The legendary Historic Route 66 takes you from Grant Park Chicago to Santa Monica Pier. It becomes a shadow of its former self as the new highway system was built in 1980’s bypassing most of the towns located along the route. Sometimes you need to drive on the highway to get to the next town, but there are a few old towns that cling to the not so distant past and you can still drive along the old route to follow the history. The Historic Route 66 road trip took us about 6 days (about 3500km) and we stopped by about 15 towns throughout the whole journey.
We landed at Los Angeles, the destination of our road trip was Chicago, which supposed to be the beginning of the Route 66. We planned spending 1 week to visit some national parks in Utah and Arizona before we heading down to Route 66.
So our journey began in Williams, Arizona
Williams, Arizona
Everything in Williams is about Route 66, cafes, restaurants, bars and all the shops. Even the cars park along the road bring you all the senses of route 66. Stop at Williams was like stepping back in time, or running into a movie scene. You can feel the tones of stories happened there and time had been frozen since then.
Winslow, Arizona
Everything in Williams is about Route 66, cafes, restaurants, bars and all the shops. Even the cars park along the road bring you all the senses of route 66. Stop at Williams was like stepping back in time, or running into a movie scene. You can feel the tones of stories happened there and time had been frozen since then.
Holbrook, Arizona
Besides all the stories that we heard about Route 66, another crucial reason that we decided to go for this trip was the Wigwam Motel photo we saw online before we even heard about this road.
There were 7 motels in the past and only left 3 now. Two of the Wigwam Motels are located along Route 66 and we decided to visit the one at Holbrook, Arizona. Every Wigwam has a vintage car parked outside to add in the colour. Today, the Wigwam are for display purpose only, and you could only stay the night at the two storeys house behind them.
If you are a super fan of vintage car, this is really a cool place that you won't want to miss it!
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque old town is a very famous shopping and touristic destination. The buildings there were founding by the Spanish so you can find the historic adobe buildings all around the district, yet it shows a very strong mexican culture place. An interesting spot we found in the town was seeing the local people making and selling hand-crafted accessories under a roof. They are all super friendly and so willing to share with you about their design concepts and even their lives, it was really inspiring and you will be surprised when you heard about their design—every stone they used, has its own stories, and they are all unique by themselves. Besides this, you can find all kinds of vibrant color painted skulls in the souvenir shops.