CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A one-way ride of 1103 km, Kingman to Los Angeles - roughly 15 h 17 in the saddle. The stops in between: Oatman, Needles, Barstow and San Bernardino. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 69 km this is Historic Route 66, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Kingman is where Route 66 gets down to business in the Arizona desert. The town sits at about a thousand metres between the Hualapai and Cerbat mountains, with creosote flats stretching in all directions, and it has been a railway stop, a mining supply town and a highway halt in turn. Today it is a tidy, sun-bleached place of nearly thirty thousand people, with a long main street, Andy Devine Avenue, named after the gravelly-voiced Hollywood actor who grew up here. A small museum devoted to Route 66 occupies an old powerhouse, and a neon-lit downtown has diners, motels and murals that keep the mid-century atmosphere alive.
Read the complete Kingman write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kingman is where the day begins. Next is Oatman.
A donkey will probably block your way into Oatman, and you should let it. The wild burros that wander the main street are descendants of animals left behind by prospectors, and they are tame enough to take carrots from tourists and stubborn enough to hold up traffic. The town itself is a little gold-rush survivor of about a hundred people, with wooden boardwalks, saloons and gift shops, and staged gunfights in the street for the benefit of visitors. It is kitsch, certainly, but there is something genuine in the dust and the mountains behind it.
Read the complete Oatman write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Oatman comes up about 84 km into the recorded legs. Next is Needles.
Needles takes its name from the jagged pinnacles that rise above the Colorado River on the Arizona side, and it is one of the hottest places in the United States, where summer temperatures regularly climb above forty-five degrees. Behind the town, the Needles peaks stand in a jagged row, and to the east the river curves in blue loops through the brown desert.
Read the complete Needles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 153 km into the recorded legs you reach Needles. Next is Barstow.
Barstow is a railroad town that happens to have a highway running through it, and you can feel the trains in the place: freight cars rumble past day and night, and the yards on the edge of town are among the largest in California. The settlement grew up in the 1880s as a junction on the Santa Fe line, and the Casa del Desierto, a Harvey House hotel and station built in the early twentieth century in the Spanish Mission style, still stands beside the tracks and houses a Route 66 museum. It gives a good idea of what travel in the age of steam looked like, with fine dining and uniformed waitresses for passengers changing trains in the desert.
Read the complete Barstow write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Barstow, about halfway. Next is San Bernardino.
Hamburgers changed the world here, or at least the way Americans eat. The first McDonald's restaurant opened in San Bernardino in 1940, a drive-in run by two brothers, and the idea of fast, standardised, cheap food that began on this corner went on to spread around the globe. The original site is gone, but a small museum on Route 66 tells the story, and it is a curious pilgrimage for any rider following the old highway. The city itself is large, a place of more than two hundred thousand people stretched across a plain at the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains.
Read the complete San Bernardino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
San Bernardino sits at 882 km, late in the day. Next is Los Angeles.
Route 66 does not end in a blaze of glory. After more than three thousand kilometres from Chicago, the old highway frays into the boulevards of Los Angeles, and its last stretch is a patchwork of Foothill Boulevard, Colorado Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard, ending officially at the pier in Santa Monica, with the Pacific beyond. The point on the map here is the old centre, where the city began in 1781 as a Spanish pueblo, and a few blocks of adobe buildings and a Mexican market street, Olvera Street, are still standing, near the grand Spanish-style Union Station, which opened in 1939.
Read the complete Los Angeles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 1103 km.
Kingman → Oatman is 84 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Oatman → Needles is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Needles → Barstow is 523 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Barstow → San Bernardino is 217 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
San Bernardino → Los Angeles is 210 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.