Route 66: Traveling America’s Mother Road

If you’ve never traveled the Mother Road, this book is a great overview best enjoyed before embarking on your trip. You’ll become familiar with some of the most famous stops along the road. Of course, you’ll want to relive your trip through this book once you get back home! (And start planning your next trip to go back and see all the things you missed the first time around!)

This is the “must have” turn-by-turn guide that will help you drive the route even when there are no road signs present. The spiral binding helps you quickly flip through each page while you are on the road and directions are provided for both east- and west-bound travel. There are also tips for some off-66 attractions, which are always worth the trip off the Route. I would've missed some wonderful sections of the Route in Missouri if I didn’t have this guide since the historic route road signs were missing in many sections.

This is a must-have companion to the EZ66 guidebook, above. This isn't actually a book, but a set of maps that supply an overview of an entire state on its own foldout map. All of the most popular Route 66 landmarks are indicated on these maps. Before starting across each state, fold out the accompanying map and get a good sense of where each of the crucial stops will be in that state. Once you have the overview, the EZ66 guidebook is easier to follow.

This guidebook supplies background information and stories that I didn’t find anywhere else. Without reading some of the background information, you might think that you were looking at just another billboard, or just a pile of rubble along the road. Reading this guidebook makes a place like Two Guns, Arizona come alive again. Read this one before you embark on your trip, but make sure to keep referring back to it while you’re on the road. I had fun asking the various business owners mentioned in the book to autograph the pages in which they were referenced; of course they obliged.

This book is filled with recipes from many of the historic diners, many of which are long gone. But you don’t need to be a cook to enjoy this guidebook; it’s filled with information about the diners and the towns, too. The historical references make eating your way across Route 66 a lot of fun! I used the book as a guide to find diners that were still standing and searched for them when I was ready for a meal. If only I could have eaten at ALL of them along the way!

While this is not a book, you will want to watch the DVD of Cars before your trip… and then again after. The fictional Radiator Springs is a compilation of cities and towns all across the Mother Road. It’s particularly fun to see how many landmarks you can identify when you get home from your trip. You will definitely want to watch the behind the scenes segments prior to embarking on your first trip. The background information and the interviews with folks along the Mother Road will help you gain a better understanding and develop an appreciation for the preservation of the historic route.