Travels
End of the Trail: Route 66 in California
From border to border, California provides some of the biggest contrasts in geography on all of Route 66. Entering at the eastern border, drivers find themselves a mere speck in the massive expanse of the Mojave Desert where little remains of the towns, auto camps, and gas stations that were once available to Mother Road…
Read MoreHere It Is: Route 66 in Arizona
Some of the most beautiful stretches of Route 66 lie within Arizona’s borders. With more than 250 miles of the route still drivable, the Grand Canyon State lays claim to the longest unbroken stretch of accessible original road- 158 miles running from Ash Fork to Topock at the California border. Arizona also has the distinction…
Read MoreEnchanted Travels: Route 66 in New Mexico
With a long and storied history covering more than a millennium, there is no shortage of beautiful historical sites, ruins, and places to explore in the Land of Enchantment. Despite being much more recent historically, there is just as much 20th Century Americana waiting to be discovered. Our love for Route 66 began in Tucumcari…
Read MoreGet Your Sniffs: Finley’s Travels on Route 66
For more than a decade, we’d dreamed of getting our kicks on Route 66. With a month set aside to follow our dreams and travel the route last fall, we couldn’t imagine taking the trip without our dog, Finley. Over the last two years, Finley has traveled more than 20,000 miles through 36 states with us,…
Read MorePaint On, Drop In, Pig Out: Route 66 in Texas
Mention the Texas Panhandle and most people will likely envision wind sweeping across wide open fields of, well, nothing. Life on the Llano Estacado, or the Staked Plains, is not for the meek, with hot summers, cold winters, little rainfall, tornadoes, and dust storms. Constructed following the path of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific…
Read MoreA Whale of a Good Time: Route 66 in Oklahoma
Home of the “Father of Route 66” and the place where the idea for America’s most famous road was conceived, it is fitting that Oklahoma contains the most still-drivable miles of any state, with more than 400 still in service. From a gas station purportedly once visited by Bonnie and Clyde to a giant blue…
Read MoreJourney Like its 1949: Route 66 in Missouri & Kansas
On April 30, 1926, Route 66 was officially designated in Springfield, Missouri, establishing the town as the “Birthplace of Route 66”. Stretching from the Mississippi River, through the Ozarks, to the southeastern corner of Kansas, Route 66 covered 317 miles through Missouri, and just 13 miles through Kansas. Although the interstate was constructed over the…
Read MoreMotoring West: Route 66 in Illinois
The Mother Road, the Main Street of the America, the Will Rogers Highway; no matter what you call it, there is no stretch of road more synonymous with Americana and our country’s love of automobiles than Route 66. From the date of its establishment, 91 years ago today, until June 26, 1985, when it was officially decommissioned,…
Read MoreTin Sheets on 66 Pics: Holbrook, AZ to Santa Monica, CA
The final stretch of Route 66 takes you up through the mountains and down into the desert before finding its end at the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, CA. Much of the older alignment can still be traveled in this section, including almost 160 uninterrupted miles through Arizona, and many of the long ago popular…
Read MoreTin Sheets on 66 Pics: McLean, TX to Holbrook, AZ
As you head west through the Texas Panhandle and into New Mexico and Arizona, the land opens up and the views make you feel like you’ve stepped into an Old Western. A stretch of Route 66 that we’ve driven in the past, it a section of perhaps our favorite part of the Mother Road and…
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