Route 66 - Start to Finish! (Chicago to Santa Monica)

For those of you who were waiting patiently for the Route 66 Road Trip report, your wait is over.  Alan and I spent 22 nights on the road, leaving home at the end of August and returning in mid-September.  With 2,758 photos, I can assure you that there is still much to see along Historic Route 66.

Eight states, three time zones, 2,448 miles.  Traveling the entire length of Route 66 had been on our bucket list for years.  For a variety of reasons, this year was the perfect time to add this trip to our travel calendar.  Route 66 officially opened in 1926, and cities and towns from Chicago to Santa Monica will be celebrating “The Mother Road’s” Centennial next year.  While Alan and I would have liked to make the journey next year to take advantage of the many events being planned, we believed we might have less hoopla, but a more realistic experience traveling Historic Route 66 this year without the fanfare.  Honestly, though, anyone who is considering this trip should do it sooner rather than later, in my humble opinion.  As time goes on, we’re losing more and more pieces of this historic road – both literally and figuratively.  Some of the oldest sections of Route 66 are no longer accessible, and more businesses are succumbing to the curse of tourists being diverted by interstate highways and air travel.  That part is sad to see, but there are plenty of communities and businesses that devote time and resources to keeping Historic Route 66 not just alive, but vibrant.  Come along with us on this epic road trip . . .

Although we normally prefer to travel with our truck and travel trailer, for this trip we decided to take Alan’s Camaro Super Sport.  We knew we’d be treating this epic journey like one big scavenger hunt since we had a long list of stops we wanted to make.  Because we’d be hunting for various old gas stations, motels, theaters and a whole bunch of neon signs, we wanted to move nimbly, progressing from one stop to another without have to return to a base camp and move the trailer on down the road to the next campground.  This approach had both its advantages and disadvantages.  Our gas mileage with the Camaro was SO much better than with the truck and trailer.  For the entire trip, we averaged 26.8 miles per gallon – and we’d never get that with the truck even if we weren’t pulling the trailer.  Not too shabby for a car with a big V8 engine.  Plus, we loved the thought of traveling in the sports car with the sunroof open and Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” on the playlist.  It just seemed so . . . right.  On the other hand, it didn’t take long for us to begin missing our home away from home.  Even though we had worked hard to streamline our packing, we were hauling two duffle bags, a backpack cooler and our “go” bag into (and then out of) a new hotel almost every night.  Not fun, people, not fun.  But Alan and I agreed – both during the planning stage of the trip and after we arrived back home – that taking the Camaro was the best way to enjoy the trip and honor the spirit of Route 66.

In planning for this trip, I had purchased several resources, including an excellent set of maps that I picked up the last time we were “Standing on a Corner in Winslow, Arizona.”  But my “go to” resource ended up being the ”Moon Route 66 Road Trip” travel guide by Jessica Dunham.  Usually, as I’m doing research, I add notes to a “Trip Notes” document on my desktop computer that I’ve created especially for a particular trip.  I started those notes when I began reading the Moon guide, but I quickly became overwhelmed by how much information I wanted to transfer from the guide to my trip notes.  Alan suggested that I simply mark up the Moon guide and I, lover of books that I am, refused to deface one of my books for the sake of convenience.  But, as I continued reading, I realized that he was right.  And if I wanted to have a pristine edition of the travel guide, I could always purchase another copy.  So, I hesitantly, but determinedly, grabbed a highlighter and marked all the things along Route 66 that we wanted to see.  This plan worked admirably, and I have to admit that the Moon guide performed spectacularly.  I will say that we came upon two errors in the book.  One error was the location of the Hogue House – the house in Oklahoma that’s rumored to be the first kit house ever ordered from the Sears catalog.  The guide book lists the address as 1001 Olive Street in Vinita, but it’s actually at that address in Chelsea.  (And, yes, we found it.  It’s adorable!)  I don’t remember what the second error was; if I figure it out while I’m documenting the trip, I’ll be sure to clue you in.

This book was much more dog-eared by the end of the trip.

What I like about Moon travel guides is that they’re chock full of detailed information – and details are right up my alley.  Not only did this guide list places of interest (along with restaurants and accommodations), but it provided addresses and phone numbers for them, as well.  (It also included directions for getting back to Route 66 after any deviation – no small feat since the road endured at least two new alignments in the years after it opened.)  Having the addresses proved to be a distinct advantage because we could just keep plugging them into the car’s GPS system.  That particular GPS system isn’t my favorite (I much prefer our RV-specific Garmin 890 GPS unit – even when we don’t have our RV), so I usually had the guide book in my lap and Google Maps or Google Directions open on my phone.  Truthfully, the week it took us to get from Chicago to Santa Monica was exhausting for me.  It’s not that we were getting an extraordinary amount of physical exercise because we weren’t.  I believe I was just mentally fatigued from trying to juggle more than one source of information to keep us on track as we tried to locate every item on our “scavenger hunt.”  Plus, I was helping Alan to watch for street signs, attractions, parking and bad drivers.  (Not that we ran into many bad drivers.  Cough, cough.)  I was happy to be relieved of those duties when we reached the end of Route 66 at the Santa Monica Pier, and I found the return trip home a much more relaxing drive.  In hindsight, I admit that my plan was a bit too ambitious to complete in a week because we ended up skipping some stops along the way.  If I had it to do over (which we’re probably not going to do), I’d like to allow double the time, stretching the trip out over two weeks to give my poor brain a rest.  Alan didn’t necessarily agree with me.  He felt that by doubling the time, it would make the trip drag since we’d only be covering maybe 150 miles per day.  I think you could make a good case for a one, two or even a three-week trip to cover Route 66, depending on your travel style and preferences.

Sadly, there aren't many Burma Shave signs left.

When we travel by car, all we’re looking for in a hotel is something clean, comfortable and in a good location.  We won’t stay at a low-end motel or hotel, but we don’t need something that’s top-of-the-line, either.  We’ve gravitated toward Choice Hotels, and we usually prefer a Sleep Inn or Comfort Inn – although we stayed at a Rodeway Inn, one or two EconoLodges, and several Quality Inns on this trip to get the locations we needed without switching to another hotel brand.  By taking advantage of Choice Hotels’ free hot breakfast, we usually ended up spending money only on an early dinner.  We always travel with snacks and water anyway (because I have to eat every few hours unless someone wants to die), so we’d fill in with something light and fairly healthy during the day, if we were hungry.  The healthy snacks precluded us from feeling guilty whenever we saw a Culver’s sign and decided to stop for frozen custard.  Wink, wink.

Alan's chocolate with M&Ms on the left, my vanilla with Heath Bar on the right.

 

There was one major disappointment for us during the trip, having nothing at all to do with Route 66.  I came down with a wicked cold, and it took me more than a full week to shake it.  (Luckily, although Alan spent several days sneezing, he never came down with it to the degree I had.)  I was extremely annoyed because I hardly ever get sick (ever!) so it was a case of really bad timing.   What made it more annoying was the fact that we try to stay away from crowds and always carry hand sanitizer in our vehicles.  So much for precautions.  Why was a simple head cold such a major disappointment?  Because we ended up canceling not just one, but two, meet-ups with friends.  With much regret, we missed spending a day in southern California with fellow blogger Janis (from Retirementally Challenged) and her husband.  Living on opposite corners of the country makes for long stretches between get-togethers with these folks, and I can’t tell you how disappointed I was.  Alan and I had such a good time with these two the last time we passed through their neck of the woods, that it made the decision to cancel a really difficult one.  We also passed on a meet-up with long-time friends Mary and Dave who live in Colorado.  In this case, not only would we be exposing the two of them to my miserable germs, but we’d also be exposing their family – including two grandchildren.  Nope, not on my watch.  We’ll catch them on our next pass through Colorado.

This old gas pump looked as bad as I felt, but . . . 17.9 cents/gallon!

In looking back at our Route 66 journey, Alan and I are both happy to call the complete, start to finish trip, a one-and-done.  That’s not to say that we won’t be returning to our favorite places along Route 66 again in the future; I can assure you that we will.  (Looking at you Union Station in St. Louis!)  But navigating through both Chicago and the greater Los Angeles area to reach the Santa Monica Pier was neither fun nor anything we feel the need to do again – at least, in reference to Route 66.  The small, quiet towns along old Route 66 were, for the most part, our favorite stops.  And it was the people we met along the way who truly enriched our journey.  Route 66, with its people and places that remind us of family trips by car and the freedom of the open road, is an iconic piece of our American history – at least to those of us from certain generations.  Go get your kicks on Route 66, and do it now, before it becomes only a memory and a two-line entry in a history book.

Carthage, Missouri, welcomes Route 66 visitors with open arms.

Next up, we begin our journey in Chicago, early on a Sunday morning.  We couldn’t think of a better time to hit the Windy City, hoping to get in and get out as quickly and easily as possible.  Well, you know what they say . . . “Man plans and God laughs.”