Day 21 Route 66

Yesterday was supposed to be a travel day but winds gusting to 39 miles an hour made us decide to stay parked. I spent most of the day researching our route and realized I hadn’t told you what that involves.  So here goes.

I did tell you we bought two books in Chicago about touring Route 66. One of them is a turn by turn description of the road itself and the other is a list of things to see and do along the way. So being the spreadsheet freak that I am, I started a new spreadsheet and listed the things to do and see and their locations. The turn by turn book added a few more places. Websites about Route 66 added some more.

Then I turned on my mapping software. I use Street Atlas USA to mark our route so I can see what towns we will be passing through.

Also on Street Atlas,  I have a bunch of files downloaded from discoveryowners.com. Those include locations of things like WalMart SuperStores, Flying J truck stops, Corps of Engineers campgrounds, etc. So I look at my route and see which of those places lay along it and add them to my spreadsheet.

Then I go to my membership campground directories and add places we can camp at discounted rates. We belong to Passport America which gives us a 50% discount on their parks. We also belong to Escapees, Good Sam, and Winnebago/Itasca Travelers each of which is usually good for a discount of about 15%.

Then I go to my Nick Russell e-books. Nick is a former newspaperman who has been fulltiming for eight years and during that time he has gathered lots of information on free and cheap places to camp. I pick a state we will be visiting and go through his campground, fairground, and casino books marking each location in the state on my Street Atlas Map. Then I add the ones that lay along our route to the spreadsheet.

By now, my spreadsheet is getting pretty long but it is incomplete. Most of the places on it don’t yet have addresses. So I Google each one to get the address, time of opening if it’s a museum, cost if it has one, and a short description of the place. If the place is a campground, I also look it up on rvparkreviews.com to see what others have thought of the park.

If I still have time, I Google state tourist bureaus for any other information they might offer. And if I have even more time, I Google towns along the route. That’s how I found the Hobo Museum in Britt, Iowa.

Then I give each town a sequence number so I can sort them in the order we will reach them. And I give each category of stops a number so the museums will sort to the top of each town, the drive-by sites will sort next, the shopping/eating places will sort next, and the campgrounds will sort last. That way a quick look at the list while we are driving will tell me what’s coming up.

Then I decide how much of that we are likely to do today and select that portion for printing.

Finally we are ready to hit the road knowing we are not likely to miss something we’ll regret because we have lots of data to help us decide what to do when and where.

TTYL,

Linda