No true American road trip would be complete without a detour to the famous Route 66. And I truly mean a detour since the historic link between Chicago and the southern west coast doesn't actually exist anymore. Some remaining bits and pieces can still be driven though, weather, good fortune and your vehicle permitting. We wanted to take our 19 feet long RV called Harvey there just to be able to say that we've done it. Isn't that how these things usually go?

Starting from Las Vegas we headed southeast on highway 93 all the way to Kingman in Arizona where we hopped on I-40 towards west. We had no intentions to make our "Route sixty-sixperience" last for more than a day or two and definitely weren't planning on making any extremely long detours. We were eventually heading towards Los Angeles, so going southeast instead of southwest was pretty much as far as we wanted to take this. It was a pretty easy choice to make since the part of Route 66 that starts from Kingman was the only stretch of it marked as scenic on our AAA map within a reasonable distance. The weather was sunny and hot, just as it should be when one is trying to find a true old-school road trip experience in the American west. After following I-40 for a couple of miles we took exit 44 and found ourselves on the famous historic highway, completely alone. I had feared that we would end up driving bumper to bumper with oversized RV's and trailers looking for the same experience we were, but the truth turned out to be the exact opposite. We stopped on the side of the road a few times to take pictures and got back on it again without anyone passing us. It was time to put in the two disc album we picked up from Walmart for $5, called Roots of Country Music. A collection of 30 good ole' country songs was the perfect soundtrack for this. Two of the songs were sung by Dolly Parton, not only the namesake of the world's first cloned sheep but also the name behind one of my favorite quotes: "I've got little feet because nothing grows in the shade".

We followed the old highway a few miles in progressively rugged environment which gave us some idea why it had been abandoned all those years ago. The route took us into an expanse of barren hills with steep drop-offs and endless turns. When the interstate system was developed these sorts of places were designated too difficult to build on and hence the I-40 makes a long loop around the area. We went straight through, following a road that seemed to get narrower with every turn. At one point fairly early on we passed a road side café after which we saw a sign informing that the next eight miles of the road would have no lines marking the lanes. Luckily the only RV sharing the road with us was going the same way we were and even though they stopped about as often as we did we didn't have to worry about going side by side with them. Harvey made it through the steep turns marvelously but a longer RV might have had some difficulties, at the very least in finding good spots to stop and enjoy the views.

The road was marked as scenic and it really was, in the way that a road in the desert can be. There were cliffs and cacti and even a ghost town that we almost missed. There's not much left of Goaldroad, only a few ruined stone foundations of a few small buildings. I had hoped to see a crumbling saloon with its swing doors laying broken on a moldy floor, but I guess you have to go to an abandoned movie set to find something like that. Just after the ghost town we passed something vaguely resembling that in a town called Oatman. The buildings there seemed to mimic the ones seen in old westerns and all the businesses had western themes to them as well. I especially enjoyed the fact that they had donkeys walking around the street in large numbers. After leaving town we had to drive around one of them that was standing in the middle of the nearest intersection. It didn't even seem to notice us.

The weather seemed to be getting progressively hotter but we just had to stop eventually to make some lunch. We picked a turnout with an information kiosk to pull over in and had a quick meal under the baking sun. There was no breeze coming through our open windows but luckily we still had some ice-cream in the freezer to cool us off. Refreshed we continued on, going through a small town called Topock before returning on I-40. The thing is that you simply can't follow the old Route 66 all the way and all the time, you occasionally have to get on the newer roads, in these parts mainly Interstate 40. It's not all bad though, since the going was pretty slow on Route 66 and the interstate sped our way considerably. Heading west we crossed the border to California where we met with the first inspection station of our journey. I don't really know what the thing was all about, but they made us stop and answer a couple of questions before letting us continue. We got through in just a few seconds actually, probably because Harvey has Californian plates. Thus when we answered their question of where we were coming from by telling them that we had started from Vegas and were heading towards Los Angeles through Route 66 they probably thought that we'd been on the road for just a few days and were now heading back to where we started from.

We got another surprise when entering California and this one was even less pleasant. The first gas station we passed was selling regular unleaded for $4.749/gallon, which was ridiculously high compared to what we were used to paying. In Kingman we had filled up for $2.959/gallon, only to find a station selling for $2.759 just behind the corner. Still cheaper than gas back home the price was still pretty horrible to behold. We tried to keep Harvey's V8 engine below 2000 RPM to save some fuel but I'm sad to say that he's a thirsty little fellow.

Still heading west we passed exit 133 where we could have turned on highway 95 towards another short stretch of Route 66. We were aiming to get on the historic route at exit 115 to Essex where it was painted on our map with a thicker brush. However when we got that far we found the road blocked with several signs declaring it hazardous and only allowing residents to pass. We had gone through a couple of spots on the previous stretch of Route 66 where it had been clear that a flood had recently gone over the road but those places had been cleaned up by now. Apparently something like that was going on on the way to Essex as well… We got back on I-40 and tried exit 107 and 100 with the same results, there was no going to Essex that day. This presented us with a bit of a problem since we had been hoping to find a place to spend the night on Route 66, possibly even spending some money to get a room in an old time motel. With Essex ruled out we were forced to find shelter further and it was starting to get a little late. We finally got off I-40 from exit 78 towards Amboy where there were no signs warning us of hazardous roads. With night falling fast we rushed towards Route 66 and eventually reached it in total darkness. The way to Essex was closed here as well so we turned to Amboy which was closer anyway.

There was nothing at the town called Amboy. Well OK, there were a few buildings but no lights in them so we didn't stop to ask for vacancies. Instead we continued west towards our last hope for finding a place to spend the night. I had copied a list of free camping spots in different states from the internet, but we weren't too comfortable with resorting to that since it was in no means an official site that I picked it up from. Its users could add places where they had spent a night without getting caught, which doesn't mean that it was actually allowed to stay there. Anyway this was a bit of an emergency so we decided to check all of our options and drove two miles west of Amboy before turning left to Amboy Crater National Natural Landmark. There we found a large parking lot, a few shaded picnic tables and two pit toilets but no signs prohibiting overnight parking. We figured that this was probably the best we could find and decided to stay. If someone would come asking what we were doing there we could always pull the foreigner-card. Besides, we were tired and it was dark, there was no point in continuing and it might even have been hazardous. Since Amboy wasn't accommodating the nearest towns were 30 to 40 miles away…

We spent a peaceful night there but not the most comfortable one. We were in a desert after all. We were hoping that the temperature might drop after sunset but it had other plans. It was extremely hot in the RV and we were forced to turn on the air-conditioner, which meant also using the generator. That is a very loud combination, but it made life tolerable. It did nothing to lessen the bugs however, I have no idea where they kept crawling in from but we were constantly slapping at some pesky little flying insects that seemed to be nearly indestructible. We were pretty miserable but then again this was an integral part of our Route sixty-sixperience, you're supposed to be hot and bug ridden when traveling on the old highway.

After a sweaty night we drove back to the road where I took a whole bunch of pictures. The morning was as sunny as the day before it and there were a couple of those iconic Route 66 paintings on the road right there. An empty stretch of desert highway shooting to the distance straight as an arrow. Simply put this was pretty much all we had hoped to see. We got back on the road and headed west, returning to I-40 in Ludlow. We had places to see and things to do so we didn't get back on the famous Route 66 again. We only drove it for a few dozen miles but they were memorable ones. Apparently it is still possible to get your kicks on Route 66. And that makes it worth a detour or two.