Route 66 or Mississippi magic? The ultimate road trip showdown

You could follow the mighty Mississippi River through 10 states, or get your kicks on arguably the world's most famous highway. It's a tough choice, but our duelling experts are here to help.

By Mal Chenu

Reprised in novels, songs and many, many movies, the American road trip is a cultural icon; a motoring motif of the freedom entrenched in the Seppo psyche. The Great River Road and Route 66 are both epic adventures of this diverse melting pot, and neither go anywhere near Mar-a-Lago.

Amy will try to convince you to get your kicks on the east-west Route 66 but, as so much of it is desert, unless you are a hoodoo guru, or like drifting along with the tumblin' tumbleweeds, the kicks are as scarce as the Sydney Swans in a grand final.

On the other hand, the Great River Road (GRR) follows the mighty Mississippi down through the American heartland. And its proud, beating heart. If Huckleberry Finn had had a driver's licence, he would have embarked on the great American odyssey in a Chevy rather than on a raft.

The GRR is a 5000-kilometre star-spangled network of federal, state and local byways across 10 states, taking in cities, towns, farms, forests, cliffs, meadows and parks. And like Old Man River, the roads just keep rollin' along, into and out of parochial delights.

Local colour and flavours lie around every corner, across every county line, over each state border.

Hike to see the loons (no, not the Mar-a-Lago variety) and monarch butterflies at Lake Itasca in Minnesota and build an appetite for Norwegian lefse and Swedish meatballs, best enjoyed at a Vikings NFL game.

In the Dairyland state of Wisconsin, you can buy cheesehead hats in the shape of a wedge of cheese for your friends. (They probably don't have one.)

Check out the 200 prehistoric animal-shaped mounds built by ancient Native Americans at the Effigy Mounds National Monument and join an immersive tour of the Bridges of Madison County in Iowa.

In Missouri, visit the Gateway Arch and sample toasted ravioli in St Louis, and drop by the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal on the bank of Old Muddy.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee is the most visited park in the US, while Memphis is home to the moving National Civil Rights Museum, as well as musical musts such as Graceland and Beale Street, the spiritual home of blues music.

Take a scenic drive on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi and stop literally anywhere for fresh shrimp and fried catfish.

And finally, in Louisiana, dip your toes in the Gulf of Mexico and tap them to the sounds of good ol' Dixieland jazz in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and munch on cajun and creole cookin'.

Meanwhile, back on Route 66, it's only another seven hours until the next interesting boulder, and just two days until you hit the LA traffic jams.

By Mal Chenu

There are road trips, and then there's Route 66. As definitively American as the Stars and Stripes, these 3940 meandering kilometres between Chicago and Los Angeles are perhaps the world's most famous tarmac.

Everyone knows the name - and maybe the sign, too. This is the highway that inspired Steinbeck, Disney and the hit Get your Kicks on Route 66, penned by 1940s songwriting hopeful Bobby Troup as he drove along it towards LA and fame. From 1926, Americans flowed westwards along Route 66 from prairie to Pacific, out of windy Chicago and across the plains of Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas through the wild west deserts and canyons of New Mexico and the high mountains of Arizona, to sunny California's promised land.

There are time capsule motels like the 1949 Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona, with its concrete tepee rooms; Route 66 Rail Haven Motel in Springfield, Missouri, where room 409 is the Elvis Suite, a shrine to its 1956 famous guest, or Blue Swallow motel, a 1941 neon-bedecked gem in Tucumcari, New Mexico. A deluge of diners includes Cozy Dog Drive In, where the corn dog was invented in 1949, and Red's Giant Hamburg, thought to be the world's first drive-thru restaurant. At the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, 10 classic Caddies are face-planted into the ground in a 1975 art installation and the Heart of Route 66 Auto Museum in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, boasts a 20-metre "world's tallest gas pump".

Not to be outdone, Fanning, Missouri, has the 12-metre Route 66 Rocker giant chair, Amarillo in Texas boasts the giant disembodied Legs of Amarillo and all along the way loom 1960s Muffler Men - house-sized fibreglass blokes.

Route 66 ends on the California shore, at glittering fun palace Santa Monica Pier. The beautiful historical carousel, Hippodrome and Ferris wheel are the old road's final nostalgic flourish.

The legendary highway turns 100 in 2026. There's time to plan a road trip, choose your wheels and crank up the theme tune (also sung by the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry and Glenn Frey) that says it so well: "Travel my way, take the highway that's the best. Get your kicks on Route 66."