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Tracé de la Route 66 sur une façade d'un hôtel en Arizona © MattLphotography - Shutterstock.com .jpg

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Novels and travelogues

Sur la Route 66 : petites fictions d'Amérique (2007), by Eric Sarner: this writer, poet and filmmaker, who directed a documentary for France 5 in 2007, Route 66 une odyssée américaine, takes us through the route at the rhythm of his encounters.

Le Cherche-bonheur (2010), by Michael Zadoorian, tells the story of two octogenarians who leave everything behind and go on a final journey along the legendary Route 66... Funny and moving.

Sur la route 66 : Carnets de voyage (2011, republished in 2018), by Stéphane Dugast and Christophe Géral, is an epic on Route 66 in a Harley-Davidson that allows to perceive the deep America of today, illustrated by more than 400 photos.

La Route 66 vue par les Frères Reitzaum (2012), by Frédéric and Nicolas Reitzaum. Beyond the clichés, the Reitzaum brothers show us the backstage and make us meet the men and women of Route 66, from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Fabulous Route 66 (2015), collective of authors from Ulysses Editions. Magnificent book on the Mother Road, through photographs and stories about its inhabitants, its landscapes and its more or less known stories.

Sur la Route 66 avec Dominique Chapatte (2017), by Dominique Chapatte. Very beautiful book that makes you discover unpublished places of the Route 66, far from the beaten tracks.

The Life, route 66 (2022), by Jim Hinckley. This book focuses on the key places and characters that forged the legend of Route 66. The whole is illustrated with archival and recent photos that allow to see the evolution of The Mother Road through time.

Mapping

In addition to a guidebook on Route 66 that will allow you to recognize, in addition to the sites to visit, the different alignments and branching points, a good road atlas or a map of the region that you will have to annotate is essential to discover Route 66 outside the highways and interstates. Otherwise, you can always refer to Here it is ! The Route 66 Map Series, a set of 8 tourist pamphlets offering for each state crossed a map and the essential of the sites to visit, or to the various roadbooks available on the market.

Maps and atlases. To date, there is no commercial map or atlas specific to Route 66, even in the United States. However, it is possible to find its route(s) with more or less precision depending on the publisher and the map scale available. Michelin (https://boutique.laventure.michelin.com) recently proposed several maps of the United States (n° 761, n° 173, n° 585, n° 175 and n° 174). They can still be found on the Internet via Amazon or other online sales platforms. Similarly, the IGN (https://boutique.ign.fr) publishes general maps (United States West, United States East) and both ends of the route (Chicago and California). For more details, one must turn to the Anglo-Saxon competition. You can visit the Rand McNally website (www.randmcnally.com), whose products are sold on the Internet, in bookstores and, in the United States, in gas stations.

To refine the discovery of the country, the US Geological Survey (www.usgs.gov) publishes a series of maps that cover the entire territory as well as the national parks. They are ideal for backpackers and hikers. They can be purchased online or at many retailers (see list on website) such as national park ranger stations. To complete the picture, the U.S. Forest Service (www.fs.usda.gov) also publishes topographic acts (less practical), and National Geographic (maps.nationalgeographic.com), in the Travel and Hiking Maps section, offers several maps of regions of the American West that are on the route of Route 66.

Locally, the Visitors Bureaus provide maps (free or not), more or less detailed, on states, regions, cities, sites, parks, hiking trails, etc.

Navigation assistance. Rental GPS units in the U.S. do not have a Route 66 background map, so there is no special Route 66 programming available. However, you can use a GPS (which is very useful), as long as you enter your route point by point, always checking the route proposed by the device against the road map that you have previously marked. The Google site (maps.google.com) and its GPS application for smartphones has the advantage of displaying many sections referenced as belonging to Route 66, but here again, it is an additional aid to preparatory work on your part, because the sections in question are not necessarily those you want to use or the most picturesque. Note: Using the "Avoid highways" option, point by point, often allows the GPS to suggest the old Route 66 route.