The sun-bleached semitrucks began to drag and shift towards the right lane as the road inclined. I sped up the narrow highway into the dry California hills, then down into a bare valley. An ancient Air Force base sprawled far off to my right and flocks of tumbleweeds huddled in the median on my left. The twilight sky was baby blue and the baked road a light mauve, the colors of whimsical nostalgia, like a ’50s diner. I was chasing the remnants and pockmarks of Route 66.

In popular imagination, road trips are a powerful matrix of freedom.