Category: US Route 66

The first… okay, maybe not the first, but another quite significant fly has deposited itself in the ointment this morning. Not able to sleep I picked up my phone at 4 am in this morning, only to read an email that makes sleep even less of a prospect. The industrial action is to take place…

After a full day of 100+ attempts to get through to British Airways customer services in order to reschedule our flight, having received a confirmation our flights to Chicago had been cancelled, we received another email 14 hours later… Okay, so unless my left leg falls off between now and September 12th, the cycle is…

Okay, so the planning isn’t actually done, but I am done with the planning. While you might think that Route 66 is an actual route, unfortunately, you would be sadly mistaken. Route 66 was officially decommissioned in 1984, however, in the three preceding decades, since the introduction of the US Interstate Network, much of it…

What was planned as a day of final checks, including a final check at the local dentists, ended up with an unplanned day trip to the Livingston shopping mall in the hope of finding a solution to stay connected during our cycle. Having been promised by Vodafone for the past 5 weeks that upgrading Deborah’s…

Only 3 days before we will be sitting on a BA flight heading for Chicago. While the planning of the entire route is far from done, we do have at least a semblance of a plan to guide us through the first 8 days, including a place to rest our heads each night. We are…

Well, that’s a little over 24 hours since we unceremoniously piled our bikes onto the back of the hire car, reversed down our drive and headed south. After a quick stop off in the North East of England to visit family, we hammered on down the A1(M) for a late evening pizza and an overnight…

A delayed flight, lousy veggie food, a broken entertainment system, a loud group of Dutch ladies, and a chaotic immigration hall later, has us safely on US soil. While Deborah received a cheery welcome by the immigration official that stamped her passport the chap that I landed went through each page of my passport with…

As Friday the 13th’s go, today wasn’t all that bad. We started as we mean to go on, so tucked into Best Western’s free breakfast of pancakes and a rather unhealthy assortment of toppings. With breakfast done by 8am we couldn’t put the task of unpacking the bikes off any longer. In some respects, this…

We could have stayed in bed all day. Not due to being tired, but due to it being the comfiest bed we are likely to sleep in for a very long time. While I am sure there are plenty of great hotels between here and Santa Monica, the budget isn’t being stretched that far to…

1 am – I’m sure if you live here in the US Mid-West the electrical storm that is firing off all around us isn’t anything to write home about, but for the rest of us this is one almighty storm. For almost an hour the sky has been lighting up with the intensity of a…

Okay, so in daylight, the Palamar Motel maybe even less luxurious than we thought yesterday night when we first arrived. Would we book it for a Wedding Anniversary get-away? No! Would we book it for a cheap place to stay with a comfy bed and a bedroom that I can store two bikes and dry…

What better way to start a day off than share breakfast with some new found friends, Larry and Twila. Unfortunately, as is the way of this way of travelling, breakfast was also the goodbye as we had to hit the road early in order to have a leisurely cycle down to Lincoln. A final photoshoot…

I must have fallen to sleep the second my head hit the pillow, so can only guess Pickleball takes more out of you than cycling across the US. The day kicked off to the best start possible, with a magnificent breakfast of freshly made waffles with a table full of topping, from blueberries to maple…

Decision made. As we will likely never return to this city, how could we possibly leave without first immersing ourselves in the Abraham Lincoln theme park that is Springfield? The negotiation of a second night in the hotel as a slightly more challenging ordeal as it seems yesterday we were given a suite by accident….

Having spent most of the night either attempting to get through to the HSBC Expat Contact Centre or talking to them on the phone, time to get on the road came all too soon. The solution HSBC had come up with involved a ‘Visa Encashment’, which basically involves us taking dollars out of our USD…

Up early with the intention of putting in the extra miles that we didn’t do yesterday after the best night’s sleep on the trip so far. While Route 66 borders the campground and the Interstate is within sight, the campground was quiet as a quiet thing. Another reason for not getting away as soon as…

Not the best of sleep due to the campground noise. While our fellow visitors obeyed the campground rules, the locals, comprising of grasshoppers and tree frogs partied until the sun came up. While not as noisy as their pals, by early morning the mosquitos were also out in force and it wasn’t long before the…

A great night sleep on a futon in the lounge of the Byrd family home, with just a minor blip of a call from a Britsail student, but hey, we still do have a business to run. We enjoyed an amazing breakfast in the company of a family full of energy for the day. Everyone…

Well, that’s the first 10 days of cycling done and almost 500 miles under the wheels. We had planned on an average of 40 miles per day and are managing a little over 47, although the daily total varies due to the need stop somewhere we can bed down for the night, either camping, a…

A good night’s sleep interrupted only by Deborah scratching at her mosquito bites. A free breakfast buffet of yoghurt, cereal and waffles, which was as good as it gets for free. We didn’t unpack our bikes last night, apart for all our electronics for the nightly recharging ritual, which Deborah has down to a fine…

A good night’s sleep, but again a few mosquito or chigger (thanks Jim) bites made for a little restfulness. Not much packing required, as again we didn’t unpack much, and there was nobody around to chat to as we checked out after a breakfast of cold pizza resulted in a quick getaway for a change….

Another great night sleep, interrupted only by a brief but particularly heavy downpour at about 2 am, which was amplified by the tin roof of the camping trailer we were sleeping in. By the time we were fully mobilized, Cindy had unfortunately already headed to work and James was dressed in full Roman Catholic Deacon…

We woke to the sound of Miles taking the Denae and Alex to school, so we had clearly slept beyond the planned 7 am wake-up call, although as we hadn’t set an alarm it’s no surprise the plan failed miserably. It didn’t take much to pack up and pile the gear on the front steps….

It wasn’t the best of night’s sleep due to our proximity to the road. The road itself wasn’t the problem, it was the rumble strip that someone in their infinite wisdom had added to the road, resulting in every vehicle that passed us making considerably more noise than if it had just driven past. Deborah…

Okay, so clearly we were tired as I am sure our partying motel neighbours didn’t turn the music off as soon as our heads hit the pillow, but that is when it stopped for us both. We decided for a late morning start as we both had Britsail and personal admin to catch up on……

The most luxurious hotel room since the JW Marriott Chicago two weeks ago, but the worse night sleep for no obvious reason. Maybe we need the sound of the road to help us sleep these days. The advertised ‘full breakfast’ was disappointing. The only hot buffet items were a single piece of fossilized bacon and…

After yesterday night’s failure, we both finally managed a wonderful sleep, woke only by songbirds singing a most wonderful tune from the branches… actually no, while the sleep was wonderful it was the horn of a passing locomotive that woke us. While there are a few birds around I think they are all mute. We…

How could we have anything other than a lovely night’s sleep in such a wonderful home? Finally, we woke refreshed. Robert was already out of the house when we finally mobilised so we enjoyed the company of Becky over breakfast. Last night we had parked the bikes in the sunroom, so I went in there…

A good night’s sleep until around 3 am at which point Ivor the Engine and his pals decided to make an appearance and that was it for the remainder of the night as far as deep sleep went. When the body clock went off to demand we get up and start the day we weren’t…

Okay, so we have a conflict this morning. While I fell to sleep the moment my head hit the pillow, right through until around 6 am when our working neighbours that live permanently in the RV park started to head to work, including an Oklahoma Police Officer, Deborah had a different experience. According to Deborah,…

At last, a goodnight sleep. Absolute silence for once, not even noisy neighbours. No locomotives, no cars, no trucks… nothing. The bed could have been softer, but compared to a 2cm thick self-inflating mattress it was good enough. The free breakfast was as bad as they come, but cereal is cereal and pancakes are pancakes……

Due to technical challenges, ie. I wrote it then the WordPress app crashes and I lost everything, so today’s and yesterday’s blogs will be published tonight…. from Texas! 🤠

The forecasted rain didn’t materialise, so we had a good sleep until the guys in lycra that are doing a supported Route 66 cycle decided to start their day at 5 am. Once they were up they made sure everyone else in the vicinity was too. While we didn’t actually get up at 5 am,…

We woke early even though today could be a rest day, still. It was a free breakfast in a $38 hotel, so it wasn’t a full breakfast spread, but waffles and sugar-coated cereal do just fine. Over breakfast, we analysed the data presented by the Windy app on my phone, which is becoming as invaluable…

It’s weird not getting up, packing our panniers and heading west, but are coping. Just! A lazy morning, although most of it finishing off the blogs from the last two days. We then headed up to the main Shamrock attraction, just at the top of our street, the U-Drop Inn, where we had a lovely…

It wasn’t until it was time to get up, around 7:15 am, that the muscles started to really overreact to the idea of climbing out of bed. Breakfast was an interesting mixture of carbs, but without anything that would give it away as breakfast. We were already half packed, so the other half shouldn’t have…

If our tent’s waterproof rating was being tested by the sprinkler system last night, it’s ability to stand up to strong wind was tested this morning. When we went to bed the breeze was blowing in from the south and the air was warm. This morning the strong wind was blow hard from the north…

Apart from the occasional rattle on the garage door by the wind and hoot from Ivor, the night passed peacefully. As Adam had set breakfast at 7 am our alarm clock was set at 6:45 am, which was about 5 hours earlier than our bodies would have liked. Even inside the garage inside the tent…

For sleeping in a tent on spikey ground a few metres away from a busy interstate, even Deborah admits that it was one of our better night’s sleep. As we should not have been camping at the picnic area without permission, with a hefty fine if we got caught, we had set the alarm to…

A pal that is a real cyclist with lycra, a lightweight bike and probably even knows how to change a spoke, once told me that when it comes to comfort in the saddle it is the first twenty years that are the worst. Well, I’m not sure if we have lucked out on our saddles,…

A great night’s sleep until the point Deborah’s alarm went off when her watch read 5:45 am, as she had set yesterday’s alarm to repeat daily. I said, when her watch read 5:45 am as she hasn’t changed the time on her watch since we cross a time zone yesterday, so it was actually 4:45…

A great night’s sleep with some weird dreams, so it was a struggle to get out of bed when the alarm went off at 7 am. We knew it was going to be a long day, with at 60+ mile cycle and 900+ metres of climbing (3000 ft), what we didn’t figure into the equation…

Another amazing sleep with the only disturbance being the 6 am alarm. The sleeping bags were cosy warm, but the air felt cold and damp. How cold and how damp was demonstrated by the layer of ice that covered the tent and the frozen bottles of water we had left on the ground outside of…

It remained quiet as a quiet thing all night, or at least the small part of the night either of us was conscious. There may have been a grizzly bear party going on outside for the rest of it, although if there was they were very tidy. We knew our first order of the day…

It would have been a good night’s sleep if it wasn’t for loud music coming from cars parked nearby, a crying baby in the room next door and a touch of food poisoning that had my up much of the night. It wasn’t the best start to the day from a bike perspective either. My…

Windy (phone app) had been predicting today was a windy day with wind speeds of 20+ mph and gusts of up to 40 mph, so it wasn’t a surprise when the wind picked up in the middle of the night. Apart from that brief wakeup call, the night was peaceful and the sleep was good….

A day of two halves. Through necessity today was going to be a long day as there is nothing between us and the next town with somewhere to stay for the night, Grants. Also, because the area between the two is a Native American Reservation we are not allowed to wild camp. So at least…

We are happy that today didn’t go to plan. Very happy. While we went to bed reasonably early it took a while before sleep was possible. As we lay in our sleeping bags trying to ignore the noise of the distant road one of the guy ropes on the tent pinged as if someone had…

We woke early after a magnificent night’s sleep to a very cold morning. The water we had left outside had frozen solid, which not a problem today, would require a new tactic for keep drinking water drinkable when camping if the overnight temperatures continued to drop. By the time we had dressed into warm clothes…

We woke early to get our panniers packed before heading over to the main house to have breakfast with Erec. We were still faffing about trying to fit square pegs into square holes and failing miserably when Erec came over to the cabin to ask what we would like for breakfast. We joined Erec on…

The Red Roof wins the prize for the noisiest motel room of the trip. Even though there are few weeks of cycling to do there is no way that any motel could beat it. It couldn’t have been louder if the train line actually passed through the room. In actual fact, the line was approximately…

It seems I was asleep before my head hit the pillow, which last night was a pannier full of our electronics. Deborah, on the other hand, did not have a restful night sleep due to prairie dogs finding our tent interesting and tripping over the guy ropes around the tent all night. We woke just…

You would think that after forty days of train horns sounding we could sleep through it now, but we can’t. When the time came to get up for breakfast it felt a few hours too soon. Breakfast was served in the small Mexican restaurant across the car park. It was advertised as a hot breakfast,…

We set the alarm super early. Actually, I set it earlier than I planned to set it by mistake, so it went off at 5:30 am instead of 5:50 am. Due to crossing timezones again it is now light at 6 am it is dark by 6 pm, so we are adjusting our day to…

If there were trains passing through Flagstaff last night, the noise of them was drowned out by the noise of the wind. By the time we crawled out of our tent at 7 am most of our fellow campers where already in the process of collecting together the collection of poles, pegs and canvas that…

The wind from yesterday continued enough to make enough noise in the trees above the tent to drown out some of the choruses from the local coyotes, but for once there was no nearby train line and the road next to our $10 plot of grass wasn’t busy. The aircon unit that was a few…

Another bitterly cold start to the day, which is not too surprising as we were out of the tent while it was still dark to watch the sunrise over the canyon. A couple of wrong turns, including walking through a graveyard, and we found ourselves standing on the rim, just as the sun broke the…

While I am sure the sunrise over the canyon would have been as spectacular as it was yesterday we are calling the days spent at the Grand Canyon rest days for a reason. For the first time since records began we rolled out of our tent at 8 pm. While we had a reasonably good…

While it was toasty warm in our sleeping bags, when the need did arise to leave the sleeping bag in the middle of the night in search of the little boys room it was into a night that was colder than any experienced on this trip to date. The little boys room was too far…

We woke at 7 am after a good night’s sleep. The free breakfast received a 3-star rating out of 5, even though the breakfast room was too small for the hotel. It seemed more like a swingers speed dating event, with the room filled with small round tables each with four chairs. Every time one…

Wow, we really can’t believe we have now been on the road for fifty days. Even though the hotel was just across the road from a busy railway line, we both slept well. Actually, I think we are starting to get used to the sound of trains passing all night long in our different ways….

Not the best night’s sleep for absolutely no reason. There was no road noise, no railway line nearby, nothing, yet we didn’t sleep well. The alarm went off at 6:50 am, but it was 7:15 am before we ambled along to the breakfast room, the smallest breakfast room to date, comprising of a table and…

For the first time on the trip, we were woken to coyotes in the middle of the night, which Jeff had warned us was a possibility. While it was annoying to be woken, I guess not many people that live in Scotland can make that claim, so we put it down to experience. We woke…

Not much sleep at all last night. While the service station is very quiet for a service station, probably due to the fact that they literally add a 100% surcharge to everything due to being so remote, our neighbour was shouting at the sky most of the night. By the time the alarm went off…

It was a restless night with the sound of the trucks coming and going from the service station, so the 5 am alarm was not a welcome noise. Packing was relatively quick, so we were ready for the road before 6 am. Deborah enjoyed her evening hot chocolate so much she needed another fix before…

A great nights sleep and a long lie-in, getting up at 7:30 am. We weren’t expecting much from the breakfast, but even that low expectation was surpassed with a doughnut in a sealed plastic bag and lukewarm coffee. When Deborah asked for some hot water the owner filled a mug with cold water and placed…

The alarm went off at 6:00 am after a very peaceful, but far too short a night’s sleep. We are getting far too used to going to bed around 9 pm, so hitting the pillow close to 1 am made it very difficult to get out of bed. We packed and went into the kitchen…

We woke after an amazing night’s sleep in the most comfortable bed of the trip, that is apart from the 2cm thick self-inflating mattress we use when sleeping in our tent. We also had the longest lie in of the trip to date, even longer than our rest days, as we had a short 30…

The alarm went off at 6 am on the final day of our Route 66 adventure, although it was closer to 6:30 am before we entered the kitchen to be welcomed by Ken and Neil, who were clearly a little more awake than we were. Susan joined us shortly after and we all set down…

Resting, chilling, sleeping, washing, bike maintenance, body maintenance and planning… next stop San Francisco!!

Three great nights sleep in a row in a very comfortable condo in Santa Monica, so it was a struggle to get out of bed knowing tonight would almost certainly be sleeping in a tent. Most of our packing was already done, so after a breakfast consisting of the last of our granola crumbs, a…

It was never going to be a quiet night. I could have thrown a stone over the railway line on to the road in one direction and onto the crashing ocean waves in the other, and I’m rubbish at throwing stones. When the alarm went off at 5 am it was still dark outside, but…

The 4:58 am express train rendered the 5 am alarm pointless. With Julie and Imka no doubt still sound asleep just a few metres away, we packed up camp on tiptoes, although there is every possibility Nelly could have done it quieter. Today was one of those rare days where we started the day without…

Without the alarm set, we slept until 7:15 am, so we had 15 minutes to dress in order to be the first at breakfast. We needn’t have bothered as the coffee wasn’t ready and all that was on offer were three pastries in a sealed plastic bag and a jug of orange juice. Back in…

Apparently I woke Deborah from one of the best night of sleep in weeks with a sneeze, although it didn’t wake me up and I didn’t feel sneezy when I did, so I’m concluding it was a sneeze dream. We had both agreed that this was a near-perfect motel room, with a big fridge, a…

We were both still a little sleepy when the 5am alarm went off, even though we both slept well for over 10 hours. It was still pitch black when we rolled out of our tent. With the homeless chap that we had spoken to last night snoring in his tent just a few metres away,…

We seem to be on a roll and had another great night’s sleep even though the motel was close to a busy road. That said, we weren’t woken by the alarm at 6:30am, but by a plane taking off and flying directly over the motel just before that. With the motel reception area being the…

It was a cold night, so it was another one of those mornings that it was a struggle to get out of our toasty warm cocoons. With our gear quickly packed away and loaded onto our trusty steeds, we headed in for a hot drink with Sally before she headed off to help a friend…

Wow… if I didn’t mess up on the count we have been on the road for exactly 10 weeks. Our last night in a tent for a while wasn’t the best with the thunderous sound of the waves crashing on the beach, a distant foghorn blasting every 4 seconds and one of our fellow bikers…

Route Segment Dist(miles) Acc. Dist(miles) Ascent(m) Ascent(ft) To the start… 8 8 37 121 Day 1 – Chicago 60 68 189 620 Day 2 – 62 130 140 459 Day 3 – Pontiac to Normal 35 165 96 315 Day 4 – Normal to Lincoln 40 205 157 515 Day 5 – Lincoln – Springfield…