Driving Route 66:

'Now on Special Offer at £1.49'

Many books have been written on driving Route 66 so why buy mine? One good reason is that at around the cost of half a pint of beer it's cheap; mind you all that glitters is not gold. Perhaps a better question to ask yourself is "why do I want to drive Route 66 and will I enjoy it?" The simple answer is if you enjoy driving and looking at scenery you will, if you don't you won't. To drive Route 66 you will cover approximately 3,000 miles and travel through 8 states, namely; Illinois – Missouri – Kansas – Oklahoma – Texas – New Mexico – Arizona and California. If you don’t enjoy driving then stay at home and read my book.

My book is about the adventures of two best friends (Pete and Alan), I'm Alan. 'Driving Route 66' is not a definitive guide to the Route, for that you will need to buy 'EZ66 Guide for Travellers'. The current cost from Amazon is £18.46 you don't need any other book (apart from this one!), although if you intend to go off route, which we did (diverting of Route 66 at flagstaff to visit the Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, the Hualapi Indian Reservation and the Grand Canyon), then at $9.99 'The Truckers Road Map' is good value. Buy one when you get there.

We bought EZ66 before we went, during our journey we perused many more books in various shops but we didn't feel the urge to buy them. EZ66 is simply the best.

The normal way to travel Route 66 is east to west; i.e. Chicago to Santa Monica (the same direction as the early travellers). If you want to do it in reverse then start at the back of the book, it's designed for journeys in both directions. If driving west to east pay particular attention to the writing in the black squares at the bottom of each page.

You don't need to be particularly adventurous to drive Route 66, nor do you need to do lots of pre-planning. You do need to obtain Visa's, book your first nights accommodation (so you have an address to put on your visa), book your return flights and preferably book your hire car through your flight provider; that's it, no further planning is required. The Epilogue of my book contains details on obtaining a visa. It costs $500 to leave your hire car at the other end of Route 66.

You will need approximately 2-weeks to travel the full distance of Route 66 plus a few days extra for diversions. We took 18 days which was just about right.

As for cost it depends on how much you want to spend. We ate well and cheaply, staying mostly, in original Route 66 Motels at an average cost of £35 per night. We spent approximately £45 to £50 per day (between us), on meals, having a simple breakfast, a burger or Subway type meal at midday and a proper restaurant type evening meal.

The total combined cost in 2008 was £5545.45 and the exchange rate was £1 = $1.50 To give a comparison; in late 2013 my wife and I flew to Las Vegas, we then hired a similar car (in our case a Chrysler Journeyman SUV 4 x 4), and drove down to Santa Monica (the normal end of Route 66), by the Pacific Ocean. We then drove Route 66 in reverse ending up in Chicago before continuing on to New York and Long Beach to throw stones in the Atlantic Ocean, it was to cold to paddle.

We travelled across 15 states, namely; Nevada – California – Arizona – New Mexico – Texas – Oklahoma – Kansas – Missouri – Illinois – Indiana – Michigan – Ohio – Pennsylvania – New Jersey and New York. We travelled a total distance of 4,469.5 Miles spread over 29 days. Our total expenditure was £4807.90. The most expensive costs were the plane flight and the hire car. By pre-booking the hire car we saved over £1100 which helped to finance a 10 day longer holiday.

I always keep a written record of our adventures and this e-Book is basically a copy of my original 2008 Route 66 Journal. To be honest it can be a bit anal at times, with my obsession with listing times to the nearest minute as a typical example.

Take care and enjoy your adventures whatever they might be, or wherever they might take you.

Share this page