Any time I find a working payphone I love to call myself and leave a message with the date, time, my location, where I'm going, and why I'm going.<p>My experience is that even when you can pick up the handset and get a dial tone they're still broken more often than not. Some times it's a physically jammed-up coin slot, so I started carrying a calling card (most of the ones at I-5 rest areas are like this). Some times they give the appearance of working fine until you actually try to place a call, then the robot lady will read out some code like “Error Six” and hang up on you (the one at the westbound Donner Pass Rest Area did this to me just three-or-so weeks ago).<p>But on the very rare occasion that everything works it's a cool way to digitally-scrapbook my trips! I think the last one I ran into that fully worked was a TTY-enabled one at the Francis B. Mathews Rest Area on Route 299: <a href="https://cahighways.org/ROUTE299.html" rel="nofollow">https://cahighways.org/ROUTE299.html</a>