Finding the Old Road

As I’ve mentioned that I’ve got lost several times I thought I would share with you how I, and many others, find the old road. I’m using a book by Jerry McClanahan called Route 66: EZ Guide For Travellers (http://www.amazon.com/Route-66-Guide-Travelers-Edition/dp/0970995164/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344513633&sr=8-1&keywords=ez+guide+for+travellers). It’s spiral bound with directions and information on each page. The instructions on the top of the page are for west bound travellers, like myself, and the instructions on the bottom of the page are for eastbound travellers.

A sample page from Route 66  EZ Guide for Travellers

A sample page from Route 66 EZ Guide for Travellers

Depending on the complexity of the route pages need to be turned every few miles, sometimes as little as 5 in towns or sometimes 40 or 50 miles in the open countryside. For me that means stopping, extracting it from my map holder on the top of the petrol tank, turning the page, putting it back in the holder and then reading the new instructions. A bit time consuming, and the reason for so many wrong turns (my memory being what it is!)

It is however the ‘bible’ for anyone wishing to travel Route 66, and I thank Jerry for his hard work putting it together and keeping it updated.

Time to go and start using it now.

Abandoned Businesses

Not a lot of words to say here. Just how sad it is to see these monuments to the Mother Road brought to their knees. These are the pics of the abandoned businesses that I said I would post in the ‘Half Way!’ post. No captions, the pics say it all. You don;t need to know where that all are, however many are from one place: Conway.

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Half Way!

I made it to the half way point today :) 1139 miles from Chicago and 1139 miles from Santa Monica (only I’ve actually done 1328 because of poor navigation and a couple of ‘side trips’). When I say I made it to the half way point I actually mean that I did (see the photos), however I’m currently in Vega Texas, about 12 miles short of the half way point as I had to turn back once I got there. I asked the people in the shop there where the next hotel / motel was and they said 12 miles east in Vega or 80 miles west in Tucumcari, New Mexico. I didn’t fancy another 80 miles, so turned around!

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