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Route 66 Traveler's Guide
Price: £6.27
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Celebrating the history and current revival of a great American highway, the author paints a vivid portrait of life on Route 66, and the people who haunt it, including cattle rustlers, gangsters, hitchhikers, and everyday travellers. All you need for the ultimate cross-country drive!
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But although the famous Route 66 road signs were removed over 20 years ago, the highway they called The Mother Road and The Main Street Of America lives on, with increasing efforts being made to preserve both what remains of the highway (Historic Route 66 signs are now popping up along its length) and the Americana that could be found to tempt weary drivers to stop along its way.

Route 66 was originally built between 1925 and 1938 to connect not just two of America’s great cities, Chicago in the north and Los Angeles in the west, but the hundreds of urban and rural communities that lay along its way.

So where to stop along the way.

Well, there’s Amarillo in Texas for starters for all you Tony Christie and Peter Kay fans. And you can get your main course here for free if you can finish the legendary 720z steak dinner served at the Big Texan in town.

Then there’s Seligman in Arizona, birthplace of what is now called Historic Route 66 and the start (or finish) of 158 miles of original Route 66 between the town and Topock. Seligman is also home to the Route 66 Gift Shop & Visitor’s Center (telephone 928 422 3352).

Route 66 also passed through the Nob Hill-Highland district of Albuquerque in New Mexico and today it remains one of the best preserved reminders of what driving along the Mother Road was like back in its heyday, even if its most famous landmark, the iceberg shaped cafe, is no more. Make sure you grab a milkshake at the 66 Diner (telephone 505 247 1421) on Central Avenue while in town too.

Also don’t miss the annual Route 66 Rendezvous which takes place this year between the 15th and 18th of September in San Bernardino, California. The cars are most definitely the stars at this celebration of Route 66, with a rolling display of over 2,000 pre-1974 classic cars and hotrods strutting their stuff for up to half a million enthusiasts.

Of the old motels and hotels along the way, some are still in business, although many more have been lost to time. Certainly don’t pass up the opportunity to spend the night in a concrete cone-shaped room at either the Wigwam Village Motel at 811 West Hopi Drive, Holbrook, Arizona (telephone 270 773 3381) or the Wigwam Motel (pictured above) at 2728 W. Foothill Blvd, Rialto, California (telephone 909 875 3005). American kitsch at its very best with rooms from $50 a night.



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