Route 66 to Paso and so much more! (5649 miles on vinyl!!)

This is one of my favorite photos of the 60 on this whole trip. Taken in front of the General Store at the edge of town, we hit the bathrooms, shopped for souveniers and THOUGHT we were all set to blast off for Kingman, Arizona.

 

Hey, Fat Hack, I thought I was watching Cars over again. Great pics and thanks for the trip, quite interesting. Hope you guys enjoyed yourselves cause it looks like you had fun and thats what it's all about. Take care, Rags

 

Here's a little tip for anyone contemplating this trip. That sign behind the buffalo there SHOULD say "Hey, guess what...there's NO MORE gas stations between here and Kingman, so make double damn sure you got enough fuel to cover about 70 miles, Fool!"...but it doesn't!!

So...we rolled out of Seligman roaring off towrds Kingman with the fuel gauge dipping lower...and lower and lower...until uh-oh...it started to say "You ain't gonna make it, dumbass!!". I blew past ONE turn-around point before doing a little quick math in my head to determine that I had about 25 miles to go BACK to Seligman...and about 50 miles to go to Kingman...so I took the next available exit and prayed we'd make it back to that cute little General Store we had just left to gas up the car with the needle now sitting right about on 'Empty'!!

The run between Seligman and uh...wherever we turned around involves mountin driving, and I was starting to accept the fact that I'd have to do at least SOME walking...but I hoped I could get close enough to minimize it as much as possible! I concluded that we could coast a lot further if we ran outta gas at a HIGHER speed...so I wound the car up to about 105 and made a banzai run back towards Seligman!!!

Amazingly, the Seligman ramp came into view pretty soon and we were still under power! I let off and took the long, sweeping curve and steered back towards the gas station. Some dope hauling a trailer stopped to look around just as he was blocking the driveway, so I had to stop to wait for him. Just as I went to pull into the lot, the car ran dry and we rolled up about a foot and a half short of the pump! Ha Ha...only had to push the car about twoo feet!!!

 

Leaving Seligman (again!), we motored on with a full tank, now knowing that the Chevy could go exactly 261 miles on a tank of gas, and not one bit more...and headed for Kingman once more!

We had decided to detour to see Las Vegas, so we hopped onto Highway 93 in Kingman for the drive through the desrt to reach the Hoover Dam. The ride was hot, but not too unbearable...and it didn't take too long to arrive at the point overlooking the dam area.

 

Crossing the Hoover Dam area, we soon entered Boulder City, Nevada where we found a good deal on a motel room and decided to stay for a couple of nights, since we were kinda tired of driving and still well ahead of schedule to make Paso Robles in time for the show.

Right next door to our motel was a little restaurant called Bob's Boulder City Burger or something like that...advertising the "Best Food By a Dam Site!" so we went there for dinner. I gotta tell y'all...their tripple decker burger is about the best dam burger I've ever had!!! It's a whole meal in itself...but it came with sides and a salad, too! Of course, being Nevada, you can get a beer in just about any restaurant...so I had a Miller Lite to cap off an excellent meal!! (But you know...I still had my Fritos and beer later as well!!!)

 

Fat Hack you are awesome. Thank you for quite an outstanding thread and super pics and read.

 

Super post. Threads like this make ones day.

 

Did you miss the best attraction Seligman has to offer? The Black Cat Saloon.

 

I think I remember seeing it...but don't know if I got any pics. I know I didn't go inside or I might not have come out for a while!!!

 

Day Six...

Well, this will be one of the EASIEST days to re-cap! We had the room in Boulder City for another night, so we just sorta hung out and took it easy most of the day. We DID drive into Las Vegas (only about 25 miles or so) to cruise around a bit and stopped at "The World's Largest Gift Shop", though.

I found Las Vegas to be too big and overwhelming for my tastes...but I'm easily blown out by things like big, huge, busy cities with lots of traffic and no clear cut plan...so maybe I'm just a wimp! Ha Ha...you'd THINK that being from Detroit would make me immune to being intimidated by large cities...but Detroit is pleasure cruise compared to Vegas!!! (Well, I just KNOW Motown a whole lot better I suppose...enough to be totally comfortable there!!)

On the way back to the motel, we dropped by the casino at the outter edge of Boulder City to enjoy the bargain buffet (Travel Tip: Casinos offer some of the BEST food at some of the BEST prices!!!) and we played a little roulette for a while. Then it was back to lounge around the motel, do a little shopping and goof off until dinner time. All in all an easy, simple, relaxing day!!!

 

Day Seven...

We were up and had the car loaded early. I took a few moments to tighten the power steering belt a little and check the fluids (the new transmission started leaking from the rear seal and the speedo cable right before the trip, so I had to keep an eye on that) and then we were off and running towards California.

After several uneventfull miles of driving, we ended up in Barstow, California for the night. Not much to talk about there, but we did stay at a motel with about the wickedest air conditioning I've ever seen! Ha Ha...setting it for "LOW" would have the room cold enough to support an ice rink in about ten minutes!! It seemed to be a motel favored by bikers, as there were lots of motorcycles in the parking lot by nightfall, but it was cheap, cool, clean and secure!

Dinner for the evening came from the local Jack In The Box...something I hadn't eaten since 1978 when they pulled outta Fraser, Michigan never to be seen again in Da Mitten! It's kinda sorta like Hardees or Carl's Jr, though. I liked it...and we ended up at various other Jack In The Box restaurants along the way from there on out!

And thus ended glamorous Day Seven!!!

 

Day Eight...

I plotted a course for the Paso Robles area by looking at the map and deciding that Highway 58 seemed to be the most direct shot at it. It runs from Barstow, through Bakersfield on up to Highway 101 just outside of San Luis Obispo...so after breakfast and a full tank of gas, we rolled out in that direction.

I immediately liked Highway 58...just outside of Barstow it turns into a happy little two-laner for first leg towards Bakersfield, and then becomes more of a freeway as you run through Tehachapi on your way to Buck Owens' old hometown! The car is equipped with a pretty killer stereo with CD player...but the original AM radio is still in the dash and works great...so at times I'd flick it on and we'd catch some local stations playing out of the single speaker in the center of the dash. It kind of added to the whole nostalgic feel of driving an older car across country on such a trip, and we rolled on through Bakersfield while diggin' on a country music station!

Once through Bakersfield, Highway 58 becomes a nice little two lane road again. It seemed like an easy drive on through small towns like Buttonwillow...but then as the mountains got closer the road got more and more, ummm...CHALLENGING!!!

If you've never driven Highway 58 through the mountains between Buttonwillow and Highway 101, you owe it to yourself to do it at least once in your life! A 60 Bel Air is far from the ideal vehicle for this type of road...but it was still lots of fun! Ha Ha...imagine a smooth go-kart track with super tight turns, sharp inclines and downslopes, whoop-dee-dos and brief straigthaways that goes on for about 70 miles through majestic scenery with very, very little traffic on a weekday afternoon! This road SCREAMS for a Corvette, or Mustang or sportbike to enjoy it to it's fullest...but it's a blast in ANYTHING!!

(Well, when we saw a Winnebago gingerly headed the other way as we were comming out of a real twisty set of maniacal curves I just laughed aloud and said "WRONG!!"!!!

 

The pictures above don't BEGIN to capture the true magnitude of just how wild parts of Highway 58 can be to drive...but all too soon we were out of it all and driving down Highway 101 for lunch in San Luis Obispo.

We had reservations for Friday and Saturday night at a motel in San Luis Obispo, but that was a few days away, so we thought we'd head up Highway 101 about 30 miles to Paso Robles to check out that town and get a feel for it before everyone descended upon it the following weekend! We got a room in Paso just across from the park in the square and spent a couple of nights there just sort of relaxing and learning the lay of the land.

 

We concluded Day Eight by taking a quick ride down Highway 46 from Paso to connect with the legenday Highway 1 along the beautiful Pacific coastline! That isn't to say that Highway 46 isn't breathtaking in itself...as it was really quite scenic in the evening sunlight!!

 

Since we planned to drive up Highway 1 the next day towards Monterey, we only spent a short time cruising the coastline on Day Eight as the sun began to head down, but it was still a spectacular view looking out at the ocean after driving so far across mountains, deserts and highways to get there from Tulsa!!

 

Day Nine...

We just sorta hung out in Paso on that day. I lounged by the pool at the motel for quite a while reading a book, enjoying a cold drink and just loving it as the most perfect spot on Earth! California really IS the best state if you ask me...even though I got kinda sunburned and scorched my feet running back across the blistering blacktop barefoot towards the room! Later that night after dinner as the sun went down I would go BACK to the pool to soak my feet in the soothing, chlorinated water in an attempt to bleach them white again! (Wearing SHOES to and from the pool THIS time!!!!)

 

I tell you I had the itchen to take a Route 66 run before, but now this really put me over the edge! I feel like jumping in the old 54 and heading down the highway tonight.
Thanks for sharing your awsume experiance with all of us.
Oldschool54

 

This experience you have passed on it awsome. It just reafirms my promise to myself to do it soon, not someday.

Can you recommend some type of map or info that will help me catch all the legs of 66 remaining?

 

Hack: Cool post, I've done the trip a few times and you hit most of my favorite spots. You MUST go through Oatman Arizona if you do this again, it is off OLD, OLD 66 and is a really cool funky old place full of burros that wander the streets. Sorry to hear you were so close to Monterey and did not come up for a visit.

 

It was nice meeting you at Paso Robles. I think I interrupted your and Muttley's conversation. I would've had something to say if I'd known you'd driven there taking Route 66. Excellent story!

Thanks,
Kurt

 

Day Ten...

We checked out of our room in Paso and drove back out Highway 46 to pick up Highway 1 once again. This time, we stayed on Highway 1 and followed it up the coast to Monterey. It was a really cool (cold, actually!) morning with patches of heavy fog in places...but that couldn't spoil it for us! Highway 1 gets REAL tricky to drive in spots, making super tight bends through falling rock areas, but the unmatched splendor of it all makes you enjoy every second of it!

 

Hey Kurt!

It was cool to finally meet you in person as well! As for interrupting Muttley and I, that was no big thing...we're old hams and we were just shootin' the breeze!!!

 

We stopped for breakfast along Highway 1 at a kind of snobbish place called the Raggedy Point Inn or something to that effect. We obviously weren't their type of crowd, but our bus boy (who looked like Toby McGuire!) was pretty nice, and we did get to see some blonde chick pull up in her Ferrari 308 like the one on Magnum PI!

The food was actually VERY good, except for the so-called muffins. Too bad Toby took our dishes right before a blackbird came hopping through the open door! I managed to grab some crumbled bits of so-called muffin off the table and toss them to the bird as the waiter and some patrons looked on in horror as if I'd just dropped my drawers and shit on the floor or something. Toby was forcing back a smile at it all, though!!!

(Ha Ha...how offended can they really BE if they'll let the local wildlife drop in at will??? We may not be the Jet Set, but we don't fly around and crap on the tables either!!!)

 

Damn, Ratboy...I wish I woulda gotten to meet you in person while we were there! Maybe NEXT time, eh?!

 

After breakfast, we continued up Highway 1 into Monterey and then drove through Salinas and up to San Jose to see if we could figure out where the cruise nights were going to be held the following night. Lacking any high tech satelitte navigation gadgetry, we simply relied on good old fashioned 2-D navigational techniques...that is to say...we bought a street map at a local convenience store from one of many non-English speaking merchants in that town and found our way to Big Dog Burger and Mojo Burger a few miles away. Easy enough.

We then drove back down to Gilroy, California (The Garlic Capitol of the World, in case you didn't know!) and got a nice room there for the next two nights. It was within easy walking distance (for me, anyway!) of the nice little 'downtown' area and the Black Bear Diner or whatever it was called right next door. We ate dinner there and called it a night.

 

Day Eleven...

We spent the early part of this day exploring downtown Gilroy and the surrounding area, and taking care of little things like getting the car washed after all those miles from Tulsa. (Well, Cathy washed it while I checked out some of the local stores and stuff...the navigator always washes the car, right?!? )

Just on the outskirts of Gilroy, you will find many cute little fruit stands and stuff, and we hit a few of them.

 

When we stopped back at our room, we found a couple of other older rides lurking about the parking lot. Likely headed south down to Paso for the BIG show, we took the opprotunity to check them out in a far less crowded setting!!

 

hey hack,
i thought you were gonna call me for some beers and the tour of stuff that only locals know about...

sorry you didn't care much for it out here.

by the way, that bridgestone is still back east waiting for one of us.

 

That evening, we headed back up to San Jose for the Thursday cruise nights mentioned here on the HAMB. The first one we stopped at (Big Dog Burger) was kind of small, but still, it was nice to see some of the local rides in a relaxed, casual setting on a PERFECT California afternoon!!!!

 

Out of the 49-54 Chevys, 52s are my favorite...and THIS one was nothing short of fantastic!!!! Simply incredible...pictures just can't express how cool it was...but here's a couple to give it a TRY, anyhow!!!