Route 66 stretches right across America from Los Angeles to Chicago and we were lucky enough to drive on 2 sections from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and from Las Vegas to Flagstaff in Arizona.
The drive out of Los Angeles was on the Highway, pretty boring and tedious but on the approach to Victorville, we were able to join Route 66. Our first stop was the California Route 66 Museum where we found lots of information about this part of our journey.
We had great fun there in an old brightly coloured camper van where we donned bright coloured wigs and beads and had our photos taken looking as if we were cornering at speed! Great fun. There was a lot of great memorabilia in the museum including a Ford Model T which we both sat in, an old working juke box and a replica 50s diner.
We hit the road and soon came across Bottle Tree Ranch which was literally thousands of coloured bottle arranged to look like trees. An added bonus here were the hummingbirds!
We stopped for lunch at a busy diner on the route in the middle of nowhere. Good value American Fayre at a value price. As usual, portions so generous that we struggled to finish.
It was amazing to see the long straight quiet road ahead with extremely long freight trains running alongside the road from time to time.
A week later, we set off from Las Vegas to Flagstaff in Arizona and once again we hit Route 66, picking up the trail in Kingman, Arizona. There was an excellent tourist information centre there where we picked up maps and information and we walked across the road to a real 50s diner for lunch (Mr D’z). The diner was decked out in pink retro with bench seats and we both had a Route 66 Burger and fries. Bliss!!
Along this route, we had a small wild west town which was totally deserted. We ended up stopping at Sligman where the Route 66 concept was created by Angel & Vilma at their barber shop to bring business back to the Route 66 towns following the completion of the Interstate Highways. Lots of interesting things there.
One of the overriding memories of Route 66 was the long straight road. At one point, we could see the long straight road stretching ahead of us and decided to note our mileage. Bearing in mind this was not the start of the long straight, stretch, it was 14 miles before there was a bend in the road!!
Using Route 66 rather that the main highway brought interest to an otherwise very boring drive. We had a great time!
