RouteTrip USA

Spotlight on Austin, Texas

I first visited Austin in 2013, fell in love with the city and have been back several times since.

I was asked to provide my replica A-Team Van for the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) event for a promotion by the National Geographic Channel and made arrangements to get it to the state capital.

SXSW is a large, annual event for the music, film and multimedia industries and features conferences, presentations and a bit of showing off! My van was part of a 1980’s promotion and was running as a VIP shuttle between the airport and downtown Austin and, with a Delorean and General Lee participated in several events during it’s time in Austin.

texas state capitol austin — The A-Team Van outside the State Capitol building in Austin, Texas

Whilst the van was being used for promotional activities, I spent the time exploring Austin and found it a really fascinating city. The recorded history of Austin goes back to the 1830’s when settlers founded the village of Waterloo on the banks of the Colorado River. By 1839 the settlement had become the capital of the Republic of Texas and had adopted the name Austin from Stephen F Austin, known as the “Father of Texas”.

There are some wonderful buildings in Austin, including the State Capitol Building on Congress Avenue and the historic Driskill Hotel on famous 6th Street.

In addition to visiting the State Capitol and nearby museum, I always walk down Congress Avenue and across the Colorado River to South Congress Avenue to wander around some of the antique shops as I head up to Allen’s Boots. Despite my best intentions, I always buy a Stetson, belt or cowboy boots in Allen’s Boots, a large western store on South Congress Ave.

One of the must-do activities in Austin is to stand by the bridge on Congress Avenue just before sunset and you’ll likely see around 1.5 million bats emerge from the underside of the bridge – it’s a spectacular sight! As the evening continues, we have our favourite restaurants and we like to experiment with some new ones too.

Austin is known as the live music capital of the world and you’ll find no shortage of this in the bars and clubs along 6th Street.

One of the striking things about Austin is the lack of chain stores, restaurants and other businesses. There is a general desire in the local community to support local businesses and to shun large corporations. Of course there is an out of town shopping mall with all the large, well known stores and restaurants but there is a very noticeable lack of these household names in downtown Austin.

congress avenue austin — On the bridge looking North along Congress Avenue with the State Capitol in the background.

Further outside of Austin, I always make sure I take the short drive north to Round Rock, to buy a doughnut from Round Rock Donuts, who sell giant, Texan sized doughnuts which happen to be really tasty too! Dallas and Houston are just a few hours drive away and San Antonio can be driven to in about an hour which makes it ideal for a day trip. I’ll write a blog about this separately at some point, but I love taking a stroll around San Antonio and nearby Gruene and this part of Texas really deserves more time than you could give it on a day trip.

Austin features in various of our Southern Road Trips and is well worth a two or three day stop as a part of your itinerary. Visit our main website www.routetripusa.co.uk to book your trip to Austin.

Our Station Wagon Arrives in Arizona

Over the weekend our Checker station wagon has arrived in Arizona from Massachusetts. A friend is going to spend the next few months going over the car mechanically to try and give us the best chance of completing Route 66 in it. The car is a 1968 model, which makes it 50 years old. He will try and go through the car in the evenings and at weekends as time allows. He has a few Checkers himself so has a good knowledge of these cars, in fact the white limo Checker you can see on the car transporter is yet another one that our friend has bought!

We have acquired one of the later model disc brake set-ups from another Checker which is sadly beyond saving which we will use to replace the current drum set-up on our ’68 Wagon.

As before, we will share progress and information as this car over the next few months.

46520695_598980917187202_5376572363305385984_n

46772803_598981010520526_4213439668441579520_n

Visit us at Destinations Show 2019

For the first time, RouteTrip USA will have a stand at the Destinations Holiday & Travel Show at Olympia in London. The exhibition which runs from the 31st January 2019 until the 3rd February 2019 is the largest of its kind in the UK and showcases leading Tourist Boards, Travel Agents and Tour Operators.

We will be based in the Americas Section with stand AC32 and our experts will be on hand to discuss your travel thoughts.

We have a limited number of completely FREE admission tickets to give away too. To get yours, please visit our website www.routetripusa.co.uk

Our Route 66 Challenge

We love the USA and the culture and Americana that comes with travelling throughout the different states. One of the best known road trips is arguably Route 66 which stretched almost 2500 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles. Route 66, also known as the Will Rogers Highway, the Mother Road or simply the Main Street of America still has large sections which still exist in varying conditions whilst others have been paved over and are now part of the US interstate system.

American road trips are in our DNA at RouteTrip USA and has been part of Director Stephen and his wife Chantal’s life for many years. A couple of years ago they decided that they would buy a classic car and drive the entire length of the Mother Road in it before shipping the vehicle back to the UK.

Having made the decision, they waited for the right car to come along. Stephen has owned several American cars for many years and often drives his yellow New York Checker taxicab at the weekends or the original Texan Ford F100 shop truck to the office. He found out through a FaceBook group, the “Internet Checker Taxicab Archive (ICTA)” that several Checkers, both ex-cabs and civilian models were at a Massachusetts junkyard awaiting the crusher.

It turned out that a Checker collector had sent his entire collection of some 40 cars to the this junkyard including some rare ones such as genuine ex-cabs, station wagons, factory limos (known as Aerobuses) and other rare models.

Several people stepped in and saved cars from crushing and those which were sadly beyond saving were stripped of any usable parts. Stephen purchased one of the rare civilian station wagons, a 1968 model seen below in the junkyard. He also obtained a complete disc brake system from one of the unsaveable vehicles to upgrade the brake system from the original drum setup.

Whilst the original plan was to drive the Mother Road in a Cadillac or perhaps a Buick, it turns out that fate had other ideas. Funnily enough Stephen has often spoken about his desire to buy a Checker Wagon. Decision made, the journey would be undertaken in the 50 year old station wagon below.

The plan was to ship this car from Massachusetts to Arizona where friend and ICTA Facebook member will mechanically restore the car back to a standard where it should be able to complete the challenging Route 66 road trip.

We got word last night that our station wagon has been collected from the junk yard and is on it’s way to Arizona, also some 2500 miles. We will steer away from any technical details on the restoration, however we will keep tabs on the progress right here on this blog.

Welcome to RouteTrip USA

Welcome to the new blog from RouteTrip USA – the tailor-made American road trip company.

From here we will be discussing our itineraries, put a spotlight on specific States, Cities and places to visit and we will also include blogs about our own experiences in the USA along with some additional hints and tips!