While the cafes and grocery stores along the way remain important fuel stops for them, traveling cyclists can enjoy a certain satisfaction as they whiz past the many gas stations found in the towns and cities they visit.Over the years Route 66 was in service there were multiple alignments of its path. Now it’s the cyclists’ turn.In view of the strong association between the historic roadway and America’s love affair with the automobile, it is perhaps ironic that hundreds of travelers will now attain independence from the motor vehicle by traveling Bicycle Route 66 under their own steam. Route 66 – popularly known as Route 66 or The Mother Road – from Chicago, Illinois to the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles, California. Click to see Route 66 road.For over 50 years, motorists traveled the legendary U.S.
However, please note Bicycle Route 66 does not always follow Historic Route 66. Bicycle Route 66 travels west on bike paths, county roads, and state, federal, and interstate highways. In many places Historic Route 66 was replaced by interstate highways.
In Madison County, the route takes advantage of a number of county-maintained trails to the Mississippi River crossing on the historic Chain of Rocks Bridge into St. A short distance later, the route begins its parallel path with I-55 passing through the capital city of Springfield as well as many smaller communities.Much of the route in Illinois is characterized by the prairie landscape and rolling hills. The official start location on Lake Michigan in Grant Park at Buckingham Fountain allows the use of multiple bike paths and trails along with city streets out of the congestion to meet up with Historic Route 66 in Elwood.
That didn’t prevent the residents of the area from taking great pride in “owning” part of the highway.Once the route reaches the Oklahoma border, the flat to rolling landscape will encompass a variety of different prairie types until it reaches the Great Plains of the Texas panhandle. Bicycle Route 66 rejoins Historic Route 66 east of Joplin.Kansas contains only about a dozen miles of Route 66, the least of any of the eight states the highway runs through. West of Springfield, Missouri, the route leaves Historic 66 in favor of quieter county roads and state highways. Louis, cyclists will encounter the rolling hills of the northern reaches of the Ozark Mountains. Once through the suburbs on city and county roads, Bicycle Route 66 begins paralleling I-44 mostly on frontage roads and some county highways.
While most of the roads through these lands are state owned, those on the Pueblo Alternate through Acoma Pueblo are not and are subject to closures periodically. Stealth camping is not permitted and in most, permission must be granted to photograph or otherwise record the scenery and sites. Etiquette across them will require you to be a bit more circumspect in your behavior. These are sovereign lands with their own cultural flavor. A second exception takes cyclists onto the Turquoise Trail/State Highway 14 between Santa Fe and Tijeras providing beautiful open vistas before returning to Historic Route 66.West of Albuquerque to Chambers, Arizona and again past Flagstaff, Arizona, Bicycle Route 66 passes through several Native American lands known as Pueblos, Nations, and Reservations.
Its hauntingly beautiful archaeological sites and unique geological formations include, not surprisingly, petrified trees.In Flagstaff, Arizona you’ll see your first bike shop since Albuquerque. Gallup hosts more mountain bike races than any other community in New Mexico and the High Desert Trail system has been designated a National Recreation Trail.Bicycle Route 66 breaks from following Historic Route 66 to head south through the Petrified Forest National Park. Today, the area boasts two major networks of professionally designed, curvy singletrack trails, including the flagship High Desert Trail. The bike park, coupled with a 15-year-long effort to build trails outside of town and recast the city as a mountain-biking mecca, has earned Gallup a formal designation by the state legislature as the Adventure Capital of New Mexico. This is the original alignment of Route 66.Gallup, New Mexico is home to the Brickyard Bike Park, which celebrated its grand opening in September 2013, with cycling celebrity Levi Leipheimer officiating.
See advcy.link/sbtempclosures for road closures or inquire locally about conditions.I-40 was built to replace the NTH. Over the years the NTH has fallen into some disrepair and, in September 2014, a particularly bad storm system came through not only flooding the area but further damaging the NTH and several of the original Route 66 bridges causing long term closures of the road. However, there are long-term construction projects aimed at restoring the damaged portions. The weather pattern can result in flash flooding that closes the former Route 66 now known as the National Trails Highway (NTH) and thus Bicycle Route 66. This region is subject to violent thunderstorms and downpours in the summer monsoon and winter storm seasons. It crosses Sitgreaves Pass in the rugged Black Mountains, where the BLM warns: “Travelers are advised that the portion of the highway passing through the mountains is a very narrow two-lane with no shoulders, extremely tight switchbacks, and many steep drop-offs.”The entry into California drops cyclists into a long, desert stretch with very limited services from Needles to Barstow. From five miles south of Kingman to Topock at the California border, Old Route 66 has been designated by the Bureau of Land Management as the Historic Route 66 National Back Country Byway.
While there are several plaques in the area denoting the end of Historic Route 66, the terminus of Bicycle Route 66 is on the Santa Monica Pier at the sign located where the road meets the pier.This route contains a diversity of landscapes from the flat prairie grasslands of Illinois to the rolling hills of the northern reaches of the Ozark Mountains to the vast, open desert spreads across the southwest.While there aren't a lot of mountain passes on this route, across New Mexico, Arizona, and California there are long stretches across the desert with few services and significant heat depending on the time of year. (See the map updates and corrections for Bicycle Route 66, Section 6 for current detour information.)Once out of the desert, services improve and traffic increases as the route becomes urban through the suburbs of Los Angeles. Though I-40 is normally closed to bicycling, Adventure Cycling has worked with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to come to an agreement about temporarily allowing cyclists to ride sections of I-40 to continue on Bicycle Route 66. While interstate riding is not our preference, it is the best solution to the problem of travel between Needles and Barstow if the NTH is impassable.
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