Road Trip - Route 66 - New Mexico to California

We booked space through Exclusive Resorts at the Montage in Laguna Beach, CA as well as at their home in La Quinta, CA (Palm Springs area), and invited our California friends, Denise and Alan, to spend some time with us while we were out there.

Instead of flying to the west coast, we decided to take a road trip, something we don't often do. Exploring kitschy Route 66 sites along with a couple of National Parks and Monuments and other natural wonders on the way there and back, broken up by some beach and desert time, sounded like fun.

Here's our driving itinerary:

• Day 1: Santa Fe to Flagstaff, AZ
• Day 2: Flagstaff to Kingman, AZ
• Day 3: Kingman, AZ to Laguna Beach, CA
• Day 4 Laguna Bach, CA
• Day 5: Laguna Beach, CA to La Quinta, CA
• Day 6: La Quinta, CA
• Day 7 La Quinta, CA to to Prescott, AZ
• Day 8: Prescott AZ to Winslow, AZ
• Day 9: Winslow, AZ to Santa Fe, NM

We stopped in at the AAA office and picked up some maps and Route 66 books and began planning what to see.

Our stops along the way included the following along with some unplanned detours and photo stops.

• New Mexico: Grants and Gallup
• Arizona: some trading posts, the Meteor Crater, The Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monuments, Flagstaff, Seligman, Hackberry, Kingman, Cool Springs, Oatman, Jerome, Sedona, Winslow, the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert
• California: Laguna Beach, Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park.

Travel along with us in subsequent posts featuring lots of fun Hipstamatic photos.