route 66

birdseye

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I have long fancied doing the route 66 trip on an HD along with my wife. Has anyone here done it? If so, where do you hire the bike, what about insurance, riding gear, hints tips etc?

I would want to go at my own pace and maybe take a month to do the trip. Incidentally would it make sense to hire a bike or to buy a second hand one at the start and sell it at the end?
 
Yes, Roynie and I have ridden Route 66 four times now. We always travel with a group, the Mother Road Rally, which leaves Chicago on the second Saturday each June. We have made many friends amongst this group of (mainly) American riders ... which is why we keep going back. Although it is a friendly and convivial way to see Route 66, riding with the Rally might not suit you as it they do the whole 2,448 miles in 8 days. Personally, I'm not sure that there is a month's worth of interest if you stick solely to Route 66, but there are some great detours not so far off the route.

We have never hired a bike. The first time we rode Route 66, it was part of a three month tour and we bought bikes on the East Coast that we intended to sell when we left. The second time we were invited back by a friend we met on the Rally on the first trip, and he lent us his Honda Valkyrie (I rode pillion). Then, in 2006 and 2009, we shipped our own bikes from the UK.

If you buy a second hand bike, I would be inclined to ship it back and sell in the UK. Secondhand Harleys have lost a lot of their resale value in the last couple of years due to the recession. However, I have heard of a number of people arranging 'buy back' deals, whereby they use the bike for two or three weeks, then sell it back to the original dealer. I could ask around for you, if no one here has personal experience.

If prices stay as they are now, and Roynie makes good his threat to buy a Triumph Thunderbird in the US, I have promised myself a Road King.
 
There are far better places to visit and far better roads to ride in the US than what's left of Route 66. It has this romantic cachet but much of it really isn't that interesting.

I'd rather ride Hwy 1, both North and South of San Francisco, the Sierra Nevada passes, the Utah desert, the Colorado Rockies, the Nevada desert, etc. etc. anytime.
 
Schtum said:
There are far better places to visit and far better roads to ride in the US than what's left of Route 66. It has this romantic cachet but much of it really isn't that interesting.

I'd rather ride Hwy 1, both North and South of San Francisco, the Sierra Nevada passes, the Utah desert, the Colorado Rockies, the Nevada desert, etc. etc. anytime.
Click to expand...

:agree

Even the multitude of recent 'celebs' travelling this route do a lot of detours :blast
 
Schtum said:
I'd rather ride Hwy 1, both North and South of San Francisco, the Sierra Nevada passes, the Utah desert, the Colorado Rockies, the Nevada desert, etc. etc. anytime.
Click to expand...

Route 66 conveniently by passes all of those. What a horrible way to cross the USA. Never understood why anyone would waste their time with it.
 
Earache said:
Route 66 conveniently by passes all of those. What a horrible way to cross the USA. Never understood why anyone would waste their time with it.
Click to expand...

Although if it was a choice between that and I-70....:augie
 
Schtum said:
Although if it was a choice between that and I-70....:augie
Click to expand...

Ha! There is no good way to cross Kansas and eastern Colorado - regardless of what route you take.:toungincheek

Even got a picture of the one tree in Kansas...
IMG_5981.jpg
 
Earache said:
Route 66 conveniently by passes all of those. What a horrible way to cross the USA. Never understood why anyone would waste their time with it.
Click to expand...

If it wasn't for the song, "Get your Kicks on Route 66", we probably wouldn't.

I agree with all the above. When Roynie and I planned our first trip in 2001, we took Route 66 as our focus to get us from the East Coast to the West (well, Chicago to LA anyway). We wouldn't have thought a month unreasonable and we were amazed, if a little disappointed, to stumble on this Rally that did it in a week. If you are into group riding and socialising, it is a fun way to see what little remains of the old road - there is a Rally Master and an itinerary, but after the first day, the Rally tends to break down into smaller groups of 6 to 10 riders who go off and do their own thing, meeting up at the pre-booked hotels in the evening. Among these groups there is a lot of accumulated knowledge about the history of the road itself and the best sites to visit.

You could easily do Route 66 in a week to 10 days and have plenty of time left on your trip to see some of the great roads that have been suggested.

There are loads of books on Route 66 and you can get GPS maps, but we tend to use Jerry McClanahan's "Here it is!" map series and accompanying book and also the postcard sized "Travelling Route 66" pocket guide by Nick Freeth.
 
Elvie and I rode route 66 a few years back. We had a great time, met many interesting peeps and generally had a ball. We booked the whole thing through HC Travel, with one way bike hire, pick up in Chicago and drop off in LA. The hotels were all prebooked for us. We hope to do it again in the near future, but this time we would make the arrangements ourselves. Bike hire is straightforward, hotels plentiful and it would allow us to wander along as quickly or slowly as we wanted.
As for there being other better roads out there, you pays your money and takes your choice, but IMHO you have to go a long way to find a better mix of riding and historical/social history and scenery.
 
hire

Make sure that you are allowed to take the hired bikes out of the state you hired them in you will find the dealers have your credit card Nos and so you could possibly end up owning a harley if they think you've done a runner!.
And don't do what a friend did and leave your filler cap on the pump new ones cost a bomb!!.
 
Thanks for all the useful advice. TBH I chose route 66 on the basis of the song and nothing else. Whilst I have been to the US dozens of times on business, I havent seen much if anything of backwoods USA and my wife has only ever been to NY. So the idea was to travel through the real US using a bike because for some reason you make more friends and more contacts that way.

So if I were to junk the route 66 idea, what other route would people recommend to achieve the above objective.
 
birdseye said:
Thanks for all the useful advice. TBH I chose route 66 on the basis of the song and nothing else. Whilst I have been to the US dozens of times on business, I havent seen much if anything of backwoods USA and my wife has only ever been to NY. So the idea was to travel through the real US using a bike because for some reason you make more friends and more contacts that way.

So if I were to junk the route 66 idea, what other route would people recommend to achieve the above objective.
Click to expand...

HC travel will do you a route depending on how many days, I did a route from Vegas upto the Grand Canyon then into Utah's canyolands and monument valley took about 5 days, some of the best roads ive ever ridden.
 
birdseye said:
Thanks for all the useful advice. TBH I chose route 66 on the basis of the song and nothing else. Whilst I have been to the US dozens of times on business, I havent seen much if anything of backwoods USA and my wife has only ever been to NY. So the idea was to travel through the real US using a bike because for some reason you make more friends and more contacts that way.

So if I were to junk the route 66 idea, what other route would people recommend to achieve the above objective.
Click to expand...

If you want to go for 4 weeks, I'd recommend you ship your own. The rental will kill you for 4 weeks:eek: You can ride all the way across in a month and experience some great roads.

If you ping me an e-mail at chris@unchainedtours.com, I can recommend you loads of routes and shipping ideas/costs etc:thumb
 
PM your mailing address to me and I'll mail a US atlas to you with the ebtter riding areas highlighted.

I do 2-3 cross USA trips each summer and know loads of good places to stay and most of the better roads. Of course, you're welcome to tag along for a bit of one of the trips if the timing works out.

There are three main areas that you should include in your trip if you can;
1) Southeastern - Tennessee, Nort Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky. This area has some of the best riding in the US, without question.
2) Mountain - Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Utah
3) West - Northern California, Idaho

I'd be happy to include soem CD's full oc pictures of each area if you're interested.

Crossing the midwest kinda sucks - very flat, extreme weather with widely varying temps and about 1,200 miles of nothing to cross. But if it has to be done, crossing through the north is probably the best. Parts of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota are actually quite nice. And you'd end up in the Sturgis / Badlands area on the western edge. It's got some okay riding as well.

Riding in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma and most of Texas should be avoided if at all possible.. Nothing to see unless you really like 45 mile long cornfields, wheatfields and lots of cows and pigs.

Like Bilco said, rental fees will kill ya - better off buying a bike here andselling it when you're done or shipping your own. Rentals go for $150 to $200 per day. And they can be hard to find unless you want to ride a HD (not recommended). Lots of bike hire places in Cali and some in the east. Some in Denver as well.

If I can help you out with routes, places to stay, etc - please don't hesitate to ask. Email is EaracheMS@Gmail.com

Eric
 
Check out this highly technical map detailing the better riding areas. I spent hours creating it...
USARiding.jpg


If you overlay Route 66 on it, you can see why I'd suggest that you avoid it. Waste to try to locate existing portions when you have limited time to ride. If you must, it's not bad after you get to Santa Fe and are heading west. The 1,500 miles of it east of there is really sucks.

It's a general map, of course. Every State has some good riding in it - except Nebraska and Kansas:p . But in general, the map is true.
 
If you ship your own bike to the US, what is the best way to insure. I have done it through HC Travel in the past but it is very expensive.

If you buy a bike, can you get insurance as a UK national, without any US address or Social Security number?
 
snakebasket said:
If you buy a bike, can you get insurance as a UK national, without any US address or Social Security number?
Click to expand...

It can be done; use a friend's address here in the States (assuming you know someone). Don't know that you need a SS number.

There is a firm that offers insurance to foreigners, I'll see if I can find the info on that and will post it.
 
http://www.motorcycleexpress.com/
Try these folk.Used them last year for Bilkos trip across Amurrica and will use them again next year.
Route 66.The impression i get from most bike riding yanks is that it's a bit dull.
Maybe europeans tend to view R66 as a part of American history and getting off the mainstream.
Did you watch the Billy Connolly R66 roadtrip on the idiot box recently?.Worth a look in my book.
I've done part of R66 in a car,about 10 yrs ago;the western part from Kingman.See an alternative America.
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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