**ROUTE 66**

🇺🇸 🛣️ 🌵 📷 🚂 🌉

Some journeys finish when you get home.

Others quietly keep going.

Route 66 belongs firmly in the second category.

In September 2024, three blokes left Stafford and headed west. John. Gary. Me. What followed wasn't simply a holiday in America. It became a 25-day road journey across a continent, through the Midwest, across the plains, into the desert, over mountains and eventually all the way to the Pacific.

And thanks to Google Timeline, much of that journey still exists as something more precise than memory.

Coordinates.

Distances.

Stops.

Walking.

Flights.

A railway journey into the Grand Canyon.

A ferry across San Francisco Bay.

And thousands upon thousands of miles joining it all together.

The complete door-to-door Timeline contains approximately 12,874 miles of recorded movement, including about 3,193 miles of road-like movement inside the United States. Those figures come from Google's activity-distance data rather than a vehicle odometer, but together they reveal the extraordinary scale of what we actually did.

This is that story.

Not Route 66 imagined.

Sunday, 1 September 2024.

That is where the data begins.

Home disappears behind us and the great American adventure starts with the wonderfully unglamorous reality of driving south through England.

Stafford to Heathrow.

Approximately 129.5 miles recorded.

Arrival around 14:27.

For a journey destined to cross the American continent, the first night was still technically in England. There is something pleasingly British about that.

Tomorrow America.

Tonight Heathrow.

Then, on Monday 2 September, the scale changes rather dramatically.

Heathrow.

Chicago O'Hare.

Google recorded 6,342,286 metres in the air, approximately 3,941 miles across the Atlantic.

A road transfer followed.

Then suddenly the names on the map were no longer hypothetical.

We were in Chicago. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="1"}

Tuesday, 3 September.

We didn't land, grab a vehicle and immediately disappear west.

Chicago got a day.

And I'm glad it did.

The Timeline records roughly 6.7 miles of walking, meaning Chicago wasn't merely the point where Route 66 happened to begin. We actually explored the place.

That matters.

Because the road feels different when you've experienced where it starts.

Tomorrow we'd be driving west.

Today we were walking through one of America's great cities.

And somewhere inside that city lay the beginning of perhaps the most famous road journey on Earth.

Route 66.

The Mother Road.

Chicago to Los Angeles.

A road absorbed into American folklore so completely that its name needs almost no explanation.

One number.

Two digits.

And on 4 September, we joined it.

Chicago → Springfield, Illinois.

Approximately 208 recorded miles.

Now the trip changed.

Chicago fell behind us and the road began threading through the little places that give Route 66 its personality.

Joliet.

Wilmington.

Braidwood.

Dwight.

Odell.

Pontiac.

Bloomington.

Normal.

Lincoln.

Springfield.

These aren't merely waypoints between famous destinations. They are Route 66.

Pontiac particularly stands out in the surviving Timeline, with approximately an hour spent there.

And this was the first lesson of the road.

Route 66 isn't really about driving from Chicago to California.

You could do that much faster using modern highways.

The reason for driving Route 66 is everything between Chicago and California.

The old alignments.

The forgotten towns.

The diners.

The garages.

The signs.

The strange little roadside attractions.

The feeling that the journey itself has become the destination.

By evening we were around Springfield and Rochester.

One day down.

America already stretching enormously ahead.

Springfield → St Louis area.

Approximately 97 recorded miles.

A comparatively short day.

Carlinville appears clearly in the data, with roughly three-quarters of an hour spent there.

Then the road approaches one of America's great geographical dividing lines.

The Mississippi.

Illinois had introduced us gently to Route 66.

City skyline.

Small towns.

Grain country.

Old road.

Railways.

Water towers.

Then suddenly the landscape offered something symbolic.

Crossing the Mississippi means Missouri.

And somehow Route 66 immediately feels more serious once you've crossed a river that big.

The journey west is properly underway.

St Louis → Springfield, Missouri.

Approximately 232 recorded miles.

Now the road begins rolling.

Pacific.

St Clair.

Sullivan.

Cuba.

Rolla.

Waynesville.

Devil's Elbow.

Lebanon.

Marshfield.

Springfield.

Route 66 becomes less geometric here.

The landscapes change.

The road bends.

Forests arrive.

The Ozarks begin to replace the wide agricultural openness of Illinois.

And the names become increasingly wonderful.

You cannot drive across America on a road containing somewhere called Devil's Elbow and not enjoy yourself.

St Clair survives as a clear Timeline stop.

The digital breadcrumbs are beginning to form a proper chain now.

Not simply Chicago over here and California somewhere unimaginably distant over there.

Actual places.

One after another.

One piece of America joining the next.

Springfield → Joplin.

Approximately 85 recorded miles.

Another relatively relaxed day.

Carthage gets almost an hour in the Timeline before the journey reaches Joplin.

By now Route 66 has found its rhythm.

Drive.

Stop.

Look.

Explore.

Drive again.

That pattern is important.

Because the days where relatively few miles were travelled were not failures to make progress.

They were the point.

The Interstate mentality says miles equal progress.

Route 66 says memories equal progress.

That philosophy would eventually become something I'd recognise very clearly in my later campervan travels.

Sometimes fifty interesting miles beat three hundred efficient ones.

Joplin → Kansas → Oklahoma City.

Approximately 213 recorded miles.

Kansas barely gets through the door before Route 66 leaves it again.

Galena.

Riverton.

Baxter Springs.

That's essentially the Kansas Route 66 experience.

Tiny.

But gloriously real.

Baxter Springs appears clearly in the Timeline, proving we didn't simply skim across a state boundary according to some theoretical historic route.

We were there.

Then Oklahoma arrives.

Miami.

Afton.

Vinita.

Claremore.

Tulsa.

Stroud.

Chandler.

Arcadia.

Oklahoma City.

Afton and Chandler both survive as definite Timeline stops.

And now the scale of America starts becoming more apparent.

Illinois feels a long way behind.

California still feels impossibly far ahead.

Exactly as it should.

Oklahoma City → Amarillo.

Approximately 277 recorded miles.

El Reno.

Weatherford.

Clinton.

Elk City.

Sayre.

Erick.

Texola.

Then Texas.

Shamrock appears as a definite stop and becomes our marker that the Lone Star State had arrived.

From there the Route 66 corridor pushes through:

McLean.

Alanreed.

Groom.

Conway.

Amarillo.

The landscape has opened.

The sky has become part of the scenery.

Roads seem to point towards horizons rather than destinations.

This is the America road films promised.

Not because everything looks perfect.

Because everything looks enormous.

Movement recorded: approximately 14.5 miles.

In other words, practically nothing.

Perfect.

After several days of following the Mother Road west, Amarillo became a pause.

This is another reason the Timeline fascinates me.

It shows the rhythm of the trip.

There are days where hundreds of miles collapse behind us.

Then there are days where the data barely moves.

Those aren't empty spaces.

They are breathing spaces.

A good road trip needs both.

Amarillo → Albuquerque.

Approximately 283 recorded miles.

Now comes one of the places almost everybody associates with Route 66.

The GPS data sits practically on the installation.

There is something wonderfully absurd about Cadillac Ranch.

Cars buried nose-first into Texas soil.

Graffiti.

Spray paint.

Automotive archaeology.

Completely unnecessary.

Therefore absolutely perfect.

Route 66 thrives on unnecessary things.

Then comes Adrian.

Midpoint country.

From there the route continues towards Glenrio and into New Mexico.

Tucumcari.

Santa Rosa.

Moriarty.

Tijeras.

Albuquerque.

Texas disappears behind us.

The Southwest has arrived.

Some landscapes look impressive.

New Mexico looks scripted.

Huge sky.

Distant mountains.

Light bouncing off desert.

Roads heading towards horizons that never seem to get closer.

And town names that already sound like movie titles.

Tucumcari.

Santa Rosa.

Albuquerque.

Gallup.

No editing required.

The scenery has done it for you.

On 11 September we reached Albuquerque.

Then came something increasingly rare on a transcontinental road trip.

We stopped.

Only around 20 recorded miles.

The Timeline repeatedly clusters around Albuquerque.

Another deliberate pause.

Another day where the objective wasn't to chase California.

The road would still be there tomorrow.

There is something rather important hidden inside that.

Good travel isn't an endurance event.

Sometimes the most memorable days begin when you stop moving.

Approximately 238 recorded miles.

Laguna.

Grants.

Milan.

Thoreau.

Gallup.

Then Arizona.

And almost immediately the scenery starts competing with everything that came before it.

The Timeline captures multiple points around the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest.

Then Holbrook.

The night's stop.

Arizona is where our journey begins quietly rebelling against the idea that this is simply Route 66.

There is too much nearby not to explore.

And we were about to prove it.

Holbrook → Williams.

Approximately 130 recorded miles.

One of those days where mileage tells almost nothing about what happened.

Winslow gets more than an hour.

And yes, there is something inherently satisfying about actually standing in Winslow, Arizona after hearing the name embedded in American music and road culture for decades.

Then Meteor Crater.

The Timeline puts us there for approximately 1 hour 24 minutes.

A vast hole punched into Arizona by something moving vastly faster than anything we'd been driving.

Then Flagstaff.

Then Williams.

Approximately 130 miles.

But packed with places.

Painted Desert.

Holbrook.

Winslow.

Meteor Crater.

Flagstaff.

Williams.

This is why Route 66 is dangerous for anyone who loves maps.

Every dot produces another detour.

Every detour produces another story.

Williams.

09:31-ish.

Google Timeline does something brilliant.

It changes transport mode.

Destination:

The outbound journey covers 91,111 metres, approximately 56.6 miles, from Williams towards the South Rim.

Then the movement stops.

For approximately 3 hours 38 minutes.

Because there are certain places where even three blokes driving across America eventually shut up.

The Grand Canyon will do that.

You can know its dimensions.

You can see photographs.

You can watch documentaries.

You can read about geology.

None of it prepares your eyes for the scale of the thing.

The brain attempts to process distance.

Fails.

Tries again.

And eventually just gives up and lets you look.

The railway then carried us back to Williams.

Total railway movement for the day was approximately 116 miles.

One of the finest pieces of data in the entire archive.

Route 66 trip.

Car parked.

Train north.

Grand Canyon.

Train back.

The road could wait.

▶ Play film

Williams → Apache Junction.

Approximately 206 recorded miles.

And now the route takes a deliberate dive away from the classic westbound Mother Road.

Flagstaff.

Camp Verde.

Phoenix and Mesa corridor.

Apache Junction.

The landscape changes again.

Arizona is extraordinary because it refuses to stay visually consistent.

High country.

Pine.

Desert.

Rock.

Cactus.

Huge sky.

And eventually the Superstition Mountains.

That night we were beneath them.

Route 66 remained up there somewhere behind us.

Our road was now bigger than Route 66.

Apache Junction → Hoover Dam → Las Vegas.

Approximately 326 recorded miles.

The biggest explicit road day in the Timeline.

Wickenburg.

Wikieup.

Kingman corridor.

Then one of the great engineering landmarks of the American West.

Even on a journey filled with huge landscapes, Hoover Dam belongs to a different category.

Humans looked at the Colorado River and basically decided they could redesign geography.

And then did.

The Timeline shows the pause around the dam.

From there Google records the final passenger-vehicle leg into Las Vegas as 48,206 metres.

About 30 miles.

Nevada wasn't one of Route 66's original eight states.

We added it anyway.

Frankly, after driving most of the way across America it would have been rather rude not to.

Approximately 10 miles of total movement.

More than six of them walking.

Possibly the most accurate statistical description of Vegas ever produced.

After days of road, desert and tiny Route 66 towns, Vegas must have felt like somebody turned every dial simultaneously to maximum.

Light.

Noise.

Screens.

Traffic.

Casinos.

People.

Architecture pretending to be other countries.

America's great neon fever dream.

And for once the vehicle mostly stayed put.

Our feet did the travelling.

Las Vegas → Los Angeles.

Approximately 288 recorded miles.

Nevada falls behind.

Jean.

Primm.

Then the Mojave.

Barstow.

Yermo.

Victorville.

San Bernardino.

Los Angeles.

West Hollywood.

California.

The final Route 66 state.

By now we had crossed Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

Eight historic Route 66 states.

Thousands of miles.

And somewhere beyond Los Angeles was an ocean.

Tomorrow we'd find it.

There are moments on journeys when coordinates become emotionally significant.

This is one of them.

Santa Monica Pier.

The Timeline arrives.

Then stays.

Approximately 1 hour 10 minutes.

Chicago is behind us.

Illinois.

Missouri.

Kansas.

Oklahoma.

Texas.

New Mexico.

Arizona.

California.

All connected.

Road by road.

Town by town.

Stop by stop.

And suddenly there is nowhere further west for Route 66 to go.

The continent ends.

The Pacific begins.

For generations, Route 66 represented escape towards California.

Thousands came west looking for work, opportunity, reinvention, sunshine, whatever might exist beyond the horizon.

We had followed the road for entirely different reasons.

But standing beside the Pacific, the geography is unmistakable.

You've crossed America.

The Atlantic was behind us.

The Pacific was in front.

Route 66 was finished.

We weren't.

A sensible itinerary might have stopped here.

Route 66 completed.

Santa Monica photographed.

Job done.

Fly home.

We chose another option.

Turn north.

Keep going.

😎

Approximately 233 recorded miles.

Now Route 66 disappears from the story and California becomes the story.

Leaving Southern California behind, the journey pushes north towards the coast.

The overnight coordinates at San Simeon sit virtually beside the Pacific.

A few days previously we'd been driving through Arizona desert.

Now the ocean was outside.

This is what a huge road journey does.

It compresses landscapes into memory.

Desert and ocean end up separated by pages rather than thousands of miles.

Approximately 259 recorded miles.

Paso Robles.

The central California corridor.

Gilroy.

San Jose.

Then:

Another name that hardly needs an introduction.

By now our American road trip had completely escaped its original brief.

What began at Route 66 in Chicago had crossed the country, detoured to the Grand Canyon, dropped south through Arizona, swung north-west via Hoover Dam and Vegas, reached Los Angeles, touched the Pacific at Santa Monica and then continued up California.

Which is exactly how good journeys sometimes work.

Plans provide structure.

Curiosity supplies the interesting bits.

09:44.

Google Timeline changes transport mode again.

Distance outbound:

Destination:

Alcatraz.

Then another wonderful digital pause.

Approximately 2 hours 41 minutes on the island before the ferry returns us to San Francisco.

There is something almost absurdly cinematic about the final major excursion of this journey.

We started walking around Chicago.

We drove Route 66.

We crossed America.

We rode a train to the Grand Canyon.

We drove to Hoover Dam and Las Vegas.

We reached the Pacific.

We drove the California coast.

And now we're on a ferry in San Francisco Bay heading for Alcatraz.

You could plan a cleaner ending.

I don't think you could plan a much better one.

San Francisco.

Then the airport.

San Francisco International.

And eventually another line shoots across the map.

East.

Over America.

Over the Atlantic.

Towards Britain.

The night's overnight location is the most unusual of the entire trip.

No town.

No state.

No hotel.

Somewhere over the Atlantic.

Heathrow.

One final journey remained.

Google records 199,546 metres, approximately 124 miles, from the airport area back towards Stafford.

Then:

The coordinates return home.

The loop closes.

Elapsed time since leaving:

Two Atlantic crossings.

Nine US states if Nevada is included with the eight Route 66 states.

Chicago.

The Midwest.

The Ozarks.

Kansas.

Oklahoma.

Texas.

New Mexico.

Arizona.

Grand Canyon.

Hoover Dam.

Nevada.

Las Vegas.

California.

Santa Monica.

The Pacific.

San Simeon.

San Francisco.

Alcatraz.

Then home.

The huge names naturally dominate the photographs.

Grand Canyon.

Las Vegas.

Santa Monica.

San Francisco.

But when I look at the Timeline, some of the most evocative pieces are tiny.

Pontiac.

Approximately an hour.

Carlinville.

Roughly three-quarters of an hour.

St Clair.

Carthage.

Baxter Springs.

Afton.

Chandler.

Shamrock.

Adrian.

Cadillac Ranch.

Winslow.

Meteor Crater.

Wikieup.

They are little digital fossils.

Evidence that on a particular day, in September 2024, three blokes from Britain were standing in that exact piece of America.

That's what makes a Timeline so powerful.

A memory says:

"We drove Route 66."

The data says:

"No. Look closer."

You were here.

And here.

And here.

And here.

Thousands of moments connected into one enormous line.

🇺🇸 25 days

🌙 24 nights away

🚗 Approximately 3,193 miles of recorded US road-like movement

🌍 Approximately 12,874 miles of recorded total movement

✈️ Two Atlantic crossings

🛣️ Eight historic Route 66 states

🎰 One extra state, Nevada

🚂 Around 116 miles aboard the Grand Canyon Railway

🏜️ Approximately 3 hours 38 minutes at the Grand Canyon South Rim

☄️ Approximately 1 hour 24 minutes at Meteor Crater

🌊 Approximately 1 hour 10 minutes at Santa Monica Pier

⛴️ 2,794 metres by ferry to Alcatraz

🏝️ Approximately 2 hours 41 minutes on Alcatraz

🚶 Chicago walked

🎰 Vegas walked

🌅 One continent crossed

🏠 Home again at 18:17 on 25 September

The mileage figures are Google Timeline activity-distance measurements rather than odometer readings, which is an important distinction. But for reconstructing the scale and rhythm of the trip, they're extraordinary.

Looking at this journey from 2026, something else becomes obvious.

Route 66 happened before so much of what NIX // ROAD has now become.

Before the huge European Drift.

Before thousands more miles through Britain and continental Europe.

Before VANILLA became such an integral part of how I travel.

Before Norway and Scandinavia became the next distant dots on the map.

Yet the philosophy was already there.

Don't simply arrive.

Travel.

Take the road.

Stop.

Look around.

Photograph things.

Go down the interesting side road.

Stay somewhere because you like it.

Change the plan because something better appeared.

The destination matters.

But the distance between destinations is where most of the story lives.

Route 66 proved that spectacularly.

Google can tell me how far we drove.

It can tell me when we arrived.

It can distinguish walking from driving, train from ferry and flight from road.

It remembers the railway to the Grand Canyon.

It remembers Santa Monica Pier.

It remembers Alcatraz.

What it can't record is everything between those data points.

The conversations.

The running jokes.

The coffees.

The wrong turns.

The silences when the scenery suddenly became too good to talk over.

The tiny things that made perfect sense at the time and would be impossible to explain now.

That's the difference between data and memory.

The data gives the journey a skeleton.

Memory puts the life back into it.

And photographs give it a face.

Route 66 no longer exists as a single official US highway.

And that almost makes it more interesting.

You aren't simply following a road.

You're following a story.

Old alignments appear and disappear.

Historic business loops run beside modern Interstates.

Fragments survive through towns that the modern road system bypassed decades ago.

Signs keep bringing the old highway back to life.

People keep maintaining businesses beside it.

Travellers keep arriving.

Because Route 66 is no longer important as transport infrastructure.

It is important because people still care about travelling it.

There is a huge difference.

Modern roads are designed to eliminate friction.

Route 66 is interesting because of the friction.

You stop.

You look.

You wonder.

You get distracted.

You photograph an old garage.

You find something ridiculous at the roadside.

You stand somewhere you've heard mentioned for forty years.

You take too long over lunch.

You travel slowly enough to see where you are.

That's the magic.

Chicago.

Joliet.

Pontiac.

Springfield.

St Louis.

Cuba.

Rolla.

Devil's Elbow.

Lebanon.

Springfield.

Carthage.

Joplin.

Galena.

Baxter Springs.

Miami.

Afton.

Tulsa.

Chandler.

Oklahoma City.

El Reno.

Clinton.

Elk City.

Shamrock.

Amarillo.

Cadillac Ranch.

Adrian.

Tucumcari.

Santa Rosa.

Albuquerque.

Gallup.

Painted Desert.

Holbrook.

Winslow.

Meteor Crater.

Flagstaff.

Williams.

Grand Canyon.

Apache Junction.

Wikieup.

Hoover Dam.

Las Vegas.

Barstow.

Victorville.

San Bernardino.

Los Angeles.

Santa Monica.

San Simeon.

San Francisco.

Alcatraz.

Stafford.

Read slowly, those aren't merely place names.

They are the shape of September 2024.

Of all the coordinates in the dataset, Santa Monica means something different.

Because you can't continue Route 66.

Not really.

At some point the road has to stop.

There is something emotionally neat about a transcontinental journey eventually meeting an ocean.

You've spent days watching a road escape towards the horizon.

Then one morning there isn't another horizon of asphalt.

There's water.

And you've reached the western edge of the continent.

The data says:

A little over an hour.

Memory says something much bigger.

It is now 2026.

Much has happened since.

More miles.

More countries.

More photographs.

More maps.

VANILLA.

NIX // ROAD.

NIX // SKY.

NIX // TRAIL.

The European Drift.

An evolving NIX // ATLAS capable of turning years of movement into something visible.

And there are still enormous journeys ahead.

But Route 66 has not shrunk with time.

Quite the opposite.

The more travelling I've done since, the easier it is to recognise what that journey represented.

Freedom.

Curiosity.

Movement.

Friendship.

Photography.

Discovery.

And the simple satisfaction of watching somewhere you've imagined for years suddenly appear through a windscreen.

The famous photographs will always be there.

The Route 66 shield.

Cadillac Ranch.

The Grand Canyon.

Hoover Dam.

Las Vegas.

Santa Monica.

The Pacific.

San Francisco.

But the journey lived in the gaps between them.

Another coffee.

Another state line.

Another strange town name.

Another road disappearing into an impossibly large American sky.

Another hundred miles.

Another story.

Google remembers where we went.

I remember why it mattered.

Route 66 stopped being a famous road.

🇺🇸🛣️🌵📷🚂🌊