Route 66: the American transcontinental highway has inspired countless songs and road trip soundtracks.
"It winds from Chicago to LA, more than 2000 miles all the way," according to the Stones, Chuck Berry and even Nat King Cole who have all sung about getting their "kicks on '66".
But fewpeople know that stretches of the track play music back.
A stretch of road leading out of Tijeras, New Mexico has been cut with rumble strips that play out "America the Beautiful" if drivers observe the 45mph (72 kph) speed limit.
An ingenious way to inspire road-trippers to drive at a sensible speed, the bumps have become something of a tourist attraction.
Let's face it, on this stretch of highway, 400km since Amarillo and the Texan border the landmarks run fairly thin.
Fitting 330 strips across a 20m stretch produces the recognisable note of E from passing cars. As the New Mexican Department of Transportation told the Smithsonian magazine at the time, "anything that vibrates 330 times in one second will produce an E note—a guitar string, a tuning fork or even a tyre."
Drilling the nursery-rhyme-simple tune into the tarmac, produces an American ditty to break up the monotony of driving the Mother Road. "O-beau-ti-ful!"
However, in the five years on the road seems to be losing its edge. With some drivers saying the road is sounding a little worn in places, and the musical highway is a little out of tune.
Bernadette Bell of the DOT told KRQE that the road will be re-tuned if it does get too wonky. "If and when the singing highway does begin to degrade we'll take a look at it, if it should be resurfaced or maintained."
Frank Sanchez, an engineer for the company that installed the strips, admitted that "the song sounds different in every single vehicle," but motorists shouldn't expect too much from the musical stretch of Tar MacAdam.
Other stretches of musical road include a strip in Lancaster California that has had the William Tell overture ingrained into its surface. Built for a Honda car commercial Avenue K was eventually repaved and moved to another part of town after noise complaints from residents.
Unfortunately result was a slightly wonky rendition of the Lone Ranger's theme tune, however it can still be found by determined motorists, as this video by gallokc shows:
Denmark has its own "Asphaltophone" and Japan has paved over 30 roads with musical accompaniments as speed deterrents, including a stretch of road near Mt Fuji with a melodic accompaniment: "Look up at the stars in the night"
