Authorities have begun helicopter evacuations in Peru’s Arequipa region after heavy rains and landslides destroyed sections of the Southern Coastal Highway, leaving dozens of people and vehicles stranded for six days.
Published On 22 Aug 202622 Aug 2026
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THE daughter of a legendary Hollywood director and her husband have been mysteriously found dead inside a running car parked on a highway.
Judith “Judy” Wyler Sheldon, 84, and her husband Wylie Sheldon, 86, were discovered unresponsive in a Jeep Compass on Interstate 5 near Redding, California.
A California Highway Patrol officer made the grim discovery on the shoulder of the northbound carriageway, just north of Fawndale Road, at approximately 5.46pm on Monday.
Judy, a prominent San Francisco arts patron, is the daughter of famous filmmaker William Wyler.
She was found behind the wheel, while her husband was in the passenger seat.
Despite emergency medical personnel attempting life-saving measures, both were declared dead at the scene.
The circumstances surrounding the tragedy remain unclear, and investigators are working to determine what happened inside the vehicle.
The California Highway Patrol’s Northern Division Investigative Services Unit has taken over the case.
While authorities have not publicly disclosed any indication of foul play or a medical emergency, the deaths occurred during a period of extreme heat.
The National Weather Service had issued a warning for the Redding area, where temperatures soared to 109 degrees Fahrenheit (43C) on the day the couple were found, though investigators have not confirmed if the weather played a role.
The news has stunned California’s arts and film communities, where Judy spent decades championing silent-film preservation.
She was the long-time chair and former president of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
Anita Monga, the festival’s artistic director, said the community was “reeling” from the devastating loss.
“Judy and Wylie were very dear to us, supportive and a positive presence at all our events,” she said, recalling how the couple regularly opened their home to visiting film archivists and musicians.
“Judy would allow, actually encourage, our visiting guests to pose for pictures with her father William Wyler’s Oscars.
The perfect hosts.”
Born Judith Wyler in Los Angeles, she briefly appeared on screen during the 1950s with credits in The Errol Flynn Theatre, The Buccaneers, and BBC Sunday-Night Theatre.
However, her lasting legacy was behind the scenes.
Judy’s passion for film preservation intensified after attending a 2007 retrospective of her father’s silent-era films in Pordenone, Italy.
Her cultural influence also extended to other institutions, including serving as a gala co-chair for San Francisco Performances.
The tragedy carries a deep resonance due to Judy’s family’s monumental place in cinema history.
Her father, William Wyler, remains one of the most acclaimed directors in American film, directing classics such as Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, The Best Years of Our Lives, Mrs. Miniver, and Wuthering Heights.
William won three Academy Awards for Best Director, a feat achieved by only a handful of filmmakers.
A small plane crashed onto a highway in Laredo, Texas. Witnesses rushed to rescue passengers trapped inside the burning aircraft. Five people survived and one was reported killed.
Published On 17 Jun 202617 Jun 2026
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Jeremy Clarkson described Romania’s Transfăgărășan Highway as “one unbroken grey ribbon of motoring perfection”. The route (the second highest in Romania after the Transalpina) with its hairpin bends and climbs over the mountain was thrilling. Although we’d been told bear sightings were possible, we didn’t anticipate spotting them literally on the roadside, with one hanging over a stone wall posing for photographs, taken through the car window. Because of the harsh winters in the southern Carpathian Mountains, the section of the road to Bâlea Lake is open only for a few summer months – it proved particularly beautiful.
Helen Jackson
Guardian Travel readers’ tips
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In 2022 my wife and I set off on a 1,000-mile road trip around the island of Ireland after taking the overnight ferry from Liverpool to Belfast. After exploring Belfast, we stopped in Dublin, Kilkenny, Waterford, Cork, Dingle, Ennis, Galway, Castlebar, Sligo, Donegal, Derry and back to Belfast. We stayed in youth hostels, B&Bs, spare rooms, hotels (the Ellison Hotel in Castlebar was our favourite) and holiday lets. The scenery was incredibly varied, with the peninsula drive on the Ring of Kerry and the karst landscape of the Burren in Co Clare being particularly memorable. There were beautiful beaches (the wild sands of Glassilaun in Co Galway was our favourite), rich history and culture, superb food, characterful towns and cities, and, of course, the best pubs, and such friendly, warm people.
Joe
My wife and I drove from Bergen to Vossevangen along the Hardangerfjord (the second-longest fjord in Norway), with a diversion to Flåm for a sauna and dip. Then we took the Myrkdalen road, which includes hairpin bends, waterfalls and an exciting descent into Vikøyri. We visited Nese, a secluded village on the western shore of the Arnafjorden. Then we took the car ferry over to Dragsvik, on to the village of Rysjedalsvika, then along the northern shore of the Sognefjord (Norway’s longest and deepest fjord) for another car ferry over to stay in Dingja on the coast, to do some fishing. Then all the way back to Bergen.
Nick Martin
We started from Reykjavík and drove around the whole country on the ring road. We have done a few road trip holidays – this one was the most interesting. Every day we saw multiple dramatic landscapes and weather conditions, as well as very few other cars (we went in May). Iceland is an expensive country but being able to whale-watch and swim in geothermal pools made it worth it.
Jess
We drove up to Orkney, taking our time, stopping in Glasgow, Falkirk, Perth and Tain. As lovers of history and design, we stopped at the Falkirk Wheel and the Kelpies, as well as Scone Palace just outside Perth and Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland, the most northerly of Scotland’s great houses. But, really, you’re spoilt for choice with castles, brochs and standing stones. For us, the spectacular Caithness coastline was the main attraction – not least Dunnet Head, mainland Britain’s most northerly point. There are oodles of excellent eateries along the way – we loved the River Bothy in Berriedale and Paesano Pizza in Glasgow.
Tania
The Romantische Strasse (Romantic Road) was an early postwar successful example of a themed tourist route. It covers 286 miles through Bavaria from Würzburg to Schwangau. We drove the entire route, diligently following the tourist signs. On the way, we visited picturesque medieval towns, climbed the clock tower at the medieval walled town of Nördlingen – built entirely inside a meteor crater – and ended at the fairytale castle of Schloss Neuschwanstein. We sampled the hearty Bavarian cuisine, firmly centred on pork and sausages, enjoyed the local beer, and stayed in simple local hotels.
Marilyn
Abruzzo’s Valle del Sagittario snakes between narrow limestone cliffs, giving a peek into Italy’s wild heart. From vertiginous Anversa degli Abruzzi, head south to Scanno, pausing to solve its riddle of stone stairways and cobbled alleys, made famous by photographers and artists (including Maurits Cornelis Escher). Continue through mountain pastures, still traversed by shepherds and flocks and the region’s endangered brown bear population. Take a deep breath at the Godi mountain pass (1,630 metres) and relish the sparkling turquoise of Lago di Barrea below. As you begin the beech-clad descent into the national park, look out for the aptly named roadside hotel: Paradiso.
Emma de Heveningham
Around 7 a.m. Saturday, in a lot beside the shuttered Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, a strange set of cars and trucks began to gather. Three Model A’s. A couple of ’60 convertibles. A 1964 Chevrolet Impala station wagon. Also, a big bull on trailer wheels.
“Am I in the right place?” asked a man in one of the Model A’s.
“Going to Chicago?” asked a guy in a white Denali.
“I wish I could do the whole thing,” said Joe Hernandez of Pasadena, wistfully standing by.
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This was the starting line for roughly 70 drivers who gathered to celebrate the centennial of Route 66 with a 2,448-mile, 20-day caravan to Chicago. Most had come from outside California to share an adventure with fellow “roadies” and boost awareness of the classic scenery and independent businesses along the eight-state route.
But soaring gas prices and hesitant international travelers have added uncertainty to a trip that was always going to be a logistical challenge. Day 1 alone might terrify an L.A. commuter: From the Pacific to Pasadena by surface streets, including miles on Santa Monica and Colorado boulevards.
“I don’t know how it’s all going to happen,” said Gary Daggett, president of the Old Route 66 Assn. of Texas. But he and his wife, Stephanie, have more than a little Route 66 experience to draw upon.
Mike and Lisa Visket of Prescott, Ariz., pose in Santa Monica at the pier in their Route 66 clothing on June 6, 2026.
“This is our 30th trip over 20 years,” Daggett said. “You can’t see everything. There’s so much…. You start meeting the people, you get hooked on the people.”
Shortly before their 8:30 departure time, organizer Rhys Martin called drivers together.
“Leaving here is going to be a little complicated,” he said.
Martin, who is part of the Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership, is president of the Oklahoma Route 66 Assn., and serves as manager of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preserve Route 66 initiative. For the journey, he is driving a ’64 Chevy Impala station wagon with a GPS unit inside so that armchair travelers can follow his journey on the web.
“It’s going to be impossible to keep everybody together,” he said during preparations. “We’re encouraging people to spread out and support independent businesses rather than all going to one place and demolishing the kitchen.”
William Cooke of Pinon Hills participates in a caravan from Santa Monica Pier to Chicago, celebrating the centennial of Route 66.
In song and literature, the route is celebrated as an east-to-west journey. This caravan, running in the opposite direction, will travel from California through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri to Illinois.
From Santa Monica, the Day 1 schedule took drivers to Beverly Hills City Hall, Grand Central Market downtown for lunch, the Chicken Boy statue and Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in Highland Park, then an overnight in Pasadena.
Day 2 takes the group from Pasadena to Barstow. Day 3, from Barstow to Needles. On June 25, the caravan is due to arrive in downtown Chicago.
The loose procession was led by a core group of 15 cars, including representatives of all eight states on the route. Since anyone can join or leave the caravan at any time, the number of vehicles will vary by the hour.
Through the decades, the road has grown from an American artifact into a global symbol of small-town Americana. Many merchants, restaurateurs and hoteliers along 66 now say that their summer customers are mostly travelers from abroad, especially Europe. One of the caravan’s drivers, in a rented pickup truck, was Dries Bessels, co-founder of the Dutch Route 66 Assn.
Brady Wilson of Amarillo, Texas, displays an assortment of Route 66 pins on his cowboy hat. Wilson is part of a caravan of Route 66 enthusiasts who set out from Santa Monica Pier on June 6, 2026, for Chicago.
Though the Model A’s will surely raise eyebrows on the road, the caravan’s most startling element is the fiberglass bull representing the Amarillo-based Big Texan Steak Ranch restaurant, one of the event’s sponsors.
“It’s the same one my dad brought home in ’71. His name is Big Moo,” said Danny Lee, who co-owns the restaurant with his brother, Bobby Lee. “He’s 12 and a half feet high. About 500 pounds. It’s all fiberglass.”
In 21 cities along the drive, the Big Texan team aims to stage nightly steak-eating contests, giving free dinners to anyone who can eat 72 ounces of steak, a baked potato, three shrimp, a side salad and a roll in 60 minutes.
The caravan’s first challenge came at the Santa Monica Pier, where there was no room for the cars due to a construction project, World Cup preparations and a Children’s Hospital fundraiser. Instead, the caravan gathered by the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Drivers strolled over the pier for a photo op, then returned to their cars.
“Herding cats,” said George Kulakowski of Huntington Beach, at the wheel of a 1931 Ford Model A Panel Delivery truck.
Participants in a Route 66 centennial caravan pose for a photo before they depart from Santa Monica Pier on June 2, 2026, for Chicago along the historic highway.
Another challenge awaited in West Hollywood, where Santa Monica Boulevard (aka Route 66) was busy with crowds for the city’s WeHo Pride Street Fair. By plans laid ahead of time, most caravan vehicles detoured around the party while select caravan cars followed a police escort through the action.
This way, Martin said, “another community along Route 66 gets to share its identity with the community at large.”
Allison Lehn of Boston participates in a caravan from Santa Monica Pier to Chicago, celebrating the centennial of Route 66.
By 11:15 a.m., Martin’s car had reached Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. Meanwhile, assorted other parades and caravans are traveling Route 66 in other states this year; most of them concentrate on short segments.
By 12:45 p.m., caravaners had met the mayor of Beverly Hills and rolled through West Hollywood’s Pride festivities, arriving at Grand Central Market, running slightly ahead of time.
On May 30, an estimated 3,596 classic cars joined a “Capital Cruise” on Route 66 in Tulsa, Okla., becoming a Guinness Book of World Records holder for the largest parade of classic cars, drawing an estimated 100,000 spectators and overwhelming local traffic.
In Arizona, the Williams Historic Route 66 Car Show was set for Friday and Saturday. In Texas, the Amarillo-based Texas Route 66 Festival is running Thursday through June 13.
William Cooke of Pinon Hills, left, and Sarah Jane Woodall of Tecopa, Calif., drive along Wilshire Boulevard in a 1960 Edsel Ranger Convertible as part of a Route 66 centennial caravan.
In those states and beyond, the caravan from Santa Monica will find hotels and motels in every kind of condition, vintage neon, road food, blue states, red states and purple states.
As a package of Times stories described in May, some landmarks date to the highway’s days as a scene of Depression desperation in the 1930s, others to its giddy postwar years in the late 1940s and ‘50s.
Route 66 was created in 1926 as a highway stitching together hundreds of local roads. Nicknamed “the Main Street of America” by its boosters and “the Mother Road” by John Steinbeck in “The Grapes of Wrath,” the highway inspired Bobby Troup’s song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” in 1946.
But economic life along Route 66 has been precarious since the late 1960s, when interstate highways and chain hotels began stealing traffic away from the older, slower road. After Route 66 was decommissioned as a highway in 1985, about 85% of the old route remained in use, often as small-town thoroughfares, country highways and frontage roads alongside Interstate 40.
Efforts to save and rebuild the route as a historic resource began in the late 1980s and gained ground after the 2006 release of the Pixar/Disney animated features “Cars,” which tells the story of the highway’s rise and fall. In small towns such as Tucumcari, N.M., and Seligman, Ariz., the highway remains central to local identity and economy.
A vehicle in the Route 66 caravan is photographed June 6, 2026.
This year’s centennial improvements along the route “are things that are going to go into the future,” Martin said. “The real impact is going to be next year and the years after.”
On a 75-mile cliff-hugging stretch of highway in California, traffic is way up, despite soaring gas prices. And locals expect the busiest summer in years.
The road is Highway 1 in Big Sur, which reopened in January after three years of repair and reconstruction following a pair of landslides. Drivers can once again embark on the state’s most famous road trip, covering the 100 miles between Cambria to the south and Carmel to the north without leaving the two-lane coastal highway. And they’re heading out in big numbers.
Caltrans estimates that as of May, Big Sur restaurant and retailer guest counts are up 40% from last year, and that northbound traffic at Ragged Point, the southern gateway to Big Sur, has risen 900% year-over-year.
People pose for photos near Bixby Bridge. Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking around the bridge.
Safety cones prevent parking along Coast Road near the Bixby Bridge.
“Take your time,” said Kirk Gafill, co-owner of the popular Nepenthe restaurant and president of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce, offering advice to travelers. “You’re going to be sharing the road with a number of people.”
As travelers rediscover the road, the cost of driving has been shooting skyward. California’s average gas price ($6.11 per gallon as of May 26) is up 26% from the year before. In early April, rates hit $9.99 at the isolated gas station in the Big Sur community of Gorda.
For spring and summer travelers, these numbers would seem to pose a stark question: Stay home and save money, or head for the coast because the road is finally open and it’s still cheaper than flying?
So far, the latter answer is winning big.
Fog lingers off the coast of Highway 1.
“We are definitely seeing a huge uptick in our reservations,” said Megan Handy, assistant general manager at the upscale Treebones resort. She estimated that bookings are 30% or more ahead of last year, and rates are unchanged since then. But “it’s still not feeling super crowded, which is nice. Everything still feels kind of calm.”
But added traffic has raised some anxiety. On May 19, Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking at Bixby Bridge, one of the region’s top photo spots.
Over the years, the number of cars parking near the bridge — often illegally, sometimes impeding emergency vehicles — has risen. The proposed parking moratorium won’t take effect until the supervisors discuss it further.
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Busy as things are, several business owners pointed out that many international travelers have not yet returned — perhaps because most make their plans more than six months ahead, perhaps because of global politics, perhaps a little of each.
The biggest challenge for businesses during this resurgence? “Restaffing and retaining,” said Handy at Treetops.
At Nepenthe, Gafill said his business has seen a 45% boost in guest volume since the road’s reopening. Gafill said he would have expected a 35% pickup, “simply by virtue of reopening the highway.” The additional 10%, he said, might be “all that pent-up demand,” aided by “a very beautiful and very dry winter,” followed by a mild spring.
A lunch crowd dines at popular restaurant Nepenthe.
Another possible factor: Nobody can be sure how long the road will remain open.
To cope with the influx of people, Gafill said, “everybody is trying to recruit and retain their existing staff.”
At the Ragged Point Inn, where rates dropped as low as $149 nightly last fall, rates are back over $200 and staffers are suggesting that customers book at least six months ahead. The inn has reopened its snack bar for the first time since early 2023, and management is investing in capital upgrades and staging live music on weekends throughout the summer.
Business “is up over 100%,” said Diane Ramey, whose family owns the inn. “I know not all of our neighbors are having the same lift, but everybody is doing better.”
Traffic approaching Bixby Bridge.
A visitor poses in an oversized chair at Big Sur River Inn.
Even at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery above Lucia, the road’s reopening and coming summer season have made a difference. Bookings are up an estimated 30% at the hermitage, which rent rooms and cottages (for two nights or more) to visitors who agree to its requirement of silence.
Big Sur business owners advise visitors to travel on weekdays for less traffic and the best hotel rates, and to get on the road as early as possible.
Since its opening in 1937, the highway has been vulnerable to landslides and shifting ground, operating on a longstanding cycle of landslide, closure, repair, reopening and then another landslide, or sometimes a fire. The U.S. Geological Survey has identified the Big Sur coastline as one of the most landslide-prone areas in the western United States. The 2023-2026 closure was the longest in the highway’s history.
Over time, road crews have used increasingly sophisticated strategies. In the most recent efforts, Caltrans said, it used drones to help survey the slopes and remotely operated bulldozers and excavators to reduce risks to workers.
During the closure, no traffic was allowed on 6.8-mile span from just north of Lucia until about a mile south of the Esalen Institute. Drivers detoured inland by way of U.S. 101.