A two-day itinerary built around vintage highway signs

What to take away

• Two days is enough for one corridor. Trying to cover two corridors wastes both.
• Day one runs the bypassed alignment. Day two works the towns along it.
• Anchor each day with one staffed site so there is a guaranteed stop with facilities.
• Shoot east-facing signs in the morning and west-facing signs in the evening.

This is a shape rather than a fixed route, because the signs worth seeing move and the corridors do not. Apply it to whichever old alignment is near you and it will hold up.

Day one, morning: the bypassed alignment

Start at the point where the old road separates from the current highway and drive the old alignment slowly, in the direction the sun is behind you. Expect to average well under highway speed. This is where route markers, distance posts and filling station relics survive, because nothing has needed to replace them.

Plan a first stop within the first hour so that the day starts with a walk rather than an hour of windscreen viewing.

Day one, midday: an interpretive anchor

Put one staffed or maintained site in the middle of the day. It gives you shade, a bathroom, and usually the only written history you will get all day. These sites take their own signage seriously: at Pompeys Pillar in Montana, which the BLM says draws 25,000 visitors each season, a local artist painted murals inside the two small restroom buildings, on the reasoning that they are the first buildings most visitors enter after parking.

Day one, afternoon: painted walls and town centres

Late afternoon light is best on brick, which is what most surviving painted advertisements are on. Work the town centres along the corridor, park once and walk. Ghost signs are usually on end walls facing the direction the traffic used to come from, which is a good way to work out which way the old road ran.

Day two, morning: murals and modern signage

Give the second morning to the current generation of roadside painting, which is easier to find and often more welcoming to visitors. The Fish and Wildlife Service put together a driving list of endangered species murals across California, including one in Arcata stretching more than 250 feet on the back of a building at 280 E Street. Contemporary murals photograph well and are usually walkable from a town parking lot.

Day two, afternoon: the return, done differently

Do not retrace the outbound alignment. Take the parallel modern highway back and stop only at things you noted on the way out and could not fit in. The change of pace is deliberate: it ends the trip with confirmation rather than discovery, and it gets you home at a sensible hour.

Timing rules that make it work

• No more than five timed stops across the two days.
• One hour unassigned each afternoon.
• Fuel at half a tank, not a quarter, in small-town country.
• Last photograph at least an hour before dark, then drive.

Choose subjects with the type list in sixteen vintage sign types, and if anyone in the party needs shorter walks or firmer surfaces, check the options in accessible ways to see old signage.

Common questions

Can this be done in one day? Yes, but you will get the alignment or the towns, not both. Two days is what makes the second half worthwhile.

How many signs is a realistic target? Fifteen to twenty-five photographed properly, not the sixty you can spot from a moving car.

What if the corridor has been mostly cleared? Switch emphasis to the towns. Painted walls and civic signage survive clearance better than roadside signs do.

Is a weekend enough for Route 66 style corridors? For one segment, yes. Trying to drive a whole historic highway in two days turns it into an interstate run.