Gettin' Our Kicks On Route 66 - 2004

 

This page is about our 2004 adventure on the "Mother Road", US Route 66.  This fabled highway, a genuine piece of Americana, ran nearly 2,300 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles.  It's been memorialized in scores of books, two movies and a popular TV show "Route 66" that ran from 1960 through 1964.  It's even been the subject of a great song by Bobby Troup, "Get Your Kicks on Route 66!" (Click to hear!)

We decided to follow Bobby's advice and travel, as much as possible, the length of this historic stretch of concrete and asphalt.

The Mother Road was commissioned in 1926 and was the major national East-West highway for decades.  It was rendered obsolete by the Interstate Highway System and parts of it no longer exist -- no longer exist, that is, as a contiguous highway.  But there are scores of relics of the Fifties along the road and many restored diners, gas stations, museums and other curiosities still there to see and enjoy.

When we were fortunate enough to acquire two very special Corvettes, the 1953 Commemorative Edition Corvette:

.. it seemed like a great idea to take this pair of nostalgic Corvette icons on the trip that helped make Corvette a household name (through the TV series starring Martin Milner and George Maharis as "Tod Stiles" and "Buz Murdock"):

What the heck, we already had our "Buz(z)"..

To read about the origin of Route 66 click HERE and to read about the Route 66 TV series, click HERE.

The Plan

We're going to attend (as usual) the C5 Birthday Bash at the National Corvette Museum (NCM) the last weekend of April.  We chose this time because April-May should be a pleasant time on the road and, since Buzz and Jackie live in Tampa and Chaz and Gael live in Atlanta, going from Kentucky seemed sensible.  At the time.

We met during Valentine's week at Hilton Head Island, SC to do the planning.  We wanted to experience all the quaint (goofy?) things-to-do along the road so we bought just about every Route 66 guidebook, map and DVD we could find.  Chaz sat at the laptop building an Excel spreadsheet while everyone else tried to stay in sequence with multiple maps, books and DVDs.  Here's what THAT session looked like:


Gael
Jackie

Buzz
Chaz
The idea is to take our time, scheduling no more than 150-200 miles each day.  We figured this would give us plenty of time for sidetrips, photos -- and to meet friends along the route (more about this later).

We had signs made to put on both sides of our Corvettes:

And, if you met up with us along the way, you received a commemorative dash plaque:

The trip is planned to end at the pier in Santa Monica, CA around mid-day, Thursday, May 13th.

Click HERE to see the day-by-day plan for our adventure.

Gettin' Ready to GO!

April 20, Tuesday

Today we "trial-packed" the car. We have to have everything we need for two+ weeks with us -- and we want to be able to put the top down. Yes, the C5 Corvette has lots of luggage space, but...

Gael did it! Here are two shots of our trunk packed and ready to go with room to spare:

Buzz and Jackie arrived in Atlanta on their way to Bowling Green. Their mission was the same -- and accomplished.

April 25-26, Sunday/Monday

Of course we want to get from Bowling Green to Chicago (where Route 66 starts) in a hurry.  We plan to leave Bowling Green on Sunday morning, April 25th and blast up to Indianapolis for the night; that's a 200+ mile leg.  Then off to Chicago on Monday, April 26th (another nearly 200 mile leg).

At the end of each day we uploaded stories and pix so friends could follow along.

This was truly a trip of a lifetime for us. We had the best time and met some truly wonderful people. We encourage everyone to drive at least part of the Mother Road. You won't forget it.

Of course, we had to return home. Click HERE for Buzz and Jackie's return adventure and HERE for ours.

Hope you enjoyed it -- we sure did!

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