Top Tips for travelling Route 66

Today I have the wonderful Jess from Packers Princess blog. talking about her experiences of travelling a road many of us would love to travel down; Route 66. 

Hi, my name is Jess Ford and I am a casual blogger over at the Packers Princess blog. Last year my husband and I finally achieved his dream of travelling Route66 for our honeymoon a year after getting married (whole other story!). We went into it not knowing what to expect or what we should and shouldn’t do so I have compiled a list of tips from our experience that may help prospective travellers.

The first couple of tips are actually pre-travelling, first I would strongly suggest ordering a travel money card, the post office do a good one that you can top up via an app on your phone as well as checking your balance. It is essentially a MasterCard that you can use anywhere that allows card payments.  Both my husband and I had one as we split our money (in case of loss) into the two cards and some cash each.

Next, I did a lot of research pre-travel (because I am anal about travel and like to pre-plan everything which I couldn’t do with this as husband wanted to be plan free) and found a lot of mentions about the EZ66 Route Guide.

Buy this book

This really is a must buy for this trip. It gives you step by step instructions for the whole journey as well as informing you of any interesting sights on the way. What is great are the maps and then sometimes a smaller more detailed map is included to help with any tricky sections.

A lot of Route 66 is no longer there after being replaced by newer, faster roads. This book keeps as true to the original mother road as it can but even we encountered a couple of blocked off bridges etc that had happened since our edition was published.

It is very hard to lose Route 66 in Illinois, the signposting for it is amazing, however the further West you travel the worse the signage for Route 66 is unless you are on it (i.e. it’s painted on the road surface). This book managed to keep us on the right road for the whole 2.5 weeks we travelled with the exception of some newer road layouts in one or two places.

Have a map reader

My husband did a lot of the driving, however I was the real star (direct quote from him), at any one time I was reading the route guide, checking for road signs, checking the sat nav as well as supposedly sight-seeing. It did make the journey a little intense for me in the respect that I was in charge of making sure that we got to where we were supposed to be each night.

Do not get me wrong, I had a great time, and there are stretches of time where there was nothing to do as we had 40 miles on a very straight road to cover. But in the cities.. that was my time to shine! … And get annoyed at hubbo not paying attention to me.

He did say however that he would not have been able to do it without me, so all was forgiven.

Use Sat Nav

We downloaded the US Maps whilst still in the UK so that we could avoid paying for the Sat Nav hire rental fee (per day charge). As this does not use data (we turned the data usage OFF on our phones) and only uses your GPS location as long as you can live without the traffic information you are in safe hands. We were using the TomTom mobile app on iPhone on which the US Maps download in parts, so once you travel out of a particular map you can delete it to save room on your phone. (The maps are pretty hefty in gigabytes!).

As I previously discussed we actually used the guide book to direct us, we only used the Sat Nav as back up in case we took a wrong turn or got lost. Each day we would set it to the hotel address for that night’s accommodation as often the hotel was not exactly on the route, safe in the knowledge that once we got close Sat Nav would take us the rest of the way. Also that if we ever did get lost we could simply plot a course back to the closest part of Route 66 easily enough and pick up where we left off. This definitely helped in one section where there was major roadworks going on that changed the layout and so we had to just pick a point to catch up with the road and follow the Sat Nav to that point. 

Pick your transportation

We had originally booked to do Route 66 in a VW Jetta as we thought that we would like some space if we are going to be in a car for almost 3 weeks and a mini sized car would be no good. However, it had always been my husband’s dream to do it in a muscle car like a Ford Mustang. So… because I am an awesome wife, when we got to the car rental desk we upgraded to a Mustang convertible. Yes it cost us a little extra but we got there on the last day of a Labour Day weekend sale (or so they said) so there was a discount on it.

By the way, with one way rental there is a $500 fee ON TOP of whatever you pay for the car due to how far away you are dropping it off, so factor that into your budgets.

One thing you will discover is that EVERYONE is doing Route 66 in a convertible Mustang. As we discovered at the mid-point of the Route when we met another couple doing Route 66 the other way. I mean what are the odds?! To meet another couple at the exact mid-point, at the same exact time, driving the same car but going the opposite direction. Well it turns out not that strange as another black Mustang pulled in behind us shortly after. It looked like we were part of some sort of club.

The convertible was a great idea, except that most of the time it was too damn hot/humid to have the roof down and it was roof up, air conditioning on for a lot of the time.

Hotels – Book 1 night before… and read reviews

Apart from a couple of places that we pre-booked (such as Hard Rock Hotel in Chicago and the hotel in LA) we only booked our hotel for the following day once we got to our hotel that night. We booked them online using apps on our phone like Booking.com when we were attached to the hotel Wi-Fi. What we would do is pick roughly where we wanted to get to and then find a hotel in the area to aim for. Occasionally there were specific things we wanted to stop there for, such as Kingman, AZ because we were heading up to the Grand Canyon and then back again to head to Las Vegas to see a friend.

This mostly worked pretty well, except for a lesson that we learnt pretty early on: always read the reviews. There was a couple of dodgy ones in there that had we read reviews for we probably would have booked the hotel next door instead. But also take them with a pinch of salt, most of the time people only bother to write a review if they have had a suboptimal experience. But if there are that many of them then do listen to them! If it’s just one or two then it will probably be fine.

Plus… even if you do end up in somewhere a little crappy, remember that you’re only there one night and then you’re off on the road again the next morning. Sometimes just realise that all you need for that night is a bed and a shower… and a TV… and a pool… and breakfast…

Double your driving time – don’t trust google maps

Whenever we would look at the next destination we would think oh it’s only 200 miles we can do that easily. WRONG. With Route 66 if you stick to the original road always at least double your driving time because whilst driving you will stop, you will take photos and do stuff, you will be driving slower than if you were on the ’freeway’ because they are little roads or even barely roads.

Although it states the mileage for Route 66 is around 2,450 we actually ended up doing 3,000 miles. You need to keep in mind that with that comes more petrol usage etc. (Which is not much of a cost issue due to how cheap it is there… although the closer you get to the Western end of Route 66 the more expensive it gets).

Don’t plan too much – follow your whimsy

Whilst travelling Route 66 there is much to see and do. You will not lack for things to see but what we loved doing the most was the random side trips we made. For instance, we went to the Meteor Crater in Arizona with only 30 minutes to closing because we saw the signs for it and decided within seconds because ‘when we would be there again?’ So we went down and boy was it worth it. Yes at the end of the day it is just a massive hole in the ground but the sheer size of it makes it something to see.

We also went to a Drive-In Movie Theatre that I had pre-holiday checked out and got the American experience of a drive in that was amazing, unfortunately the film wasn’t (looking at you Sausage Party!).

Even driving down to Las Vegas and seeing the Grand Canyon on the way was well worth the extra mileage and time out of the trip. We even renewed our vows because what do you do in Vegas? You get married!

Petrol vs UBER

Lastly, to save money we returned the car the day before HOWEVER because we had no car we used Uber in La. Bad mistake, we almost spent more on Uber in the two days that we were in LA than on petrol for the whole trip! We spent a grand total of $319 on petrol (which is disgusting that we were able to drive over 3000 miles in a muscle car that cost that little when you consider the petrol prices here in the UK!) and $120 on Ubers.

If you can, keep the car!

Hopefully this was helpful to you guys or at the very least just interesting!

Jess