http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33829935...os_angeles_ca/ For a place thats wants tourist think they need to make the road a bit less historic.

 

The least they could have done is make the "66" sign look the way a numbered U.S. Highway five-point shield is supposed to look, not the circle around the number they used here.

 

I lived in Santa Monica for 13 years, and know the territory fairly well. Olympic and Lincoln (the previous Route 66 end point) is about 1-2 miles away from the pier. But it is about a 1/4 mile east of the ocean. It would make sense to take the end point to the ocean, but not to divert it north, then west to the pier. Obviously, there are a lot of tourist oriented businesses on the pier that will derive benefit.

 

That's on my bucket list, to drive some of Route 66 in my 442 with my beautiful woman. And if the wife doesn't nag, she can come too

 

Nice ad. I like the "Shark attacks Helicopter" pic. So it isn't real. It puts the fear of God in ya worse than a rerun of Karl Malden in "The Streets of San Francisco". Hmmmm....maybe that's why they could never find any bodies dumped in the bay....

 

My GTO was sold new at Jim White Pontiac on Santa Monica Boulevard, not too far from there. I think it's an IHOP now.

I drove out west a few years back and the old Route 66 is pretty seedy in most places. Cool old defunct motels and gas stations boarded up road is what they should call it.
A few cool motels are still open but my wife didn't want to stay in a tin tee-pee.

 

The original photo showed a route 66 in the old style shield painted on a cracked and crumbling blacktop. When I ran a few section that survive in California the road was in horrible condition with little maintanance being done.

 

Been one of my goals for a long time, buy a teardrop trailer hook it up to the 57 and do as much of route 66 as possible. Be a fun trip with a group of friends.

 

You'd probably end up disappointed, unfortunately. With the exception of a few significant lengths in Arizona between Seligman and Kingman and then west of Kingman, you'd be spending most of your time on interstate access or frontage roads, on interstate "business loops" through small towns, or on interstate highways themselves where the interstate has completely replaced the old route 66 asphalt. Significant parts still exist through larger cities, such as Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Texas, about 10 miles worth through Flagstaff, Arizona, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Central Avenue was the old 66 and runs through the center of town, but otherwise, away from the larger cities, once you get west of about Missouri, there really is very little of the old highway left that you can do any significant amount of driving on.


Here's a nifty google maps rendition of it. You can zoom in on it after the map loads.

 

X2

That was my experience also on off interstate just to see parts of old route 66. The longest stretch I saw with Teepee tacky motels was in Arizona.