Lonely Planet Route 66 Road Trips

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• Publisher: Lonely Planet
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781786573582
• eBook ISBN: 9781787012356

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Whether exploring your own backyard or somewhere new, discover the freedom of the open road with Lonely Planet's Route 66's Road Trips. Featuring three amazing road trips, plus up-to-date advice on the destinations you'll visit along the way, you can search for roadside attractions or dillydally your way through the desert, all with your trusted travel companion. Jump in the car, turn up the tunes, and hit the road! Inside Lonely Planet's Route 66's Road Trips: Lavish color and gorgeous photography throughout Itineraries and planning advice to pick the right tailored routes for your needs and interests Get around easily - easy-to-read, full-color route maps, detailed directions Insider tips to get around like a local, avoid trouble spots and be safe on the road - local driving rules, parking, toll roads Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Useful features - including Stretch Your Legs, Detours, Link Your Trip Covers Los Angeles, Chicago, St Louis, Kansas, California, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and more The Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet's Route 66's Road Trips is perfect for exploring Route 66 in the classic American way - by road trip! Planning a Route 66 trip sans a car? Lonely Planet's USA guide, our most comprehensive guide to the USA, is perfect for exploring both top sights and lesser-known gems. Looking for a guide focused on a specific Route 66 city? Check out Lonely Planet's Chicago guide and Los Angeles, San Diego & Southern California guide for a comprehensive look at all that these cities have to offer, or Pocket Chicago and Pocket Los Angeles, handy-sized guides focused on the can't-miss sights for a quick trip. About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world's number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and phrasebooks for 120 languages, and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, and in mobile apps, video, 14 languages, 12 international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more, enabling you to explore every day. Lonely Planet enables the curious to experience the world fully and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves, near or far from home.eBook Features: (Best viewed on tablet devices and smartphones) Downloadable PDF and offline maps prevent roaming and data charges Effortlessly navigate and jump between maps and reviews Add notes to personalise your guidebook experience Seamlessly flip between pages Bookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flash Embedded links

Eastern Route 66

Argue if you want, but we all know that 66’s goofiest roadside attractions, friendliest small towns and best pie-filled diners pop up on the eastern swath, from Chicago to western Oklahoma.

TRIP HIGHLIGHTS

5–7 DAYS

1050 miles / 1690km

GREAT FOR…

BEST TIME TO GO

May to September for extended opening hours at attractions.

ESSENTIAL PHOTO

The Gemini Giant, a fiberglass spaceman in Wilmington, IL.

BEST TWO DAYS

Oklahoma has more miles of the original alignment than anywhere, plus cowboys and chicken-fried steak.

The Gemini Giant, Wilmington
MARCO BICCI / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Eastern Route 66

It’s a lonely road – a ghost road really – that appears for a stretch then disappears, gobbled up by the interstate. You know you’ve found it again when a 20ft lumberjack holding a hot dog rises up from the roadside, or a sign points you to the ‘World’s Largest Covered Wagon,’ driven by a giant Abe Lincoln. And that’s just Illinois – the first of eight states on the nostalgic, kitschy, slowpoke drive west.

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1 Chicago

Route 66 kicks off in downtown Chicago on Adams St just west of Michigan Ave. Before you snap the obligatory photo with the ‘Route 66 Begin’ sign (on the south side of Adams, FYI), spend some time exploring the Windy City. Wander through the Art Institute (

312-443-3600; www.artic.edu; 111 S Michigan Ave; adult/child $25/free;

10:30am-5pm Fri-Wed, to 8pm Thu;

;

Brown, Orange, Green, Purple, Pink Line to Adams) – literally steps from the Mother Road’s launching point – and ponder Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (a diner scene) and Grant Wood’s American Gothic (a farmer portrait) to set the scene for what you’ll see en route. Nearby Millennium Park (

312-742-1168; www.millenniumpark.org; 201 E Randolph St;

6am-11pm;

;

Brown, Orange, Green, Purple, Pink Line to Washington/Wabash) is just plain cool, with contemporary public artworks and concerts at lunchtime and many evenings June through August.

The Drive » Stay on Adams St for 1.5 miles until you come to Ogden Ave. Go left, and continue through the suburbs of Cicero and Berwyn. At Harlem Ave, turn left (south) and stay on it briefly until you jump onto Joliet Rd. Soon Joliet Rd joins southbound I-55 (at exit 277), and you’re funneled onto the interstate.

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2 Gemini Giant

Our first stop rises from the cornfields 60 miles south of Chicago. Leave I-55 at exit 241, and follow Hwy 44 south a short distance to Hwy 53, which rolls into the town of Wilmington. Here the Gemini Giant (810 E Baltimore St) – a 28ft fiberglass spaceman – stands guard outside the Launching Pad Drive-In. The restaurant is now shuttered, but the humongous green rocket-holding statue remains a quintessential photo op.

The Drive » Get back on I-55. Take exit 154 for Funks Grove, a 19th-century maple-sirup farm (yes, that’s sirup with an ‘i’). Get on Old Route 66 (a frontage ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• How to Use This eBook
• Contents
• Welcome to Route 66
• Route 66 Map
• Route 66 Highlights
• City Guide
• Need to Know
• Road Trips
• 1 Eastern Route 66 5–7 Days
• 2 Central Route 66 5–7 Days
• 3 Western Route 66 3–4 Days
• Destinations
• Usa Driving Guide
• Behind the Scenes
• Index
• Our Writers