I am almost always suspicious of appeals to the "good old days" as the appeal typically has an agenda behind it, or reveals some reflexive need on the part of the appealer. For example: "Remember the good old days before the impersonal, featureless interstates cut across the land, killing mom and pop businesses and stealing the soul from automotive travel?"

Yeah, and remember when it took two weeks to drive cross-country instead of three or four days, and you never knew what you were getting in a motel room or a restaurant or a mechanic or law enforcement, and travel almost inevitably involved severe discomfort and some kind of illness? And before that, remember how intimately you got to know the lay of the land when traveling by covered wagon and freak blizard in July stranded you in the mountains and you had to eat your dead relatives to survive? Ah yes, the good old days when there was some personality to travel....

But I digress - checking out these photos from the "Forgotten Roads" gallery did bring back some memories, like when I got caught in a backroad speed trap in South Dakota in the '70s and had to sell my sister into white slavery in order to pay the fine (we were able to eventually get her back not much worse for wear), or when we took the scenic route to the Utah side of the Grand Canyon and had to hack our way out of a rest stop ambush by a renegade clan of inbred Mormons who all had three eyes... I remember it as if it were only yesterday.