Consider taking the California Zephyr (Amtrak) train back~its renowned as a more scenic route (same good diner car food) through the mountains and majestic Great Plains. From LA you’d take a bit of a ride on a Coast Starlight Amtrak along the Pacific Coast to San Francisco (technically Emeryville) and the Zephyr all the way to Chicago, through the Rockies.
It might be cheaper to take your car for the drive and have your husband use a budget rental for his local transportation-no high mileage hit or penalty for one way.
If you like going underground, the “big three” caves on the Mother Road are worth a stop, each with a different vibe.
Meramec Caverns is the biggest and most impressive with a patriotic light show at the end.
Fantastic Caverns is unique in that you take the tour on a tram.
At Grand Canyon Caverns the tours start and end with a elevator ride down 200 feet. The elevator broke down a few years ago, stranding a tour group. But that shouldn’t deter you (or should it? )
See post 9. I’m not sure where the cafe I mentioned is, but we went pre-Covid so it might not even be there. Which would be a shame, they were nice people.
If I may ask, what would you hope to get out of the trip? Just a framework within which to spend some time with your friend?
I’ve driven many portions of the route, but never the whole thing. Recall a memorable meal in Williams; stayed in a great hotel in Winslow La Posada; the Meteor Crater ought to be a must see for anyone in the area…
I enjoy “complete” experiences, so the idea of driving the entire route appeals to me. But my understanding is that driving the entire route is somewhat challenging. And if you don’t drive the original route, you are just barreling across interstate with a number of stops. And a whole lot of what you are driving through is not really memorable. I mean, you will be hauling across A LOT of Illinois/Missouri/Oklahoma in between “must see” spots.
And IMO a lot of what you see is memorable because someone wrote a song about it or filmed a movie/TV show there, rather than in its own right. I mean, “Standing on a corner”? Mildly curious, but IMO no way worth a special trip.
I really don’t want to yuck your yum. And with the help of some folk upthread, I’m sure you could put together a rewarding itinerary. Just saying, give some hard thought whether THIS is the best way to spend this amount of time and money.
Route 66 as such doesn’t exist. Certainly the iconic immediate postwar Route 66 doesn’t exist. Neither does most of the physical road, regardless of how many soulless modern franchises the remaining snippets host.
Here and there are a block or two in a town that vaguely resembles the old way. But truth is, there is plenty of that 1950s iconography in any US city if you know where to look. Including the one closest to wherever the OP lives.
The arid West is fascinating if you’re not from there. For about an hour. The green flat Midwest is fascinating if you’re not from there. For about an hour.
The other 5 days’ driving will be a tiresome exercise on a generic interstate that has too few lanes for the traffic. And ordinary cheapass franchise chain hotels. La Quinta much?
Just a note if you’re thinking about going next year: 2026 is the road’s 100th anniversary. Lots of events planned along the route and it’s likely there will be a ton of road-trippers and aficionados, so planning ahead for lodging would be a good idea. I really hope Angel Delgadillo is around to be part of the celebration.
No advice to offer on the trip but unbeknownst to me I lived on Route 66 when I was at University of Missouri - Rolla (now Missouri S&T) in the early 80’s. The university hadn’t finished building a new dormitory so leased out all the motels on Martin Springs Drive which was the old Route 66.
Had to look up the Coral Court, it’s pretty cool. I was at the Rolla Rancho which was flattened around 20 years ago. I did a search and found Rolla Rancho postcards on ebay which is strange.
A lot of buildings and business are still there, some open, some closed.
Road-wise, it may not be signed “66” but a lot of the old road is still intact, and still used. Illinois 4 is old 66, and it still looks the same (including the cobblestone sections). Long, but admittedly non-continuous sections exist all across Missouri.
100% of the old route exists in Kansas.
You can drive almost all of the old route in Oklahoma, including the one-lane section outside of Miami.
Texas? Uh yeah. 66 has been buried under I40, but the view is exactly the same on the freeway or off. You can still follow Business 40/Route 66 through every small town, though.
New Mexico is tough, because of the east NM terrain. There are many non-continuous segments of the original road, much more the more west you go. You can go from Gallup to the AZ border on original 66.
Eastern Arizona has almost nothing surviving except through the towns but west of Flagstaff is the longest continuous segment still signed as 66.
Eastern California doesn’t have a lot but of course you can drive original 66 from San Berdoo all the way to Santa Monica Pier but who would want to drive Foothill Blvd 80 miles? It looks like Los Angeles, with traffic lights.
I grew up in SoCal. Most of my experience with 66 is from Berdoo inland to eastern Texas. The part that mostly doesn’t exist. About 35 years ago while living in Las Vegas I tried my own Route 66 run eastbound from LA. Didn’t get very far.
And that was 35 years ago. Gotta be even less of the old road still in existence in the rural west.
But thanks for the correction farther east. Color me very surprised it still exists as a contiguous hunk all the way across Kansas.
In Carthage MO, the Jasper County Courthouse is definitely worth a quick stop. And don’t just take a picture of the beautiful building, go inside and take a ride in the 108 year-old elevator (I think it still has an attendant that runs the controls). Carthage is also home to the Boots Court Motel that opened in 1939.
I’m gonna share this thread with my friend (who is not a Doper… yet) and update as appropriate. We’re talking some time next spring, most likely.
Valid points (in the whole post which I didn’t bother to quote).
to spend time with the friend, whom I don’t see as often as I’d like since she moved.
My husband and I drove cross-country 40 years ago and it was a wonderfully memorable experience. While we’d be doing a different route here, for years I’ve wanted to do that again when we have the time. I often say I’d love to do a long drive taking mostly “local” roads (US highways or whatever) just because you see so much more than on the interstate.
We absolutely would do some combo of interstate and local roads. This is all very much hypothetical. I might create a Google map to share with my friend to mark places we want to visit, to help narrow down route / itinerary.
We’re full-time RVers and are camping just outside of Seligman at the moment – I could throw a rock from our campsite and, with some assistance from a north wind, it would land on the blacktop of Route 66. We drove to Seligman for provisions yesterday and saw Delgadillos Snow Cap; we’ll definitely stop for lunch there on Saturday.
We’ll be in the Winslow area beginning on Sunday. The “corner” is definitely worth seeing, if only to look at all the other tourists. There’s a taproom a half-block west of the corner, RelicRoad, that has insanely good burgers. Two of the best breakfasts we have ever had in our lives were at La Posada’s restaurant, The Turquoise Room. La Posada itself if well worth checking out, if not staying there: it’s a former Harvey House and has a great art gallery as well as some historic exhibits about the railroad and Route 66.
Petrified Forest National Park, further east on Route 66 a few miles east of Holbrook, is, as someone mentioned, well worth visiting. The part of the part north of Interstate 40 (and the former Route 66) is the sourthern end of the Painted Desert and is absolutely gorgeous; the part south of the interstate is where all of the petrified logs are, and there are some great hikes.
Going further east into New Mexico, Grants is home to Malpais National Monument and a number of historic lava flows (much of the ground in a huge area of that part of New Mexico is covered in black basalt (thus the name, which is “bad country”). We enjoyed a couple of really interesting hikes there last spring, including one that took us to the top of an extinct cinder cone volcano.
One piece of advice I’d give through New Mexico. As I said earlier, you can drive at least Tijeras to Laguna and through Albuquerque as one continuous stretch of old 66. And there’s some nice shopping and good food and beer in parts of Albuquerque right on Central. We’ve got a decent zoo and botanical garden and aquarium as well, plus other interesting museums. But don’t stay in a motel on Central if you decide to sleep in Albuquerque.
More that many aren’t in good shape, if they’re even open, and it’s about the best way to get your vehicle busted into if not outright stolen. Old Town area would be okay but pricey, and frankly it’s probably better just to head up north a few miles to something off I-25 or into what’s known as the Uptown area.
Sure, not everything is trash. But unfortunately Albuquerque isn’t like, say, Tucumcari with nice retro motels.
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