Route 66 :: Along the Way with J & J

Archive for Route 66 – Page 11

The Mother Road Begins

By jayjazz · Comments (4)

Saturday, May 3rd, 2014

05/02/14

Finally, the beginning of The Mother Road! Route 66, America’s Main Street. We headed out this morning around 9:30am, driving through Ohio and Indiana and arriving in the windy city of Chicago around 6:30pm.

We stopped at a couple rest areas along the way and picked up a few necessities at Walmart. Finding the beginning of the historical Route 66 was a little tricky, but we finally found the first road marker at the Art Institute of Chicago and proceeded towards Ogden St. We missed a turn on Joliet road and had to backtrack, but picked up again off of I55 and got back on track.

It is now just past Midnight and will be sleeping at the Food & Fuel Truck Stop in Joliet. We’re surrounded by big rigs and Jazz keeps looking for a 1974 Dodge Monaco Sedan ;o) Tomorrow we will visit Elwood (the town, not the brother) and hope to end the day with some pictures of the St. Louis Arch.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Blog for email updates and like us on FB for updates throughout the day.

~J&J

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Categories : #RoadTrip2014, Route 66

Tags : Illinois, Road Trip, Route 66, RV Travel

Day One on the Open Road

By jayjazz · Comments (0)

Friday, May 2nd, 2014

Well, we made it through the first day… 572 miles from home to the Ohio border! We got on the highway at about 11:30 AM in Massachusetts and arrived at the Ohio Welcome Center parking lot at 1:00 am.

Stopping a couple times for gas and just to make sure Lady T was holding up, she is 20 years old you know! She did just fine, although we did have to stop and duct tape the bumper marker light back into place. It has been falling out since she came out of storage and last night we caught it flapping in the wind while looking in the mirror. And speaking of mirrors, the passenger side mirror still gets out of place when you hit a nice pot hole so we still have to think of a way to keep that stabilized.

We stopped at the Pennsylvania Welcome Center to have some dinner and get gas since online it said that it was a 24-hour facility. Surprise…no gas! We decided to just have some dinner and move along. We found a nice huge truck stop with the cheapest gas we saw all day so we filled it up and poked around the truck stop store at 11:30 pm. Picked up a cool little 12V map light so we can check out the maps while driving without turning on all the lights.

Just about an hour and a half to our home for the night in Ohio from that last truck stop. When we pulled in all we could see were big rigs and tractor trailers. We found a nice spot between a car carrier and a 53′ trailer and called it a night.

Route 90 is a long road and takes you all the way across the country, but what fun would it be not seeing anything besides the highway. Almost $40 in tolls just to get to the Ohio border. Once we get to Chicago we can get off the major highways and find The Mother Road.

Still about 470 miles from Chicago. We will visit the city and a friend for a little while then be on our way.

Here are some photos we took while driving. Nothing special, just having fun playing with the cameras.

Like our page on FB for on the road updates before they hit the Blog.

~J&J

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Categories : #RoadTrip2014, Route 66

Tags : Pennsylvania, Road Trip, Route 66, RV Travel

Finally Getting Our Kicks…

By jayjazz · Comments (0)

Wednesday, April 30th, 2014

Tomorrow, we will embark on our month long Route 66 cross country trip in our awesome vintage motorhome, “Lady T”. For the both of us, this has been a long time dream.

When I think about driving cross-country, I remember the countless movies I watched as a kid on late night cable during summer vacations. In those movies, someone was always leaving, arriving, or on the way. To me, exploring the open road represented the ultimate freedom, a feeling I hoped to experience one day.

Over the years, Jay & I have often talked about travelling cross-country but it always seemed like just a dream. Early last year, we started considering the trip more seriously and we realized very quickly there were so many things to consider. Unlike all of those movies, it was not realistic for us to simply jump in an old jalopy and go. How would we travel? Which routes should we choose? When should we go? Could we afford it?

Then last July, we took our first step towards making our dream a reality. After only a few weeks of actively searching, we found our 1994 Ford Fleetwood Tioga motorhome! From the moment I saw her, I knew she was our rig. When I first stepped inside, I felt like she had always been ours and had just been waiting for us to arrive. In immaculate condition and with an old school look that we loved, she was in a word: perfect.

Fast forward to today. Our checklist has been checked (and re-checked), the mail has been held and as of 8:30AM tomorrow morning, the word “work” has been removed from our vocabulary. We have waited a long time to get here and very soon, we’ll be getting there. We hope that you will come along for the ride…

See you on the road.

J&J

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Categories : #RoadTrip2014, Route 66

Tags : Road Trip, Route 66, RV Travel, RVing

The Mother Trip

By jayjazz · Comments (0)

Sunday, March 2nd, 2014

The Mother Road

Here we are, 60 days away from the start of our month long Route 66 road trip. We are planning on making this a mostly Route 66 tour with some detours along the way. Route 66 has been reworked, rerouted and paved over by highways, but there is still a lot of it left and we plan to see as much as possible.

Route 66 is a big part of American history that has greatly deteriorated but we are sure that there is still a lot of unique & beautiful places left to see. Landscapes, run down and preserved historic sites and maybe we will meet a few old timers who are willing to share some stories along the way.

Let’s hope that our 1994 Fleetwood Tioga motorhome can handle the month-long trip, which is sure to be an endurance run. She will be getting new tires, oil changes on the engine and generator and a tune up before we depart. We also will be resurfacing the rubber roof and resealing all the seams up there as well. We did a lot of re-sealing towards the end of last summer so that will save us some work before we go. We plan to add on some gadgets, like a rear-view camera, new radio and speakers (got to have that CD player and AUX jack) and we already have the satellite radio wired up. There is an antenna on the roof but we are leaving the TV at home. We don’t plan on having much time for TV watching!

Our plan is to drive straight from home to Chicago then begin from there. Once we get to Santa Monica, we will zigzag our way home, visiting and seeing as much as we can see along the way and hope to see some friends and family too.

Here are a couple books that we will be using as guides on the road:

Road Trip USA Route 66
Route 66 Adventure Handbook

Also, we just received these cool maps the other day:

Route 66 Maps

So stay tuned, subscribe and follow us everywhere for updates!!!

We are still working on the social media sites so bear with us as we continue to get them up and running.

~J & J

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Categories : #RoadTrip2014, Route 66

Tags : Route 66, RV Travel, RVing

66 More Days Until Departure

By jayjazz · Comments (0)

Monday, February 24th, 2014

Here we are, just 66 days from departure on our month long cross country Route 66 trip!!!

We have been using a roof rake to remove the snow periodically, but this last trip was tough. It was about 2 weeks since we checked on her last to clear the snow and run the generator. There was about 2 1/2 feet of snow to plow through before we could even get to the roof!

Stay tuned as we continue to prepare the old girl for what we hope will be the best road trip ever!

~J & J