Route 66 - September 2024

September 2024. There are holidays, there are road trips, and then there are journeys that somehow become part of your internal geography.

This was one of those.

I went to America with John Rouse and Gary Kirkwood to drive Route 66. Chicago to the Pacific. The Mother Road. The road with more mythology per mile than almost anywhere else on Earth.

By the time I got home, I had 4,002 photographs, 110 videos, twenty-five days of memories and the distinct feeling that we'd done considerably more than follow an old road.

We had crossed America.

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IT DIDN'T START IN CHICAGO

Technically, our Route 66 adventure began in the least American way imaginable: Stafford, the M6, Heathrow and an airport hotel.

That is one of the details I love about looking back at the journey. The legendary road didn't begin with desert, neon or a chrome diner. It began with ordinary British tarmac and the knowledge that somewhere beyond an overnight flight was Chicago.

The following day we crossed the Atlantic and suddenly the fantasy became physical. Lake Michigan. Skyscrapers. Downtown Chicago. The city that Route 66 has called home since the highway was commissioned in 1926.

And before turning west we spent a full day walking Chicago rather than treating it as nothing more than a starting flag. That mattered. Route 66 begins in one of the world's great cities, and it deserves a proper opening act.

CHICAGO: THE FIRST MILE

The classic modern starting point is around Adams Street and Michigan Avenue, opposite the Art Institute of Chicago.

There is something wonderfully understated about that. A little sign marks the beginning of a road that would eventually become shorthand for American mobility, optimism, migration, diners, motels, gas stations, neon, dust, music and the promise of California.

Route 66 was formally established in 1926. It survived as a numbered US highway until 1985, when the Interstate system finally made it redundant on paper.

On paper.

Because culturally it refused to die.

That is precisely why three blokes from Britain were standing there nearly a century later, pointing themselves towards the Pacific.

Read the National Park Service history of Route 66

ILLINOIS: THE ROAD STARTS TALKING

Leaving Chicago was when Route 66 stopped being an idea and started behaving like a road trip.

Joliet. Wilmington. Dwight. Pontiac. Bloomington. Lincoln. Springfield.

Names began accumulating.

The skyscrapers fell away, grain country opened up and small-town America took over. We stopped in Pontiac for around an hour. By that evening we were in the Springfield area and the KOA rhythm had begun: arrive, settle, sleep, wake up, point west again.

It's easy to imagine Route 66 as one continuous ribbon of perfectly preserved Americana. It isn't. Parts vanish. Alignments change. The Interstate barges into the story. Sometimes you're hunting the old road rather than simply following it.

That is part of the charm.

MISSOURI: ACROSS THE MISSISSIPPI AND INTO THE OZARKS

St Louis felt like one of the first giant punctuation marks.

The Mississippi is more than a river when you're crossing America. It feels like a border between chapters.

Then Missouri rolled and twisted through the Ozarks. This was not the endlessly flat America I'd half expected. The old highway repeatedly wriggled away from the modern road through towns such as Cuba, Rolla, Waynesville and Lebanon before Springfield and Joplin.

By now the journey had developed its own daily heartbeat. Coffee. Road. Strange roadside object. Another old sign. Another town. Laughing at something utterly stupid in the vehicle. State line. More road.

The bits between the famous landmarks were becoming the actual trip.

KANSAS: THIRTEEN MILES OF SHOWING OFF

Kansas gets one of the best ratios of fame to mileage on the entire Mother Road.

Historic Route 66 spends only about 13 miles in the state, running through Galena, Riverton and Baxter Springs.

We stopped at Baxter Springs, which means our Google trail genuinely records this tiny Kansas cameo rather than merely brushing past it.

I rather admire Kansas for this. Illinois gets hundreds of miles. Oklahoma gets hundreds. Kansas turns up for thirteen, poses for photographs and leaves.

Explore the official Kansas Route 66 Historic Byway

OKLAHOMA: THIS IS WHERE THE DISTANCES BEGIN TO FEEL AMERICAN

Oklahoma opened the road out.

Miami. Afton. Vinita. Claremore. Catoosa. Tulsa. Stroud. Chandler. Oklahoma City.

Some places were stops, some were names passing beneath the tyres, but together they created that extraordinary Route 66 sensation: you are not merely travelling to somewhere. The road itself is the attraction.

On 9 September we left Oklahoma City and drove roughly 277 recorded miles towards Amarillo.

El Reno. Weatherford. Clinton. Elk City. Sayre. Erick. Texola.

Then the state line.

Texas.

TEXAS: BIG SKY, SHAMROCK AND TEN CADILLACS STUCK IN THE EARTH

Shamrock was our unmistakable Texas arrival. Then McLean, Groom and the long Panhandle run towards Amarillo.

We actually stayed two nights in Amarillo. On a trip built around constant forward motion, two nights anywhere felt suspiciously luxurious.

Then came Cadillac Ranch.

Ten Cadillacs, nose-first in Texas soil, created in 1974 by the art group Ant Farm. It is one of those places that should feel ridiculous, and does feel ridiculous, and is therefore absolutely perfect for Route 66.

The cars have long since become layered in paint from visitors. The artwork changes constantly while remaining exactly the same idea.

Just west of Amarillo came Adrian, the famous midpoint country. The symbolism is irresistible: Chicago behind us, California ahead, and the journey now genuinely feeling continental.

NEW MEXICO: THE ROAD CHANGES COLOUR

Crossing into New Mexico changed the visual language.

Tucumcari. Santa Rosa. Moriarty. Albuquerque.

The Midwest had faded. The landscape was drier, bigger and more cinematic. Albuquerque gave us a deliberately slower day, largely around Old Town, and that pause mattered.

If every day had been another 250-mile shove west, Route 66 would have become an endurance test. The slower days gave the trip texture.

Then we turned west again towards Gallup and Arizona.

ARIZONA: THE ROAD ENTERS DEEP TIME

Arizona was where the trip began throwing absurdly good attractions at us in quick succession.

First, the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest.

Petrified Forest National Park is particularly special in Route 66 history because it is the only National Park Service unit containing a preserved section of Historic Route 66. Old telephone poles still trace the former roadbed across the landscape.

That's a lovely collision of timescales: a road from the twentieth century cutting through a landscape containing fossilised trees more than two hundred million years old.

See the National Park Service Route 66 story at Petrified Forest

WINSLOW, METEOR CRATER AND WILLIAMS

On 14 September we went from Holbrook to Winslow, where the Timeline shows us hanging around for about an hour and twenty minutes.

Then came Meteor Crater.

We stopped there for roughly another hour and twenty minutes.

That's one of the joys of having the old Timeline breadcrumbs. Years later it proves the difference between “we drove past that” and “no, we actually stopped and looked at the thing properly.”

By evening we were in Williams.

And the next morning, for once, the road vehicle got a rest.

THE GRAND CANYON: WE ARRIVED BY TRAIN

There are many ways to reach the Grand Canyon.

We chose one that somehow fitted Route 66 perfectly.

The Grand Canyon Railway carried us north from Williams to the South Rim. Google's Timeline even classified the movement correctly as IN TRAIN, recording roughly 56 miles each way and about three hours and thirty-eight minutes at the canyon.

Then you stand at the rim.

And every photograph you've ever seen of the Grand Canyon immediately admits defeat.

Scale is the problem. Your brain can see it but can't quite file it. It looks less like scenery and more like the Earth has been opened up for inspection.

WE LEFT ROUTE 66 ON PURPOSE

From Williams we deliberately turned south.

Flagstaff gave way to the hotter country around Phoenix, Mesa and Apache Junction, beneath the Superstition Mountains.

Then came the biggest recorded driving day of the trip: around 326 miles from Apache Junction towards Hoover Dam and Las Vegas.

Hoover Dam is still astonishing engineering. Construction began in 1931, the last concrete in the dam was placed in 1935, and the first generator entered full operation in 1936.

Before the dam could rise, the Colorado River itself had to be diverted through enormous tunnels bored through Black Canyon.

You stand there now as a tourist and it is very easy to forget just how audacious that project was.

Read the Bureau of Reclamation's Hoover Dam chronology

LAS VEGAS: BECAUSE APPARENTLY EIGHT STATES WEREN'T ENOUGH

Nevada isn't one of Route 66's historic eight states.

We added it anyway.

Because after driving across America, apparently the sensible response was to introduce Las Vegas into proceedings.

The desert went from near silence to neon overload almost instantly. The Timeline says we walked more than six miles on our Vegas day, which sounds about right. Vegas has a remarkable ability to make somewhere “just over there” require forty-five minutes and three casinos.

CALIFORNIA: BACK TOWARDS THE MOTHER ROAD

From Vegas we turned southwest.

Jean. Primm. Mojave Desert. Barstow. Victorville. San Bernardino. Los Angeles.

Suddenly the roadside mythology became palm trees, traffic and Hollywood.

And on 20 September, at about 10:41 in the morning according to the surviving Timeline, we reached Santa Monica Pier.

The Mother Road had run out of continent.

SANTA MONICA: THE END THAT ISN'T QUITE THE END

This is one of my favourite bits of Route 66 trivia.

The famous END OF THE TRAIL sign on Santa Monica Pier is the symbolic finish and the photograph everyone wants.

But historically, the official western terminus was actually at Lincoln Boulevard and Olympic Boulevard. Route 66 had originally ended in downtown Los Angeles and was extended to Santa Monica in the 1930s.

The pier's famous End of the Trail sign only arrived in 2009.

Does that make the photograph on the pier less important?

Absolutely not.

If you've driven west from Chicago and the Pacific is suddenly in front of you, that's the emotional finish line. Bureaucracy can have Lincoln and Olympic. I'll take the ocean.

Read Santa Monica's history of Route 66 and its many endings

BUT WE STILL WEREN'T FINISHED

Route 66 was complete.

The holiday wasn't.

We went north.

San Simeon put us beside the Pacific. Then came Paso Robles, Gilroy, San Jose and finally San Francisco.

And because this trip apparently had no interest in gently winding down, we finished the sightseeing with a ferry across the bay to Alcatraz.

Alcatraz operated as a federal penitentiary from 1934 to 1963, holding more than 1,500 prisoners during those 29 years. But its history is much bigger than the prison: military fortification, military prison, lighthouse and the hugely significant Native American occupation of 1969–71 all belong to the island's story.

Explore the National Park Service history of Alcatraz

WHAT THE 4,002 PHOTOGRAPHS ACTUALLY SHOW

The obvious pictures are all there.

Chicago.

Route 66 shields.

Old filling stations.

Roadside America.

Texas.

Desert.

Grand Canyon.

Vegas.

California.

Santa Monica.

San Francisco.

But that isn't really what four thousand photographs preserve.

They preserve accumulation.

Another morning.

Another coffee.

Another bit of old road that suddenly disappears.

Another tiny town whose name you didn't know a month earlier and will now remember forever.

Another ridiculous roadside object that absolutely demands a photograph.

Another state line.

Another motel, campground, fuel stop or diner.

John Rouse. Gary Kirkwood. Me.

Three blokes heading west and gradually turning a famous road into our road.

I THOUGHT ROUTE 66 WAS ABOUT NOSTALGIA

It is.

But not in the way I expected.

The old signs, diners, abandoned alignments and neon matter because Route 66 is a physical record of how travel changed America.

It connected the urban Midwest to the West. It carried migration. It fed thousands of roadside businesses. It represented freedom after the war. Then the Interstate system bypassed the towns that depended on it and the road was officially decommissioned in 1985.

And somehow that should have killed it.

Instead it turned it into a legend.

Which is why, in September 2024, we crossed the Atlantic to drive it.

Twenty-five days later I came home with 4,002 photographs and a much clearer understanding of why people get sentimental about an old road.

Because the best roads don't merely take you somewhere.

They give you a before and an after.

📸 OPEN ALL 4,002 ROUTE 66 PHOTOS ON FLICKR

Route 66, September 2024
John Nickolls / NIX
With John Rouse and Gary Kirkwood