Destination: USA
LONELY PLANET'S OFFICIAL ITINERARY INFORMATION
Itinerary: The Main Street of America
ONE WEEK/CHICAGO TO LOS ANGELES
Route 66, or the Great Mother Road, is a nostalgic driving tour that passes a wealth of quintessential, wacky, shake-your-head-in-disbelief Americana.
Only portions of the original highway remain; today it has either been paralleled or replaced by newer interstates. For detailed route descriptions, see 'Route 66' boxed texts in each of the eight states the road passes through. Good websites are www.national66.com, with Route 66 history and maps for sale, and www.historic66.com, which has turn-by-turn driving directions.
Nostalgia is a drug. And for those living along the fabled 2400 miles of Route 66, it is a serious addiction. But obsessions are amazing things to witness. This trip takes you back to when cars and highways were just reshaping America, to when travel became democratized. Route 66 is a memorial to that first delicious, delirious rush of freedom.
Route 66 starts in Chicago, Illinois. You'll pass Burma Shave signs and the birthplace of the corn dog on the way to St Louis, Missouri. Kansas gets a whole 13 miles of Route 66 before it cuts across Oklahoma for 400 miles, including stops in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
Route 66 then grabs the panhandle of Texas, a section that includes the halfway point and a plethora of cars stuck in the ground. In New Mexico the road passes Acoma Pueblo and Santa Fe, and in Arizona you'll find the longest uninterrupted section of the original route and several small towns on a serious nostalgia binge.
Once you enter California, you're in the home stretch. There are more museums, the original McDonald's and the end of the road in Los Angeles' Santa Monica - where a delicious beach and boardwalk await road-weary legs and bums.
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