Lonely Planet Journey Route 66

Several of my friends have taken the iconic Route 66 Road Trip, and it’s a journey I’d love to do myself one day. This colourful compact guide has everything you’d want to know to plan your trip.

When you open the front of the book, there is a funky hand drawn pull out map that immediately gives a great fun vibe for planning your trip, and the book is sensibly organised into an introduction with recommended highlights and how to approach your trip, then it goes into the drive itself, and it finishes up with a ‘Toolkit’ of things like money and how to rent a car and safety and other practical information.

This trip takes you from Santa Monica to Chicago (or vice versa), and it’s clear that this is a journey with plenty of roadside charm and quirkiness, featuring small towns and a wealth of nostalgia. And on this trip, you get to eat at real Route 66 diners, not the ones found around the rest of the USA or other parts of the world!

With insightful essays that cover food, history and culture, there is much to enjoy on this trip that takes you from California to the Southwest, through the Great Plains to the Midwest.  Highlights suggested in the book include the Mojave Desert, the Painted Desert, the tiny town of Mesita, the Dust Bowl country of Western Oklahoma, and the small-town charm of Springfield.

Crammed with useful information that tells it like it is, this is an excellent travel guide for this iconic trip.

Karen McMillan

Lonely Planet