Six days of being speechless through a vast and spectacular landscape – we couldn’t get over how headexpandingly magnificent the deserts and rock and plateaus and canyons are in this part of the USA. We ran out of superlatives and hyperbole to express our reactions to the landscape. If you need to fill your view with monumental rock – go Nevada, Arizona and Utah!
We headed out through Bristlecone Pine country (the oldest living tree in the world at 4,765 years) and skirted Death Valley (but mighty relieved to stop at the quirky nut & candy store / casino hotel there for a much needed pee after 2hours of driving through no-mans land).
Zion National Park was the first of the National Parks we visited and a glorious day to be walking through the steep-sided chasm of red rocks. Loved the squirrel, the waterfall we walked under and the grandeur of feeling dwarfed by rocks millenium old.
The drive out from there had us stopping multiple times to marvel at the striated sandstone and its layer upon layer of pancake like rock, and run about like mountain goats and stroke its very scuptural forms. Anya discovered her latent love of rockhopping here, sound effects included.
We had a couple of nights in Page, AZ: the best thing about the motel was the breakfast – waffles and oatmeal – and watching on TV kids walking out of school across the US. Strange town – incredible natural surrounds but hard to the ignore the smoke billowing powerstation you always seemed to be able to see out of the corner of your eye. The road out of town had 7 churches lined up next to one another, all different Christian denominations – seemed a lot for a town of 8000.
Horseshoe Bend was the first stop there – the power of rivers to carve out artistic signatures fully expressed here.
Antelope Canyon was utterly beautiful – the pics say it all – it was the kids favourite.
And finally, sunset at the Glen Canyon Dam.
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