Get Your Kicks on Route 66 Road Trip

I can’t wait to get my kicks on a route 66 road trip! Before we started working for ourselves, we traveled in two ways, relaxing vacations, and international travel.  We tried to take an international trip every year or so while we still had dependable income.  I’m a “do it now” kind of person, and it just didn’t make sense to me to wait until we retired.  I mean, what if we couldn’t travel later?  We need to do it now!  Then on the domestic front, we typically wanted to relax on a beach and have cute people bring us umbrella drinks all day.  This was the ultimate antidote to the burning the candle at both ends lifestyle we were living. 

In my mind, though, I was gathering a list of road trips I planned to take “someday”.  That day would have to be after we left corporate america, so that we’d have a few weeks to laze our way along the road to our destination.  To me, road trips are a great chance to breeze along to whatever interests me next, with only a loose itinerary along the route. I can’t be held up by the number of PTO days I have remaining.

My first bucket list road trip is Route 66.  I may have mentioned that I’m an acapella quartet singer.  This R & B song, Route 66, is one of my favorites to sing.  It was written in 1946 by Bobby Troup and made famous by Nat King Cole that same year.  It just makes the drive sound fun, and the fact that someone wrote a song about a highway piqued my interest.

What you might not know about Route 66

As with every place, the history of Route 66, which was established in 1926 and paved in 1930, has its celebrations and sadness.  It was famous long before the song.  John Steinbeck dubbed it The Mother Road in his 1939 novel, Grapes of Wrath. 

An Oklahoma businessman, Cyrus Avery, was responsible for getting the route to go through Tulsa, and he was dubbed the Father of Route 66.  Part of the road even follows the Trail of Tears where Native Americans were displaced from their land East of the Mississippi, to new land West of the Mississippi. 

There is so much history along this route.  I want to be among the many people to get my kicks on Route 66. But more importantly, to pay homage to the legacy and lives of the American people who came before me along this historic highway.

So where, exactly, is Route 66?

Route 66 spans from Chicago, Illinois to the Santa Monica Pier, near Los Angeles, California.  It crosses three time zones, and can take 30 hours to drive, if you go straight through. 

I do not plan to drive the nearly 2500-mile route in one shot.  I plan to stop along the way to take in the unique culture of each of the eight states, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.  My only regret is that since I live in the Southwest, I’ve already visited all these States.  I’ll have to make a point to visit and explore new sites and take a northern route home.

You’re gonna need a map

Sadly, Route 66 was decommissioned in 1984 after the last of the high-speed interstate highways were completed along the route. The old route is now referred to as Historic Route 66 and is no longer available on U.S. road maps. 

Road trip enthusiasts recommend buying a special trip guide to aid in your journey since you won’t find well placed Route 66 signs along the way.  I’m not getting paid for that link, by the way.  I appreciate the anecdotal info, including play lists, provided in the Moon Route 66 Road Trip by Jessica Dunham, and plan to buy it for myself since I’m new to long road trips.  There are several options available, and you may find one that suits your travel style better.

Since we make regular drives from Arizona to California, we’ll probably start our road trip in Flagstaff, Arizona, stop in Sedona on our way. We’ll also take a little off-route jaunt to the Grand Canyon before we press on to New Mexico.  If we plan this right, we could catch the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta in early October.

There’s an art installation in Amarillo, Texas, called Cadillac Ranch.  This looks like a fun photo stop. 

Oklahoma City is mighty pretty

Oklahoma City is home to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, where we can spend an afternoon enjoying their internationally renowned collection of art and artifacts. A historic road trip should include some great history of the American West, after all. 

Stop and learn about Barbershop Singing

The international headquarters for Sweet Adelines International is in Tulsa, Oklahoma.   We will definitely stop to visit headquarters. Then we’ll jump into the quick 13 miles of Kansas separating Oklahoma from Missouri. I have a rule that we have to at least have a meal in a State before I can cross it off the list, so we’ll be finding a cute restaurant in Kansas, for sure.

Visit a friend along Route 66

We have great friends who live near St. Louis, MO. We will want to stop for a night to visit with them before we hit the last of the road through the beautiful Missouri Ozarks toward Chicago. 

The end of the road – Chicago!

I’m a huge deep-dish Chicago pizza fan, so you know what we’ll be eating that first night there!  We’ll stop and take a photo of the Route’s end at Lake Shore Drive, bordering beautiful Lake Michigan.  We’ll likely spend a few days enjoying everything there is to see in Chicago, but that’s for another post.

Do you like to take road trips? Drop your must-see in the comments.