The sign said Roadkill Cafe, a strange name for a restaurant. We were in Seligman, Arizona, on the famous Route 66 and had stopped at the Roadkill for lunch. The cafe got its name back in the 1930s Great Depression when Route 66 was the “Mother Road”, the highway followed by travellers escaping poverty and dust bowl conditions further east and heading to California for a better life. Urban myth has it that the cafe would cook up any roadkill that motorists brought in. They don’t do that anymore, but the menu reflects its past reputation with choices like “Splatter Platter”, “Smear of Deer” and my favourite, “One Eyed Dog Hit in the Fog”.
We were in this Route 66 town on the return leg of our first American road trip for a few years due to the COVID lockdowns and travel bans in Australia. Our trip started from Carlsbad Beach, just north of San Diego, and took us through southern California and Arizona to New Mexico to another Carlsbad, this one at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. After leaving the coast, we rode through the mountainous California hinterland on a winding road to the old gold rush town of Julian, before climbing higher into the mountains. Then it was down the Montezuma Grade, a popular motorcycle route resembling a giant asphalt slippery dip that banks through multiple corners on a perfect grippy surface and drops you 1100m in just 18km
