Katelin Francis, left, and Jennifer Merryman of Uniglobe Ohio Valley Travel serve popcorn and root beer floats to community members who stopped by the agency’s new location at 2258 Main to preview a centennial tour of Route 66 on Wednesday. (Photo by Stephanie Elverd)

Bill Bryson of Uniglobe Ohio Valley Travel discusses the agency’s upcoming Route 66 trip with community members who came to Uniglobe’s new location at 2258 Main St. to preview a centennial tour of the historic highway on Wednesday. (Photo by Stephanie Elverd)

WHEELING — Community members were invited to “get their kicks on Route 66” Wednesday evening, as Uniglobe Ohio Valley Travel opened the doors to its new Main Street location and previewed a centennial tour of the historic highway.

The travel agency welcomed visitors for a public open house that offered a first look at the expanded office space while highlighting a 12-day motor coach trip scheduled for June 4. The tour will trace the first half of Route 66 from Chicago to Oklahoma City as part of the highway’s 100th anniversary celebration.

“We are doing our Route 66 night so we are promoting our trip in June that is going from Chicago to Oklahoma City,” said Jennifer Merryman, owner of Uniglobe Ohio Valley Travel. “It’s a night where people can come and get some more information on the trip, go through the itinerary day-by-day and almost have a chance to see our new office because it’s our first information at our new location.”

The open house marked one of the first public events at the newly purchased property, formerly the Top Hat Pools and Stoves location. The agency will officially open at the new address Feb. 17 after closing its Market Street office for several days to complete the move. A grand opening and open house are planned for Feb. 20.

“The move is going good. It’s a slow process,” Merryman said. “It’s been six months of remodeling and moving and over the weekend we will do our official move to open on Feb. 17 with an open-house/grand opening on Feb. 20.”

The relocation from 1165 Market St. provides additional room for travel advisors, client consultations and informational events.

“We are a full-service travel agency and we are excited to have the opportunity to have this bigger space for our clients to do events like this, to kind of promote our trips and educate the people on the destinations so we are really excited,” Merryman said.

Despite the rise of online booking platforms, Merryman said travel agencies continue to offer value through expertise and personalized service.

“Everybody is booking online or they think that travel agencies no longer exist but we’ve held strong for over 35 years in the industry now,” she said. “We are full-service whether it is airline, vacation, rental car, hotel, Europe, river cruise, ocean cruise. We do it all. You get our friendly faces, our expertise, with no extra charge. We don’t charge any fees to book with us. It’s all complimentary.”

She added that ongoing training helps staff navigate the vast amount of travel information available online.

“We do a lot of training. We have our vendors who do training as well,” Merryman said. “We get our education that way so we can decipher through it all to save you the time to go through thousands of websites or thousands of reviews. We have our training that helps us get the knowledge and expertise and pass it along to the traveler.”

The Route 66 itinerary begins at the iconic “Begin Route 66” sign in Chicago and travels through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. Stops include the Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, Illinois; the Gateway Arch in St. Louis; Cars on the Route in Galena, Kansas; the Blue Whale of Catoosa; the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Oklahoma and the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

The group will stay at the Best Western Rail Haven in Springfield, Missouri, a property known for its deep Route 66 heritage. The motel has hosted notable guests over the years, including Elvis Presley, adding another layer of nostalgia to the trip. Travelers will also visit the Giants Museum in Atlanta, Illinois, featuring the towering fiberglass “Advertising Giants” that once lured motorists into small-town businesses.

Bill Bryson of Uniglobe Travel, who planned the tour and has traveled the route twice himself, said the idea developed years ago after a conversation with Wheeling Mayor Denny Magruder.

“We thought about it over the years and I called down to talk to Denny Magruder about four or five years ago and they said, ‘He’s not here. He’s down on Route 66,'” Bryson said. “So when he came back I said, ‘Hey Denny, you want to have lunch?’ So we talked about that in the fall and the next year we offered a Route 66 trip.”

The full highway stretches roughly 2,500 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, California. Bryson said Uniglobe divided the journey into two segments.

“It’s 2,500 miles so we did the first half and that was a motorcoach to Chicago and the route runs from Chicago to Santa Monica, so we said, ‘Let’s do Chicago down to Oklahoma City and come back and then next year, we will fly to Oklahoma City, go to Santa Monica and fly home,'” Bryson said.

The agency plans to complete the second leg in the summer of 2027.

As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, Bryson said the timing of the Route 66 centennial offers more than just a scenic journey — it provides a chance to reflect on a defining era of American culture. With its preserved diners, vintage motels and glowing neon signs, the highway serves as a living museum of mid-20th century life, capturing the spirit of postwar road trips and small-town enterprise that shaped generations of travelers.

“All this kind of stuff is kind of throwback,” Bryson said of the scheduled stops and sights. “This isn’t any trip. This is a look back on the memory as to how the way of life was in the ’50s and ’60s. You will get to see a lot of neat stuff and the old neon signs. It’s a cool trip.”

The tour concludes in Oklahoma City with a visit to the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

“We end up at the Oklahoma City Memorial and, boy, that is a tearjerker. They have done a great job with that,” Bryson said. “It’s sad but you also get to see the amazing things that happened out of that. There is a tree that took the brunt of the explosion. If not for the tree, more people would have been injured or killed but it’s still there. It’s still alive and coming back. But the whole Oklahoma City Memorial is an experience that brings tears to your eyes, seeing the big chairs and the little ones.”

The tree, a large American elm known as the Survivor Tree, stands as a symbol of resilience and hope and 168 empty bronze and glass chairs are arranged in neat rows, each bearing the name of a victim — 19 of the chairs are smaller to represent the children who were killed.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial itself stands on the former site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, honoring the lives lost in the 1995 bombing. The outdoor memorial is designed as a quiet, reflective space and the elements create a solemn and peaceful place for remembrance.

For Bryson, the ending destination is meant as a time of reflection and the journey as a whole is meant to capture the enduring appeal of the open road and love of American nostalgia.

“That turned out to be one of the best trips I have ever done,” he said of the Route 66 experience. “I just absolutely loved it.”

For more information on the Route 66 trip or Uniglobe’s services, call 304-232-5171 or visit the agency’s website at uniglobeohiovalleytravel.com. ​