I've driven chunks of Route 66. The Seligman stretch through Arizona, the part where the Snow Cap Drive-In has been slingin' cheeseburgers and bad jokes since 1953. What I've never done is trace the whole thing, Chicago to Santa Monica, all 2,199 miles of it, because that's a two-week commitment minimum and my vacation days have opinions about that.

Somebody fixed that problem for all of us. As AOL reports, a dedicated mapmaker has charted the entire Mother Road end to end, every historic alignment and bypassed section included, so you can run the whole route from your couch with a laptop and a coffee.

The thing is, Route 66 isn't one road anymore, and that's exactly why this matters. The interstate system gutted it piece by piece starting in the 1950s, and today the "route" is a patchwork of frontage roads, old alignments, dead ends, and stretches that just plain vanished. Some sections have five different versions depending on which decade you're honoring. Decertified in 1985, it survives because small towns refused to let it die, and because people keep mapping it.

Nobody thinks about the unglamorous part. Keeping Route 66 drivable, or even findable, takes constant work from volunteers and map obsessives who log every cracked mile of concrete. This new full-route map is the latest round of that work, and it's the kind of thing you don't appreciate until you're standing at a fork outside Amarillo with no cell service wondering which cracked ribbon of pavement is the 1930s alignment and which one dumps you onto I-40.

Ask me how I know.

What I like about a project like this is how it lowers the barrier. Not everyone can take three weeks off to drive the whole road. Maybe you're planning the trip and want to scout the segments worth slowing down for. Maybe you'll never get there and just want to see what Oatman, Arizona looks like, the old mining town where burros outnumber people and the road turns into a hairpin climb. Either way, the map gets you there. The outdoors and the open road belong to everybody, and that includes folks exploring from a kitchen table.

If it does turn into a real trip, use the map the smart way. The classic move is westbound, Chicago to Santa Monica, because that's how the Okies ran it in the '30s and the sunset math works in your favor. Give yourself at least two weeks. Three is better. And don't skip the boring-looking stretches, because the best stops in America are never on the billboard. They're the ones you almost drive past.

I'll probably burn an evening this week scrolling the whole route myself, bookmarking sections for a future run. The Snow Cap is already on the list. So is whatever that mapmaker says sits at mile marker 1,912, which I just realized I don't know yet.

Time to go find out.