 66 between Kingman and Topock. Six of the seven service station families started to leave the town the following day, and other businesses quickly followed."

Today, Oatman survives as an eccentric little town with an old-west flavor, attracting tourists who are willing to travel pretty far off the beaten path. Getting there from the California border is great. Heading from Oatman over Sitgreaves Pass to Kingman is even better. And today, you don't even have to content with a bunch of families in Dodges being hauled behind tow trucks.

When I told J. B. Norris, our eastern advertising manager, that I was going to take a ride in search of Route 66, I could hear the jealousy in his voice. J. B. lives in Springfield, Illinois, and was born practically within sight of the mother road, so it made sense to give him a call and ask if he had any information that would be useful to me.

I remember him muttering something about "cozy dogs" before promising to get back to me with "something hot."

The next morning, I received a packet of bizarre postcards and maps, all drawn by some guy named Bob Waldmire. And I got a return phone call from J. B.

"I gotta' do this too," he said. "I've been dreaming about it for years. Besides, I just bought the new Beemer and this ride would be perfect for it."

"But I'm flying to California tomorrow to get the bike," I said. "I'll be headed back east the day after that."

"The way I've got it figured," he answered quickly, "if I leave tonight and blast a little bit, I can meet you in, uh, let's see . . . " I could hear maps rustling the background. " . . . How about Kingman, Arizona? I'll see you there Saturday night."

As many an advertiser has found out over the past several years, J. B. is a difficult man to say no to.

"OK," I said, not sure how he planned to cover nearly 1,900 miles in that time span, "but dinner is on you."

J. B. rolled into Kingman about an hour after I did, with his new BMW Paris-to-Dakar thoroughly broken in. We had enchiladas at a great little Mexican restaurant, and my wallet never left my pocket.

The soulful sound of a Santa Fe freight train woke us up early the next morning. By the time the sun was fully above the horizon, we were on our way, headed east under a crystal-clear sky.

Arizona boasts the longest surviving section of Route 66, a 160 mile stretch running from the California border all the way to Ash Fork, about 50 miles west of Flagstaff. Along this part of the road, you'll find some of the best scenery the highway has to offer, and some of its most interesting characters, too.

Following the old road is easy in western Arizona. It's officially designated state Route 66, and the signposts even call it Old Route 66 in places. As a result, this area makes a good training ground for 66 hunters.

The road was nearly deserted and J. B. was used to covering miles, so we left Kingman behind us pretty quickly. The open highway gave us a chance to explore the capabilities of J. B.'s R100GS and its descendant, the loaner R1100GS I was riding. In fact, we got so wrapped up in that pursuit that we nearly missed one of the great visionaries along Route 66 today. But as we approached a wide spot in the road known as Hackberry, Arizona, J. B. suddenly braked and pulled into a gravel parking lot.

Bob Waldmire must have been sound asleep when J. B. began beating on the door of the 1930s-era gas station and general store that he calls home.

"Come on, J. B.," I implored after his second attempt to rouse somebody. "He isn't here. Let's go."

"There's his VW bus," J. B. pointed out, "so he's got to be here. Don't worry, I know him -- sort of."

Did I mention that J. B. is hard to say no to?

On the third series of knocks on the door of a building that looked like it might not be up to many more, a thin, bearded and very sleepy man appeared in the doorway. He was barefoot, wrapped in a blanket and didn't look all that pleased to discover strangers arriving very early on a Sunday morning.

"Yeah," he said, squinting into the sunlight.

"I'm here for a cozy dog," J. B. responded.

The squint turned into a crooked smile. "Well, you're a couple thousand miles off-base, but come in and I'll make some coffee instead."

Waldmire opened the door a little wider, then said over his shoulder, "And try to generate some body heat while you're at it."

Waldmire padded around the chilly interior of his old store, digging out the coffee pot and fixing us the first of several batches. Then he sat down, and over the next two hours, he told us about his dream.

Bob and his older brother, Buzz, are the sons of the late Ed Waldmire, who qualifies as a true Route 66 legend. You see, Ed invented the corn dog back in the 1940s in Springfield, Illinois.

That might not rank right up there with the work of daVinci or Edison, but it was a true breakthrough in the field of driving while eating, and that invention charted the course of the Waldmire family's future.

Ed's wife, Ginny, named his invention a "Cozy Dog," and the Waldmires opened the Cozy Dog Restaurant right on Route 66 in Springfield in the early 1950s. Buzz and Bob worked in the restaurant from the time they were kids.

"Dad instilled in us a sense of business right from the start," Bob said. "He used to pay us two cents for each fly we killed. We learned pretty quick. If business got a little slow, Buzz would prop open the screen door when Dad wasn't looking."

The Waldmire boys also inherited their father's love of Route 66, the famous road that brought people from faraway places to their doorstep. Buzz continued to work at the Cozy Dog, and when Ed passed away recently, he became the owner and operator. Bob, on the other hand, had a different path to follow.

"I was in and out of college back in the '60s," he told us, "until I finally dropped out for the last time about 1969. I was always pretty good at art, so I decided I'd be an artist. Yeah, that sounded good. Besides, it was that or get a real job."

Bob bought a school bus to live in and began to travel, drawing and selling his works along the way. Usually, that "way" was Route 66. Eventually, he became the road's unofficial artist, and a recognized highway historian. Traveling in that school bus and its successor, a VW micro-bus, he created a number of bird's-eye view posters and postcards (including several that J. B. had purchased back home at the Cozy Dog) that qualify as works of art as well as informative guides to the route.

But the road, the bus and maybe even Bob eventually got a little old, so he decided it was time to retire his traveling show and find a place where his customers could come to him. With the help of his dad, Waldmire settled down in the old general store early in 1993.

"My dad took a train out here, looked around and said, `Everywhere I look I see work,'" Bob recalled, "I said, `Yeah, but I've got the rest of my life.'

"You know, though," he added, "his words echo a lot today. I've accomplished a lot since I got here. It probably doesn't look like I've done that much, but I've started a hundred projects and I've finished, oh, four or five. I have a whole bunch more in my mind."

Bob took us outside to show us what he meant. Out by the road is a sign reading, "Old Route 66 Visitors Center -- International and Bioregional Study Center." The debris piled up against the front the structure, he noted, is actually a "lean-to solar greenhouse that I'm working on. It's made completely from recycled materials." Well recycled, I might add.

Bob's VW, covered with a map of Route 66, sits in front of what appears to be a ramshackle abandoned house. Eventually, he said, that will be his "self-serve bed and breakfast hostel." And the dusty path leading into the scrub growth beyond? Bob calls it an "interpretive hiking trail."

"That first part is already wheelchair accessible," he pointed out, "and I'm going to build interpretive displays and maps and everything.

"Over here," he said, directing our attention to the area behind the store, "I want to build an International Peace Village, with replicas of native structures like a urt, teepees, hogans. And over there will be the tent-camping area.

"I can see it all," he added, his voice rising in excitement. "I can see it all."

For now, Bob sells the occasional Route 66 map, a jar or two of vegetarian chili and, from time to time, a piece of his artwork. In between, he busies himself with a paintbrush, a hammer and his dreams.

As we started the bikes and pulled back onto the highway, I thought about Waldmire's lonely outpost along the mother road. It struck me that a lot of us from his generation started out to be Bob Waldmire, and today still fancy the idea that a part of us is. The difference is, Bob's never been anything else.

From Waldmire's Route 66 Visitors Center, the road leads northeast, into the vast high country of the Hualapai Indian Reservation. Then it drops down into Seligman, Arizona, home of Angel and Juan Delgadillo, two more people who got Route 66 in their blood at an early age and never left it behind.

These two brothers almost joined the migration to California back in the '30s when local jobs were scarce and their father's combination barber shop/pool hall closed. But they didn't leave then, and they haven't left over the long decades since.

Today, Angel cuts hair and dispenses his knowledge of Route 66 from his late father's old shop on Main Street, while just up the road, Juan operates the incredible Snowcap Drive-In ("Home of the Dead Chicken" dinner), where the calendar might just as easily say 1954 as 1994.

What is it about this road that attracted so many dreamers decades ago, and continues to hold them today, long after the rest of the world has passed Route 66 by? I couldn't be sure but it was becoming apparent that if you lined up all the fascinating characters you can meet on Route 66, they' stretch from L. A. to Chicago. And probably back again.

We were forced off the old pavement near Ash Fork, where Interstate 40 was constructed right over the top of the existing road. From there past the snow-capped peaks around Flagstaff, we were able to find only short stretches of old 66, and we wouldn't have located those without a lot of help from our guidebooks.

Well east of Flagstaff, precisely in the middle of nowhere, the Beemer's low-fuel warning light came on. The only civilization in sight was a lone gas station at a remote exit marked "Two Guns." It was there, far enough from the nearest town to make 911 a toll call, that we stumbled across treachery, murder, the abuse of a corpse, as well as Robert the mountain man and his dog Gypsy. All that, plus a descent into a remote cave with a guide who was carrying a long knife and a .38 pistol on his belt, and appeared to be looking for a good place to hide some bodies . . . perhaps ours!

But that will have to wait until next month.