Electric Route 66

After a slow early spring for Electric Route 66, the 2024 travel season is now upon us and a major event for Route 66 is coming this weekend!     Our own Sparky Sparky Boom Car on a rare out-of-town excursion to the Fun Run in 2023 The 35th Annual Route 66 Fun Run is happening May 3-5 and Electric Route 66 will be there as usual, along with a large expected contingent of other EV drivers from Arizona and elsewhere. Along with 800+ registrants of all vehicle types for this two day cruise and car show, the EV portion of festivities this year will be headed up by Drive Electric Arizona . Electric Route 66 will be representing the Route 66 EVA with our main car, The Blue Spirit.   Hundreds of cars line the street at the start of the Fun Run in Seligman This fundraiser for the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona has grown immense over the decades, and after shuttering for two years due to covid it has come back strong. The town of Seligman fills up with attendees beginni...

 Just a short post this time about a couple of upcoming events on Route 66 in Arizona. Firstly, This coming Saturday, April 23 is the date for Kingman's first-ever Drive Electric Earth Day event. It's being held at the Kingman Powerhouse Visitor Center. Drive Electric Earth Day is a nationwide series of events held each April around Earth Day (April 22), by the same folks who organize Drive Electric Week events each September. This Historic Electric Vehicle Foundation is the primary host of the Kingman event, and as such will include free admission to their Route 66 EV Museum inside the Powerhouse for everyone who attends! It's a great chance to see some very rare vehicles inside the museum, as well as a showcase of modern EVs outside, where owners will be showing off their cars and answering questions from the public. We will be there with The Blue Spirit. If you have an EV you'd like to show (plug-in hybrids included!), please register here. It's free for both r...

The Arizona Route 66 Fun Run is the biggest yearly Route 66 event in Arizona. The 32nd annual fun run took place May 3-5, and stretched from Seligman in the east to Topock/Golden Shores in the west. We were traveling 66 in The Blue Spirit on all 3 days. Here are some highlights from our EV-driving perspective. Since this was our first year participating in the whole 3 days of the event, we were a little inexperienced on how best to spend our time, so there was quite a bit that we missed! Many of our friends were there and so we spent some time catching up with them rather than covering all the possible activities that were available. The Route 66 Association of Arizona lines up a whole lot of things to do for their showcase event, so you should head over to their site for a full accounting of what goes on, along with a lot of great photos. Friday: Heading to Seligman After leaving home in Las Vegas, our first stop on Friday was the Kingman Tesla supercharger. The charging infra...

I hope everyone had a good St. Patrick's Day! We spent the day at home, but that gave me a chance to write about our March 10 foray into the Mojave Desert, a day trip to visit nearby tourist destinations and encourage development of EV infrastructure. Cool Springs, Arizona Located west of Kingman on Route 66, Cool Springs was opened in the 1920s and was once a service station, store and tourist cabins for overnight stays. This section of Route 66 was bypassed by a new alignment in the 1950s, and in the 1960s Cool Springs closed when a fire reduced it to ruin. Just a few stone walls and pillars remained when it was briefly reconstructed for the 1992 film "Universal Soldier", but only as a set piece to be blown up for the movie. In 2001 the property was sold to a new owner with plans to rebuild Cool Springs, and in 2005 the doors opened again, attracting Route 66 travelers from all over the world. It has also been reproduced in Cars Land at Disney's California Adv...