road trip – RouteTrip USA

David Jason: Planes, Trains and Automobiles

You may well be enjoying Sir David Jason’s excellent “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” 5-part series currently being broadcast on the Gold TV channel. The actor, who famously played Delboy in Only Fools and Horses is travelling from Seattle to Los Angeles and enjoying vintage methods of transport and seeing some wonderful parts of Washington, Oregon and California as he heads south.

If you fancy a trip to the Pacific northwest, we have the “Northwest Coastal Cruise” which covers a similar route from Seattle to San Francisco and includes Olympic National Park, Portland, Crater Lake, the giant Redwood Trees and the Golden Gate Bridge. The trip can be extended to Los Angeles or San Diego too if you wish.

Please let us know if you’re interested and we can price this trip up for you.

More info

Book a holiday with us and we’ll give you $250 spending money!

Book any full road trip package (flight, car rental and hotels) with RouteTrip USA Ltd by 8pm on 15th March 2019 and we will send you a prepaid credit card with your road trip pack to use on your holiday.

If you pay 50% deposit when you book, we will pre-load the card with $250
If you pay the standard 10% deposit, we will pre-load the card with $100

This offer cannot be combined with any other offers or discount. However it can be used in conjunction with our like-for-like price matching offer.

Roadkill Cafe, Seligman AZ

The Roadkill Cafe, along Route 66 in Seligman, Arizona

You kill it, we grill it!

The Roadkill Cafe along old Route 66 in Seligman has a wonderful souvenir shop inside selling gifts such as t-shirts, sweaters and aprons with slogans such as “you kill it, we grill it!” and featuring menu items such as Flat Cat – served as a single or in a stack, Rigor Mortis Tortoise and Fender Tenders. Of course, in reality it is a normal family owned, reasonably priced restaurant along a decent length of usable Route 66. The first time we drove past the Roadkill Cafe, we were trying to get to the Grand Canyon before sunset so we only stopped for some photos, however it was on a must-visit list for the next occasion, and we’ve eaten there several times since.

Seligman, an old railroad town was founded in 1886 and is known for being the birthplace of Historic Route 66, mainly due to the efforts of the Seligman Chamber of Commerce and local business owners to get the section of road between Seligman and Kingman designated as Historic Route 66 back in 1987, not long after the last section of the Mother Road, in nearby Williams, Arizona was bypassed by interstate 40. This was well before other towns and cities along the entirety of Route 66 started making similar efforts. Perhaps this is one reason that Seligman still looks so authentic and feels like you’ve suddenly been transported back to the heyday of the Main Street of America.

Seligman, Arizona – feels like you’re in the wild west

Seligman is a small, unincorporated town with a wonderful wild west heritage. The Roadkill Cafe itself was once the OK Saloon, and the bar/gift shop area is the original building. The restaurant section is an extension that was once a patio to the bar, but eventually enclosed to make a larger building.

The jailhouse which dates from 1860 claims to have held criminals such as “Seligman Sam” and “three-finger Jack”. Apparently in 1866, four Indians escaped from the jail by tunnelling underground to the OK Saloon next door and made their getaway only to be shot dead four days later in a shoot out with law enforcers.

Radiator Springs, from the Disney Pixar film “Cars” was known to be loosely based on Seligman, and indeed as you take your road trip along Route 66, also known as the Will Rogers Highway you’ll see various locations and people who inspired parts of this fun, animated movie.

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.

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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!