Where did Route 66 go?

So we keeping trying to figure out where Route 66 is, we see signs at every exit and from time to time we see a frontage road that looks like it, but where is the rest of it? One of our maps even has a faded line where it used to be but it's not there now... it's almost like it just disappeared after I-40 went in.

It was nice to get an earlier start Friday morning, I think all the time changes heading West are helping out. We coordinate with my sister Jerusha (who was heading East with her family) to meet up just outside of Albuquerque, NM at mile marker 149. I'm so glad it worked out see everyone and the cousins were very happy to play together. After catching up and taking a few pictures it was back on the road. Just as we entered Arizona we came to our next destination, the Painted Desert & Petrified Forest. It was beautiful but windy, very windy. Our plan was to enter the park and have a family picnic as we enjoyed the view. The 45 mph sand filled wind made it a little challenging but we made the best of it.

It was now off to the Grand Canyon, our last planned stop before heading home. We thought about skipping it to get back home a little sooner, but when we got there we were glad we didn't. It was amazing, just amazing. We took some great pictures, but then I realized that it might be impossible to take a bad one. The kids thought it was great that they could run around a play, Kristy did not. Most of the look out points had hand rails and short chain link fencing but not all of it and there were some areas where the fence had large child size gaps under them. So we took extra care to prevent our children from doing any unplanned base jumping. That's not to say that our time was without incident, both Lauryn and Luke managed to bleed before we left. As we drove by one of the camp grounds on our way out we decided it would be fun to come back and camp out with the kids in a few years.

One more stop at McDonalds and it was 225 miles to Kingman, AZ for the night.