Questions From a Brit About Driving Route 66

A friend who works at the MINI factory in Oxford recently sent me an email saying that he may need my help planning something in the US – something that he’d always dreamt doing. In an effort to get the word out and help him with his plans here are the details:

Apart from climbing Everest this is the one thing I’ve wanted to do for ages, and now I’m taking the plunge. I’m planning for next year a raid on the legendary Route 66 or what remains of it. We’re planning to start in Chicago, and go all the way down to Santa Barbara but need some advice.

Local information is what we need. We seem to have contacts in Chicago, i.e you, and in So Cal but the hard part will be local knowledge of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, as I have not yet found any MINI owners there yet. But MINI2 and your site are powerful medicine, and doubtless the how to, must do and what not to information will come flooding in. If people want to contact me direct, then goonery@tesco.net will get me, and we’ll be very grateful for any input at all. If you can get offers of help or advice, it would be fantastic. Anyone who would like to join up would be welcome, we would appreciate people who speak the language to help us deal with overzealous local police and bandits along the way.”

For those of you who don’t know Route 66 is one of the first (and certainly most celebrated) roads to cross the United States. It stretches from Chicago to California. While some of the old stretches are now gone much of it remains intact. In many ways it’s a time warp to an Americana that hardly exists anymore.

It looks like what he needs more than anything is advice on what to see and what not to see. It’s a long trip with some great sites and some not so great sites (largest ball of yarn anyone?). For his benefit here are some of the questions he’s asked above – between all of our collective motoring experience hopefully we’ll have some answers.

• Is a hired MINI a good car to do it in, or would a one way hire on a bigger something be more appropriate.
• What’s the best time of year to do something like this seeing as there are deserts along the way. oh there are loads more.
• Anybody actually done the whole thing?
• How far is it from end to end?
• How long would it take in comfortable stages? (we reckon on 10 driving days but over a 14 day vacation)
• Any recommended books, websites, CD ROM, DVD guides?
• Where’s good to stop over?