It began its legendary status as a road that led to a promise of a better life away from the dreaded Dust Bowl. It then went on to become the literal road to alternative enlightenment by beatniks. It even found its way into a Pixar movie, being the road that led to the sleepy town of Radiator Springs. In all its incarnations, factual or otherwise, there has always been one characteristic that remained constant: Route 66 is the very embodiment of venturing into the Great Unknown and making something more of oneself at journey’s end.
This sentiment is very much in alignment with the American spirit of adventure; the implementation of Manifest Destiny exemplified by the frontiersmen in the Old West; a spirit which still lives on today in travelers who dare to wander onto Route 66 and discover the wonders it has in store.
This wanderlust spirit exists regardless of nationality. In fact, just across the pond, the many businesses in the UK travel industry have been incorporating American road trips on the legendary route as one of their main attractions. Titan Travel is one of these that offer Route 66 travel packages. The trip covers everything from recognizable landmarks and cities like the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas; right on to lesser known yet no less interesting stops like Albuquerque; and even some pleasant uncharted surprises along the way.
It also bodes well that a lot of London’s major airports are undergoing major infrastructure and system overhauls to accommodate more potential Route 66 visitors from the UK. Airport parking service site Parking4less documents that Luton is following Heathrow’s wake in facility expansions, more outbound and inbound flights per day, adding more roads connecting to and from the airport, as well as improving facilities in its terminal buildings. Meanwhile, Gatwick has just contracted IBS Software to install a series of Airport Collaborative Decision Making (ACDM) tools to its systems in the hopes of increasing processing efficiency while at the same time minimizing costs.
Traveling is all about exploring outside your comfort zone and immersing yourself into something entirely new, with the desired goal of coming out an improved person at the end. This is the very ideal that Route 66 knows all too well; and it’s an ideal that should be experienced by everyone at least once in their lives.
