I’ve stayed at the Best Western Rio Grande in ABQ several times. It’s decent enough, has a nice pool and a gated parking area. Right off the freeway and easy walking distance to Old Town and the Natural History and ABQ museums.
A favorite ABQ/Rt 66-adjacent roadside attraction of mine is the Tinkertown Museum, about a 15 minute drive off off I-40 east of town.
Color me even more surprised! U.S. 66 never went “all the way across Kansas.” It only nipped the extreme southeast corner for 13 miles, from Galena on the Missouri border to Baxter Springs on the Oklahoma border. It’s a significant piece of Americana because Kansas was the first state to pave its entire stretch of Route 66, back in 1929.
Just taking a quick look at Google Maps, the Monterey and the El Vado look like nice retro motels. I’m guessing those would be considered to be in the Old Town area. But looking at some other stretches of Central Ave, I see what you mean.
As @Kent_Clark said, Route 66 covered just a sliver of Kansas. Currently, about 5 miles of the original road is designated as Kansas Route 66, but then the next several miles are county roads, before rejoining the original road for the last few miles before the Oklahoma border. That part of the original road is now known as Alt US-69, and continues into Oklahoma.
Now THAT’s a drive - you get to see the glory that is the ideal section in NW IN!
I never said 66 went “across” Kansas, I said it was 100% intact. It is, all 13 miles of it. 
The Marsh Arch bridge is worth seeing.
The first time I did Route 66 back in 1999, I just followed signs (back then there were a lot of ‘66’ signs painted on the road, so it was easy to follow). I didn’t even know until I got back I had been in Kansas.
We never said you did.
@LSLGuy mistakenly inferred that ‘100% of the old route’ in Kansas meant ‘all the way across Kansas.’ That mistake has been corrected. As noted, only 13 miles of the highway were in Kansas.
I-44, which essentially replaced Route 66 from St. Louis to Tulsa, bypasses Kansas entirely.
I’ll have to confess that I have that northeast heights (richer and more Anglo) bias to other parts of the city, and obviously it’s not like I go spending nights in hotels in town. So if there’s good historic motels that are well run and safe I’m glad to hear it. But lots of Central is not good, with the War Zone being the worst. And multiple times a year there’s stories about families having their U-Haul broken into or stolen or even things like hot air balloons or even rock band equipment being stolen.
I’d be happy for the OP to spend some time and money in Albuquerque. There’s a lot of neat stores and restaurants and other places right on Central. It’s the kind of town you could easily spend a few days in playing tourist even if you don’t detour up to Santa Fe or the like. But it also easily contains some of the roughest stretches of town.
I grew up on the Oklahoma City to Tulsa portion of 66.
There are a few kitschy things to see.
Blue whale of Catoosa, Tally’s diner in Tulsa, round barn in Arcadia, Chief Touch the Clouds statue in Edmond.
Would not go out of my way to see any of the above, but if you are already there, take a look.
If we’re going to keep dissing Albuquerque as unsafe, the OP may just decide to take the original route and spend the night in Santa Fe.
We may have been on that part of 30 as well, for the same trip or a different one, I don’t really remember.
This won’t necessarily assist in trip planning, but it might be of interest to folks following along with the thread:
U.S. Highway 66 Association travel brochure from 1967
(compliments of the former Yukon Hotel, Yukon OK…now an Economy Inn)
Paul McCartney took the trip in 2008 for his 66th birthday. There is a commemorative sign in his honor near Arcadia, Oklahoma.
In a turnabout of that idea, one of my more interesting friends had for years planned to travel to London and tour the various Beatles sights/sites, see Abbey Road, do the famous crosswalk walk, etc. When she was 64.
Sadly COVID had other ideas. Her entire age 64 year pretty well coincided with the worst of the restrictions and risks. So she did it when she was 65. Which doesn’t fit the rhyming scheme nearly so well. Damn.
Coincidentally, today’s Chicago Trib had an Illinois travel magazine, which had a lengthy article on Route 66 in Illinis. You might find this on-line version interesting.
Couple of thoughts - they observe that US 55 essentially covers Route 66 in IL. Have done that drive several times, and gotta say, not really interesting (unless you have a special affinity for corn and beans!)
I readily support your pursuing whatever interests you. Looking at what it lists for IL, I found myself thinking, “Yeah, that looks modestly interesting. Might be worth a couple of minutes.” But the idea of several days of just one “modestly interesting” thing after another, interspersed with stretches of not really interesting driving …
That’s why you have to take old old 66, Illinois 4. Watch for the cobblestone sections.
And 53 out of Joliet, plenty of old sections there.
I suggest taking a small detour at Gallup and drive from Window Rock to Tuba City, and then down to Flagstaff. If Winslow is a must see for you, turn south at Second Mesa. Absolutely beautiful drive.
Pish. One does not drive Route 66 in Illinois for scenery, you drive it for the quirky small towns that are half museum and half something out of The Music Man. Speaking of museums, there are at least three “Route 66 museums” in Illinois alone. I have visited the Route 66 Association Hall of Fame & Museum in Pontiac and found it to be a delightful labor of love filled with various sorta-related things and staffed by people who can tell you about every mile of the old road.
You could easily spend two days just getting from Chicago to St. Louis, and that doesn’t even include any time you want to spend in Springfield visiting the Abraham Lincoln landmarks.
But if you want scenery, there’s an immense complex of wind turbines north of Bloomington that stretch for miles and will amaze you.
I lived in Springfield at the time, and he and his companion stopped for gas at a station that was probably three quarters of a mile from where I lived. Had the universe seen fit, I could have met a Beatle in my home town!!!
The best advice I can give anyone visiting Springfield, for Route 66 or Abraham Lincoln or anything else, is threefold:
When you look on Google Maps, use the specific phrase “Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum,” and not “Lincoln Library.” Lincoln Library is Springfield’s public lending library. I’ve seen more than one confused tourist standing outside of our municipal lending library wondering where the Lincoln artifacts are. 1a) The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library is across the street from the Museum, and truth be told, it’s a research library and I’m not even sure it’s open to the general public. The Museum is right across the street; go to that.
The best tourist attraction in Springfield, for my money, is neither the Lincoln stuff nor the Route 66 stuff. It’s the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Susan Lawrence Dana House*. The neighborhood it’s in has seen better days, so you might want to lock your car when you find a parking spot, which itself won’t be easy.
*I refuse to call this building by its official name, the Dana-Thomas House. After Mrs. Dana moved out, it was eventually purchased by a book publishing company that used it as a factory, and then it sat derelict for a couple of decades, before the historical society bought it and restored it. To me, referencing the time it was a factory disrespects Mrs. Dana and the house itself.