Skip to main content

Road Trip on 2 Wheels Instead of 4 Along United States Bicycle Route 66

By Mike Richard Aug 6, 2018 2:03 PM

route 66 road train — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Route 66 is in peril. As the heyday of the old-school American road trip faded in the mid-20th century, the iconic cross-country highway fell into serious disrepair. Now, Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) is looking to rekindle a love for America’s “Mother Road” by paving the way for the great American cycling trip.

The first official miles of United States Bicycle Route 66 are now open in Missouri. Once the ACA approached the state with their plans, including turn-by-turn maps, state officials hopped aboard almost immediately. The meager beginnings of USBR 66 begin in St. Louis and wind westward through Rolla, Springfield, and Joplin. The western end of the route currently dips into Southeastern Kansas as well.

Recommended Videos

Cyclists on USBR 66 ride on two-lane rural roads that parallel or exactly follow the original Route 66 motorway. The ACA is working hard to balance cyclist’s safety with preserving the road’s history and authenticity. While much of the route’s vintage nostalgia has succumbed to “progress,” glimmers of its past remain. There are still filling stations, classic chrome diners, quirky roadside attractions, and other bits of road trip-related kitsch. As many of the small towns along the way realize the potential for tourism, more of that memorabilia is sure to follow. Even the small, initial part of the route has already proven wildly popular with cyclists.

The route is (for now) a tiny part of the ACA’s official United States Bicycle Route System of cycling trails that criss-cross the country in nearly 30 states. The association boasts more than 13,000 miles of trails with the goal of topping 50,000. USBR 66 will be at the heart of that network — literally and nostalgically. The hope is that it will one day follow all 2,400 miles of the original Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica, California. That, of course, requires a monumental amount of time, money, resources, and a dozen states working together in concert. It’s a project that will have to unfold one small piece at a time, but the ACA is hopeful that their dream will one day be realized.

To plan your own bike trip down Route 66, Adventure Cycling Association offers free maps of USBR 66 and tons of other bike routes across the country.

Mike Richard has traveled the world since 2008. He’s kayaked in Antarctica, tracked endangered African wild dogs in South… Read Full Bio

Topics

Outdoors

The Art of Doing Nothing in Kyoto

the art of doing nothing in kyoto hanami street

My first trip to Kyoto was an exhausting three-day bender. I rose at 5 a.m. to see the sunrise from Fushimi Inari, spent a small fortune Ubering between temples, and probably snapped a terabyte’s worth of photos of geiko, monks, and monkeys. I departed the ancient city with the nagging feeling that I had simultaneously seen everything and nothing—a regret akin to rushing through a magnificent dinner.

When I returned this past summer with my girlfriend, I kept in mind Kipling’s advice to the traveler: “The first condition for understanding a new country is to smell it.” With the UNESCO sites safely ticked off, I wanted to savor Kyoto slowly. Mornings in coffee shops with a book. Afternoon strolls through Gion to admire art, watches, and antiques. Dinners at out-of-the-way izakaya, perhaps followed by nightcaps at bars recommended by waiters. Like a Heian roué, I would lounge, loiter, and lollygag my way through Kyoto.

Canyon de Chelly: A Beautiful Place With a Powerful and Tragic History

Peter Horan

From the rim of Canyon de Chelly, the view is almost impossibly beautiful. Sheer red sandstone walls plunge hundreds of feet toward a green ribbon of cottonwood trees and cultivated fields. Ancient stone dwellings cling to narrow ledges high above the canyon floor. It’s the sort of landscape that makes you reach for your camera before you’ve even begun to understand what you’re looking at.

But Canyon de Chelly is much more than another spectacular Southwestern landscape. People have lived here for nearly 5,000 years, and unlike most of the great archaeological sites of the Southwest, this is still a place where families live, farm, and maintain deep connections to their ancestral homeland. It’s also the setting for one of the most tragic chapters in American history.

I tried FlipSide’s luggage: its clever compartments changed the way I organize my trips

A set of three FlipSide luggage travel bags

Organizing items in your suitcase or backpack should be a one-time thing, but that’s rarely true. Even if you save space by rolling your clothes and arrange your gear in a Tetris-like formation, things seem to explode the second you land at your destination and unzip your bag. Even worse, dirty laundry and souvenirs make you rethink your whole packing strategy, and staying at multiple properties means that you’ll have to do it over and over again. Thankfully, the FlipSide luggage suite tackles this issue—but did it really make packing easier for me?

I’ve spent much of 2026 testing three of the brand’s bags, including the 22-inch Ryan Carry-On, 26-inch Ryan Checked Bag, and the FlipSide Backpack. And I’m delighted to share that in a world of premium bags to choose from, these actually made a difference. This is largely due to one design element that both improved and simplified my packing experience — a zippered divider that let me split each bag into two distinct packing areas.