San Bernardino To Santa Monica

And so it comes to an end.

Nearly 3000 miles driven over twelve days (plus two days off), across 8 states (plus a Nevada detour), through many different terrains but luckily mostly through good weather.

Today we left our wigwam (I don’t think I’ll ever say that again) in San Bernadino for the journey across California to Santa Monica. It may have been the shortest distance we would do in a day but it would be one of the slowest.

After yesterday’s enjoyable driving from Las Vegas, today was all about town traffic and as a result it meant a lot of traffic lights and jams. It took nearly three hours to get to our destination. Or rather, destinations.

The original end of the route is at the junction of Lincoln Blvd and Olympic Blvd but there is nothing there to commemorate this. Two years ago, however, the Route 66 Preservation Society managed to get a sign erected at Santa Monica pier, now making it the “unofficial” end of the route.

And so after driving along Lincoln and reaching the end proper, we turned around and headed to Santa Monica Pier for the obligatory photo opportunity.

We had lunch on the pier before driving through all the bad traffic again to get to our hotel, situated just north of Hollywood Boulevard. I’m just glad we’ve got a day off driving tomorrow as the traffic is horrendous around here!

Miles travelled today: 75
Total miles travelled: 2935

Number of times exceeded 20mph: 5