In spring 2000, I kissed my new girlfriend goodbye and set off to ride Route 66 on a Harley-Davidson.
In autumn 2024, I kissed my wife of 20 years hello, and we set off to drive the same route in a motorhome, or recreational vehicle, as they say in the USA.
She was, now that I think of it, the same woman, and this was a trip I’d been wanting to do for almost a quarter of a century.
This being America, the RV was so big that we could probably have got in the back in Chicago, walked to the front, and we’d be in Los Angeles, so it was with some trepidation that I set off, bouncing off a couple of kerbs before I got the hang of taking a wide berth when turning right.
One of the joys of the RV, immediately christened Bill after his registration, was that wherever you park, that’s your home, and our first stop was a car park in Braidwood beside the Main Street Grille, where a cheery small-town waitress served us burgers and beer.
On the Road Again
Slightly jetlagged, I was woken at 4am by that most evocative of American sounds, the lonesome but comforting horn of a freight train heading west.
We were to see several of these en route, pulled by up to five engines and almost a mile long.
And how fine it was the next day on a fresh September morning to drive down the road I had ridden 24 years ago thinking of Cate, my new girlfriend.
To my left were the constant companions of the railroad tracks and the telegraph poles on one side, as they were then, and to my right today was the even more constant companion of my wife.
The Route 66 Association in each state has done a great job of signposting the route and reinstating old roadside adverts such as Burma-Shave, where the one at Dead Man’s Curve says in a succession of signs: Around the curve/ lickety split/ beautiful car/ wasn’t it?/ Burma-Shave.
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A Giant Adventure
About 80% of Route 66 is still there, and a lot of the old 1950s diners and motels doing well on tourist traffic, but I was to find that several of the icons of my first trip were gone, and the first were Funks Grove Maple Sirup and the Palms Grill café in Atlanta, where I’d had a fabulous pie.
At least Tall Paul, the giant statue of Paul Bunyon (sic) holding a hot dog, was still there, across the street from a lofty policeman and gas station attendant outside the American Giants Museum.
These, along with many others along the road, were made by International Fiberglass of Venice, California to attract motorists to businesses.
In Litchfield, I’m pleased to say that the Ariston Café, open since 1924, hadn’t changed a bit. The carefully folded linen napkins were as elegant and fresh as the waitresses, and the huge pie selection as delicious as ever.
“I was in here 24 years ago, when I was young and foolish,” I said to our waitress.
“Weren’t we all?” she laughed.
In Mount Olive, I’d called the last time to see Russell Soulsby, who’d opened the Shell service station in 1926 with his father Henry and ran with his sister Ola until 1991, only to find that Ola had died in 1997, and Russell had joined her two years later.
The good news is that it’s been beautifully restored, down to the old pumps, and inside the ancient TVs Russell repaired as a sideline from the 1950s on.
Ticket to Ride... And for Parking
In St Louis, Eero Saarinen’s stainless steel Gateway Arch was still soaring 630ft into the burning blue as much as my heart sank when I got back to Bill after we’d taken the ride to the top to find a $100 parking ticket.
I certainly didn’t have that problem in 2000, when I’d ridden the Harley right up to the entrance door.
Down the road, another hokey attraction whose advertising billboards for miles used to drive kids into a frenzy and their parents mad were Meramec Caverns.
The last time I was there, it was Easter, and they were having a religious show in which Jesus was crucified, although I thought some of the actors deserved it more.
Since then, it’s become much less hokey and much more commercialised, with rafting, zip lines, high prices and a huge neon sign announcing it as the hiding place of Jesse James; a complete fiction created by owner Lester Dill after he found some rusty guns and an ancient chest there in 1940.
Young and Old
In between churches and Burma-Shave signs, there were a huge number of antique shops on the road west from there; although the USA being such a young country, antique probably means a couple saying to each other: “Wow, honey, this Ikea Billy bookcase is, like, 20 years old…”
In Carthage, the Main Street Mercantile General Store, where I’d spent a happy couple of hours by the stove with two old-timers called Harold and Gene and Harold’s dog Julie, had been killed by chain stores such as Walmart and Dollar General.
In Stroud, the 1939 Rock Café was still serving the best ice cream floats in Oklahoma, and still had the sign outside saying ‘unattended small children will be towed away at owner’s expense’.
Its owner, Dawn Welch, was the inspiration for Sally Carrera in Pixar’s movie Cars.
We bought a takeaway from the Chinese down the street, and sat outside Bill drinking wine while to the north lightning split the sky and small birds trembled in the trees.
In Arcadia, the 1898 Round Barn had been closed the last time, but this time we got inside to admire the beautifully restored domed roof whose perfect acoustics made it a favourite venue for Friday night dances back in the day. In a round barn, they were, ironically, mostly square dances.
I remembered the road into Oklahoma City as being a glorious rollercoaster ride of swooping curves, and it was still the same, although not quite a satisfying in Bill the RV as on a Harley.
A Cowboy Bonanza
On the outskirts of the city, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame had been hugely expanded to include a section of native American Indians, although it still had the section on TV westerns which brought back childhood memories such as Thursday evenings watching The Rifleman with Chuck Connors, followed by A Man Called Shenandoah with Robert Horton.
Or Saturdays catching up with The Virginian or the Cartwright family in Bonanza, then when I was old enough, sitting in the cheap seats at the County Cinema in Omagh watching Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns.
Resisting the temptation to buy a Stetson or a copy of The John Wayne Code, we saddled up and moseyed on out. Anyway, the John Wayne book would probably have just said to love gays, communists and black Americans.
In Clinton, there was nothing left but the lofty sign of the Trade Winds Motel, where I’d had dinner with Doc Mason the owner, then had a look at suite 215, where Elvis always stayed after arriving at dead of night with his entourage in three black limousines, sleeping the next day and ordering from room service, then leaving as secretly as they came.
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“Yes, I’m afraid Doc passed away some years ago,” said Pat in the excellent Route 66 Museum across the road, which has an excellent history of the road, from its birth in 1926, the 1929 stock market crash, Oklahomans fleeing the dust bowl in the 1930s, a military road in the war, the golden years of the 1950s, its death by the interstate freeways and its rebirth as a tourist route.
“Sorry to hear that, Pat, but you don’t fancy taking a nice RV as a trade-in for that gorgeous convertible Corvette Stingray in your window, do you?” I said.
“Honey, you just take it, and I won’t say a word,” she laughed.
A 72oz Steak and Venturing on to the Interstate
We drove slowly through the sleepy town of Erick for fear of the ghost of Officer Elmer, who in the 1940s booked everyone who drove through for speeding, including Bob Hope.
In Amarillo, two tragedies: first, Harvey’s, whose sign Collectibles and Weird Stuff, had proved irresistible, and where Harvey had given me a little King of Hearts key ring for Cate, had closed.
And secondly, Cate politely declined my suggestion that she should try the legendary offer of The Big Texan Steak Ranch – that if you can eat their 72oz steak in an hour, you get it free. You just can’t get the young wives these days.
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Although most of Route 66 is still there, at times you have to take to the interstate, where the number of freight trucks barrelling along night and day is astonishing.
As is the complete lack of recycling: at the Chicago hotel where we’d stayed the night before picking up Bill, the plastic plates, cups and cutlery at breakfast went straight into the bin.
Halfway Halt...
The next day was a Sunday, and the Adrian Café, at the halfway point of Route 66, was packed with Texas pensioners throwing vowels over each other and tucking into buttermilk biscuits and gravy or pancakes the size of dustbin lids smothered in maple syrup.
I told the waitress the story of our trip since the last time I’d eaten there.
“Wow, that’s awesome,” she said. “Now how do you all want your eggs? You can have them any way but poached.”
Twenty miles down the road was Deaf Smith (“Hey, Smith, they named a town after you!” “What?”), then Glenrio. It had been a ghost town I rode through in 2000, and now it was a ghost of a ghost.
And then a very special stop: the Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari. I’d been in my room there after breakfast when the white bedside phone rang, and on the other end was Cate’s lovely voice saying: “Pinch punch, first of the month and no return. Hello, my love.”
It had been fully booked, so we couldn’t stay, but the chambermaid let us have a look at the same room, and it hadn’t changed a bit, down to the white phone.
Back in Bill, we’d had a fly in residence since Chicago, and I’d begun to wonder if it was the same fly, or if like the Pony Express, a string of fresh ones every few miles, but he was now so tame, sitting at our breakfast table happily munching crumbs from Cate’s blueberry muffins, that we decided it was the same one, and christened him Frederick.
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Zero Visibility and Hollywood’s Favourite Desert
On the way to Gallup, a sign said ‘zero visibility possible’, although how you were supposed to see it in zero visibility remained a mystery.
Thankfully, the visibility remained fabulous as we pulled up outside the El Rancho Hotel, built in 1936 by RE Griffith, the brother of Hollywood movie director DW and the home for stars such as Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart when they were filming in the surrounding desert locations.
Inside, the lofty rustic lobby with huge open fire is much the same as when a drunk Errol Flynn rode his horse in through the front doors one night.
It was good to know that on the old road, some things never change.
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In the middle of nowhere in Arizona, we passed a man pushing a bicycle laden with his worldly goods, with his dog padding faithfully beside him.
I was still wondering whether that was a sad sight or a beautiful one when we drove around the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert, from when Arizona was a vast sub-tropical forest 223 million years ago, which is even older than the combined age of the Rolling Stones.
Talking of rock, slightly newer was the Meteor Crater, where 50,000 years ago, a large one entered from space at speed, braked too late, hit Arizona and left a hole three-quarter of a mile wide and 600ft deep.
Under the Stars at the Grand Canyon
Which is almost as deep as your pockets need to be to get in, at $54 for two. Since we were going to see an even more impressive hole in the ground later called the Grand Canyon, we scarpered, on the way out driving past the cattle grid and barbed wire fence to stop cows getting in and skateboarding around the crater at night.
By the time we got to the Grand Canyon, they were zipping it up for the evening, so we parked at a scenic spot and sat out looking up at the countless stars, filled with wonder at two things: that the Plough actually looks like a giant Walmart shopping trolley, and that the Milky Way was formed from a single chocolate bar.
From the east, I could just about hear the excited cries of skateboarding cows: “Hey, Gertrude, watch this!”
These were the best bits of the trip: that wherever we parked for the night was our home, even in the middle of nowhere, then chairs out, G&Ts poured, and sitting chatting as the sun went down and the stars came out.
And the next day, the sheer scale of the Grand Canyon astonished us both; me for the second time, and Cate for the first.
In Seligman, Juan Delgadillo, who I’d interviewed about how he and his brother Angel had revived Route 66 in Arizona, was long gone, but his granddaughter was still running his busy Snowcap Café, and got me with the fake squirty mustard tube, just as he had 24 years before.
Outside, the old signs still said ‘Dead chicken’, ‘Hamburgers without ham’ and ‘Sorry, we’re open’.
Down the dusty desert road in Hackberry, which isn’t even big enough to be a hamlet, the General Store was still doing steady business in everything from Route 66 souvenirs to vintage hubcaps.
At Kingman, the desert gave way to the Black Mountains, a fearful sight for Okies fleeing west in ancient jalopies with the entire family on board and all their worldly goods piled on top.
Some reversed up the hairpins with a steep drop-off only inches away, and others paid locals to drive or tow them up.
In the Footsteps of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard
Even in Bill, it was challenging all the way up and down to Oatman, a real cowboy town with wooden boardwalks and donkeys wandering down the street; descendants of the ones used by local copper miners.
It was here that on March 19 1939 that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent the night of their honeymoon, and the room is just as they left it, down to the white bedspread, white cast-iron bed and gramophone.
On the wall outside is a copy of their marriage certificate, and even after she died in a plane crash three years later, Gable would arrive from time to time to play cards with the miners and stay the night.
Next stop California, and a shock to the system, with fuel prices at up to £1.80 a gallon instead of the 60p we’d got used to; which made quite a difference with Bill doing 10.7mpg.
Now, filling up at over $100 was a bit of change from 2000, when it only took $5 for the Harley.
End of the Road
Another shock to the system was taking a deep breath as we plunged into the ducking, diving and rushing torrent of impatience that is Los Angeles traffic. Haven’t these maniacs ever listened to the laid-back vibe of The Beach Boys?
And another deep breath after we parked by the beach, I went for a swim and was reminded how cold the Pacific is.
As I walked back to Bill and opened the door, Frederick the fly flew out and disappeared for the last time, obviously to buy a tiny board and become a surfing fly dude.
And then we sat outside drinking wine as we watched the sun sink into the ocean on the last night of our great adventure, and I remembered that when I’d finished the last time, I’d handed over the Harley in LA and taken the bus to Vancouver, where Cate was flying out to meet me for two weeks around the Rockies in a Jeep.
“I was completely terrified about getting on the flight, because we’d only been going out for three months, and was so close to not going,” she said as we stood below the sign on Santa Monica Pier marking the end of Route 66.
“Well, are you glad you did?” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“Me too,” I said, and she gave me that look which still melts my heart.
Geoff Hill’s essential Route 66 tips
Getting there
We flew to Chicago and back from Los Angeles with Aer Lingus, which has daily flights to both Chicago and Los Angeles from Dublin, where passengers pre-clear US immigration and customs. Fares start from €239 each way, including taxes and charges. To book visit aerlingus.com.
On the road
If you’re flying from London, America As You Like It (americaasyoulikeit.com, 020 8742 8299) has a 14-night Route 66 RV holiday from £2,190 per person, based on two sharing (or £1,425 based on four sharing), including flights from Heathrow to Chicago, returning from Los Angeles to Heathrow, one-night room-only in a hotel in Chicago and 13 nights’ RV rental, including unlimited mileage, all personal and kitchen kits and one-way drop-off fee.
If you’re flying from Dublin, the company says the price will be much the same.
For information
We used my ancient copy of Route 66: Traveler’s Guide and Roadside Companion by Tom Snyder, which is incredibly detailed and very funny, but last published in 2011, so a bit dated, although still available second-hand online.
Useful up-to-date sources include a Route 66 map by Collins and the Route 66 Travel Guide by Mark Watson.
There is a Route 66 app, route66navigation.com, but you need to download the maps before going, since it doesn’t work very well online, so we used Google Maps.
My book Way to Go, on Delhi to Belfast on an Enfield and Route 66 on a Harley, is on Amazon, £9.95 paperback and £3.99 Kindle.
