DougGrosjean
New member
Bear in mind I'm no Route 66 expert. I'm more like a young kid who's
just lost his virginity, and so can recall each part of the the
experience in detail while it's still fresh and I'm wide-eyed and
slack-jawed. So I'm trying to share helpful hints with other virgins
below, in that vein.
Don't plan it too much. But do plan it a little bit, so you don't
miss some really neat stuff along the way.
Allow plenty of time - maybe 1.5 to 2.0 times more than you think you'll need.
Don't try to stick to a schedule - just give it as much time as it
takes to travel it well.
Don't get hung up on mile numbers. You can't make time or big miles
with the circuitous path and going through every town along the way,
so don't even bother to try. Savor the experience, instead. Try to
imagine it as a 2,000 mile long ghost town, and if that sounds
attractive and interesting, you'll probably love it. If not, you're
probably best to pass it on by.
Travel east to west if you can, because that way it grows like a
river, gaining strength and speed as it goes. The oldest road
architecture also seems to be in the eastern portions of the route,
growing younger and younger all the way to Cali.
Reccomended Books:
Drew Knowles' ("Route 66 Adventure Handbook" is the title, IIRC) and
Jerry McClanahan (EZ66), plus 66 maps by McClanahan, and a modern road
atlas. Also Rittenhouse's 1946 guide to 66, which is the first
published guidebook to the Mother Road. Reprints are available.
Knowles book is mostly photos of highlights in each town, and how to
get to them. McClanahan's book is a detailed mapbook, plus arrows /
directions to some other interesting sights along the way.
McClanahan's maps are excellent, not perfect, but they're the only
game in town AFAIK. Rittenhouse's book for perspective on the way it
was, once upon a time.
If you can't do it all in one trip, you can instead do a state or two
each year. Or you could cherry-pick the most interesting sections,
based on the info in the books above. Probably the next time I find
myself on some of the Interstates (that replaced 66) with Sharon,
we'll hop onto 66 here and there so I can show her the best of the
survivors.
I'd input routes into a GPS ahead of time based on the McClanahan
maps, maybe over winter, as navigating can be a pain in
medium-to-large size towns. If I were doing it again for the first
time, I'd actually buy a modern GS that I could load tracks into.
Getting lost constantly doesn't add much to the experience....
Background:
Water sources indirectly dictated the routing of 66. Earliest 66 was
simply existing routes and trails, such as the Santa Fe trail in New
Mexico, stitched together by a small amount of new construction, and
then route signs were put up. In many other places, 66 often
paralleled the railroads, and they followed water sources so the steam
locos could be kept fed. So 66 is circuitous by modern Interstate
standards. 66 was originally one 9' wide concrete lane (several miles
of which still exist in the OK / KS border area), with about 5' of
gravel on either side to allow two vehicles to pass. Then came more
traffic, and it was widened to two lanes, still often parallel to the
tracks. Then more traffic, and it was widened to divided 4 lanes.
Then abandonment, and whichever half of the 4-lane divided road was in
worse shape was abandoned.
I'd even compare Route 66 to the Natchez Trace or old wagon roads,
with the differences being:
1. Route 66 is close to my own time and culture, so I understand the
context much better than I do on the Natchez Trace or a wagon train
trail.
2. Many of the people who provided support services on 66 are still
alive, and can reminisce.
3. You can stay in the same (surviving) motels, gas up at the same
(survivivng) stations, eat at the same (surviving) diners, and even
buy the same tourist junk that folks bought back in the day.
Some towns and states have brown "historic 66" route signs along the
way to tell you you're on track. But they're not nearly as frequent
as similar signs along a modern state highway. IOW, don't count on
them. If you run out of signs, consult the maps. Look for clues in
the archicture (abandoned motels, restaurants, and gas stations from
the 1940s - if you don't see 'em, you may not be on 66 anymore). Look
for places where locals have named modern businesses (Route 66 Video
Rental), or painted a Route 66 symbol on the pavement.
Although 80% of route still exists, many big chunks of the tourist
infrastructure are gone. Gas and food are easily available. While
maybe 95% of the old diners are out of business, the survivors have
pretty decent food. Lodging is usually in older motels (the 1-2% that
have survived) that are well past their prime (plus side - it's
usually pretty cheap); campgrounds on 66 are nearly non-existent. But
if old 66 can't supply a particular service you need, the Interstate
is only a mile or so away.
Each state's bit of abandoned 66 is a different flavor, depending on
how 66 was chopped up by Interstates, when it was abandoned in that
state, and whether the former 66 towns in the state had other economic
bases besides tourism / transportation. For example in Illinois, the
late-era divided 4-lane 66 went on with 2 lanes becoming abandoned
(and likely to become bicycle pathways), the former farm towns along
66 went back to being farm towns, and 66 became just a footnote in the
towns' histories. But in Arizonaand California, where many of the towns had only 66 tourism, in those cases nobody lives in the towns anymore, and only the abandoned buildings are left (if that).
Lots of Europeans are travelling 66. Be open and friendly, and you
have a pretty good chance of having dinner with people from all over
the world along the way. They'll probably like you - you'll be one of
the "local" characters they'll talk about when they get back home.
Shopowners along the way tell me the Euros have been doing 66 for
several decades, and that the American interest is something newer,
thanks to movie "Cars."
Speaking of "Cars", there's a ton of websites that tell where each
building in "Cars" is at, and even where some of the people the
characters are based on, are at. Radiator Springs in Carburetor
County is Peach Springs AZ, in Coconino County. But none of the
buildings in the movie is in Peach Springs AZ; they're scattered all
along the rest of 66. Google will find a bunch of this stuff for you.
I took a Jeep, and would have liked to have taken my GS, but.... the
offroad abilities aren't all that important on 99% of the trip,
because so little of the (totally) abandoned dirt portions of 66 are
usable, anyway. We were on dirt / gravel / original concrete portions
of 66 (where those roads became county roads) in Oklahoma and Kansas,
but pretty much any vehicle could handle those. We were also offroad
in Texas (around Jericho Gap / Mclean) and New Mexico (La Bajada Hill,
between Albequerque and Santa Fe), but in both cases those sections
were beyond the ability of a streetbike or family sedan, with either
big ledges or big rocks or both. But offroad portions of 66 that are
still drivable are sooooooooooo small in number - many have been trapped
behind barbed-wire fences, with no access at all.
I'd also suggest that even if you're on a pavement-biased vehicle, do
some of the easy dirt portions, for a taste of what 66 may have been
like early on.
just lost his virginity, and so can recall each part of the the
experience in detail while it's still fresh and I'm wide-eyed and
slack-jawed. So I'm trying to share helpful hints with other virgins
below, in that vein.
Don't plan it too much. But do plan it a little bit, so you don't
miss some really neat stuff along the way.
Allow plenty of time - maybe 1.5 to 2.0 times more than you think you'll need.
Don't try to stick to a schedule - just give it as much time as it
takes to travel it well.
Don't get hung up on mile numbers. You can't make time or big miles
with the circuitous path and going through every town along the way,
so don't even bother to try. Savor the experience, instead. Try to
imagine it as a 2,000 mile long ghost town, and if that sounds
attractive and interesting, you'll probably love it. If not, you're
probably best to pass it on by.
Travel east to west if you can, because that way it grows like a
river, gaining strength and speed as it goes. The oldest road
architecture also seems to be in the eastern portions of the route,
growing younger and younger all the way to Cali.
Reccomended Books:
Drew Knowles' ("Route 66 Adventure Handbook" is the title, IIRC) and
Jerry McClanahan (EZ66), plus 66 maps by McClanahan, and a modern road
atlas. Also Rittenhouse's 1946 guide to 66, which is the first
published guidebook to the Mother Road. Reprints are available.
Knowles book is mostly photos of highlights in each town, and how to
get to them. McClanahan's book is a detailed mapbook, plus arrows /
directions to some other interesting sights along the way.
McClanahan's maps are excellent, not perfect, but they're the only
game in town AFAIK. Rittenhouse's book for perspective on the way it
was, once upon a time.
If you can't do it all in one trip, you can instead do a state or two
each year. Or you could cherry-pick the most interesting sections,
based on the info in the books above. Probably the next time I find
myself on some of the Interstates (that replaced 66) with Sharon,
we'll hop onto 66 here and there so I can show her the best of the
survivors.
I'd input routes into a GPS ahead of time based on the McClanahan
maps, maybe over winter, as navigating can be a pain in
medium-to-large size towns. If I were doing it again for the first
time, I'd actually buy a modern GS that I could load tracks into.
Getting lost constantly doesn't add much to the experience....
Background:
Water sources indirectly dictated the routing of 66. Earliest 66 was
simply existing routes and trails, such as the Santa Fe trail in New
Mexico, stitched together by a small amount of new construction, and
then route signs were put up. In many other places, 66 often
paralleled the railroads, and they followed water sources so the steam
locos could be kept fed. So 66 is circuitous by modern Interstate
standards. 66 was originally one 9' wide concrete lane (several miles
of which still exist in the OK / KS border area), with about 5' of
gravel on either side to allow two vehicles to pass. Then came more
traffic, and it was widened to two lanes, still often parallel to the
tracks. Then more traffic, and it was widened to divided 4 lanes.
Then abandonment, and whichever half of the 4-lane divided road was in
worse shape was abandoned.
I'd even compare Route 66 to the Natchez Trace or old wagon roads,
with the differences being:
1. Route 66 is close to my own time and culture, so I understand the
context much better than I do on the Natchez Trace or a wagon train
trail.
2. Many of the people who provided support services on 66 are still
alive, and can reminisce.
3. You can stay in the same (surviving) motels, gas up at the same
(survivivng) stations, eat at the same (surviving) diners, and even
buy the same tourist junk that folks bought back in the day.
Some towns and states have brown "historic 66" route signs along the
way to tell you you're on track. But they're not nearly as frequent
as similar signs along a modern state highway. IOW, don't count on
them. If you run out of signs, consult the maps. Look for clues in
the archicture (abandoned motels, restaurants, and gas stations from
the 1940s - if you don't see 'em, you may not be on 66 anymore). Look
for places where locals have named modern businesses (Route 66 Video
Rental), or painted a Route 66 symbol on the pavement.
Although 80% of route still exists, many big chunks of the tourist
infrastructure are gone. Gas and food are easily available. While
maybe 95% of the old diners are out of business, the survivors have
pretty decent food. Lodging is usually in older motels (the 1-2% that
have survived) that are well past their prime (plus side - it's
usually pretty cheap); campgrounds on 66 are nearly non-existent. But
if old 66 can't supply a particular service you need, the Interstate
is only a mile or so away.
Each state's bit of abandoned 66 is a different flavor, depending on
how 66 was chopped up by Interstates, when it was abandoned in that
state, and whether the former 66 towns in the state had other economic
bases besides tourism / transportation. For example in Illinois, the
late-era divided 4-lane 66 went on with 2 lanes becoming abandoned
(and likely to become bicycle pathways), the former farm towns along
66 went back to being farm towns, and 66 became just a footnote in the
towns' histories. But in Arizonaand California, where many of the towns had only 66 tourism, in those cases nobody lives in the towns anymore, and only the abandoned buildings are left (if that).
Lots of Europeans are travelling 66. Be open and friendly, and you
have a pretty good chance of having dinner with people from all over
the world along the way. They'll probably like you - you'll be one of
the "local" characters they'll talk about when they get back home.
Shopowners along the way tell me the Euros have been doing 66 for
several decades, and that the American interest is something newer,
thanks to movie "Cars."
Speaking of "Cars", there's a ton of websites that tell where each
building in "Cars" is at, and even where some of the people the
characters are based on, are at. Radiator Springs in Carburetor
County is Peach Springs AZ, in Coconino County. But none of the
buildings in the movie is in Peach Springs AZ; they're scattered all
along the rest of 66. Google will find a bunch of this stuff for you.
I took a Jeep, and would have liked to have taken my GS, but.... the
offroad abilities aren't all that important on 99% of the trip,
because so little of the (totally) abandoned dirt portions of 66 are
usable, anyway. We were on dirt / gravel / original concrete portions
of 66 (where those roads became county roads) in Oklahoma and Kansas,
but pretty much any vehicle could handle those. We were also offroad
in Texas (around Jericho Gap / Mclean) and New Mexico (La Bajada Hill,
between Albequerque and Santa Fe), but in both cases those sections
were beyond the ability of a streetbike or family sedan, with either
big ledges or big rocks or both. But offroad portions of 66 that are
still drivable are sooooooooooo small in number - many have been trapped
behind barbed-wire fences, with no access at all.
I'd also suggest that even if you're on a pavement-biased vehicle, do
some of the easy dirt portions, for a taste of what 66 may have been
like early on.
