Originally Posted by
Rowan
...Have any of you driven or ridden the original Route 66, either part of, or all the way between the two start-finish points? What are you fondest memories?
Certainly, I am thinking this would be a worthwhile cycling route to follow sometime into the future. Is that a realistic bucket-list deal?
Back in 1977 on our cross-country cycling honeymoon from Los Angeles to Washington, DC, we rode historic Route 66 from Kingman, AZ to Williams, AZ, over about three days. I recall wide, but desolate vistas punctuated by small towns like Seligman and Peach Springs. The two big attractions that I remember were the Andy Devine Museum in Kingman, and the Crand Canyon Caverns guided tour somewhere along the Route. (Baby Boomers may recall Andy Devine as Wild Bill Hickock’s sidekick, Jingles, on that 1950’s TV show,
The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock.)
As I recall, somewhere beginning around Ash Fork was a peculiar abandoned segment that paralled I-40 to Williams. There was virtually no traffic, with grass sprouting up between the cracks in the road, and the surface had a peculiar red tinge, probably from sandstone. I was amused several years later when the 1984 film
Repo Man featured in the opening as the credits rolled, a road map including that same segment tracing the route of a renegade scientist as he fled New Mexico to Los Angeles with four dead extra-terrestrial aliens in his trunk.
