Kate and Dave

We started heading west again towards Grand Canyon and stopped for a brief look at Meteor Crater and the museum there. Meteor Crater was the first crater ever identified as such on earth and is still the best preserved. Also saw some pueblo ruins out on the plains here, just scattered around the place but not open to the public. Made a short stop in Winslow for the obligatory “standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona” and was actually quite neat because there were heaps of shops for Eagles stuff and also the famous Route 66, which makes its way through the towns next to the current I-40. Was a little sad really because all these towns would have been bustling and crowded when the Route went through them but are now relatively quiet and struggling ... read more

We arrived at Zion National Park fairly late in the day after stopping to do some shopping just outside of Bryce. Was a beautiful evening so we decided to head up the valley to see the sights. There were heaps of deer everywhere - as the valley floor in Zion is fairly low in elevation the mule deer population stay there for the winter. Was also supposed to be quite a few mountain lions around because of this, but we didn’t see any! Got up early again to head out to Kanab to see if we could get walk in permits (they allow 10 online and 10 walk in permits per day) to Coyote Buttes North and the “Wave” in the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument wilderness area. Walked into the office in Kanab and they had ... read more

The drive from Crane, Oregon to Salt Lake City, Utah was our longest day and travelled through the deserts of northern Nevada. Fortunately most of this journey was on the interstate which actually made it easier. For ages we thought that there were no trees in this part of Nevada and then we realised that what we thought were rocks up in the snow on the mountain ridges were actually pines - this seems to be the only place they can grow! Just after the border with Utah we stopped at the Bonneville Speedway on the salt flats and saw a porshe and a corvette trying it out. It was pretty dark by the time we eventually arrived in Salt Lake City so we spent the night in a motel near the airport. We headed off ... read more

After leaving Lake Tahoe we headed north again up to Lava Beds National Monument near the Oregon/California border. We arrived fairly late in the afternoon and just had time to visit the visitor centre and set up camp before watching the sun set over the cinder cones, lava flows and sagebrush. After dinner we set off in the dark to one of the many lava tubes in the park - this one was lit up by sensor lights and had information about all the different formations you can see in the lava tunnels. The next morning after a frosty night we explored some more of the tunnels including one very large one that was about 20m high and had some really neat flow lines around the sides from various lava levels. All these tunnels had spiky ... read more