The decision is near-unanimous: we're going to the Antelope Canyon. After two weeks driving around much of western U.S.A., the option is easy to just sit back and relax until our flight back home. That we're in L.A. and in a neighborhood in Long Beach, where time seems to slow down makes taking it easy all the more tempting. But there's still an itch we -- or at least most of us -- have to explore this place in Arizona that doesn't figure much on regular tours, but we know of based on word-of-mouth and too much time on Google Images. And so we spend another half a day in the interstate, passing through Barstow in California; Las Vegas in Nevada; St. George in Utah; then going south across the border to Arizona; before doubling back ... read more

“You should ask for her Facebook account now,” Joseph tells me as the bus hisses and slows down at our first stop in the Yosemite National Park nearly 200 miles east of San Francisco. It has been around four hours since we left the City by the Bay at dawn and the bus is set to depart for Los Angeles, where the 12-day bus tour concludes. But we have other plans. Instead of going with the bus to L.A., our group will stay behind somewhere between Yosemite and Fresno and wait for Tito Boy, Tita Fenny and Paolo (who stayed behind L.A. to rent a van) and pick us up going to Tita Fenny’s sister Tita Liz and her husband Tito Danny in Lathrop. Which is why Joseph is pressuring me to get the Singaporean girl’s ... read more

Before we know it, the sun is gone. My eyes try to adjust but I can’t figure out where we are. Then just as unexpected as the sudden darkness, I see them. Trees. My vision is a bit fuzzy, but the wide slabs of wood are unmistakable. I’m in a forest. And we’re not alone. I hear roars. The ground shakes. I hold on tight to the railings of the train car we’re on. And that’s where I first I lay my eyes on them. A group of T-rexes surround us, their eyes locked on us, charging straight towards us. We’re toast. I hear screaming from the other car. I just sit there, slack-jawed, my eyes trained towards a couple of the prehistoric beasts on the left side. A couple more on the right side. One ... read more

Standing at around five-foot-three – probably around my height – with a smile that never leaves her face, Kim, for me, has become the face of Salt Lake City. She’s not from here, and she’s not even American – she’s from South Korea. But she typifies the quality I have come to love about the city. More than the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (LDS), Utah’s capital, I quickly learn, is a welcoming haven populated with warm souls – an oasis in a vast expanse of desert, in more ways than one. After six hours on the interstate, concrete buildings finally take over the wide expanses of meadows. Salt Lake City is the first city we arrive at after two days in the rural West and the urban trappings ... read more

Early the next morning we head to the Black Hills in South Dakota, a large patch of mountains just off the border with Wyoming. Before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, South Dakota was the home of Sioux American Indian tribes and this bit of history comes alive at the Crazy Horse Memorial, a yet incomplete mountain carving aimed at creating a Native American version of the nearby Mount Rushmore National Memorial. When completed, it will stand 563 feet high – around nine times higher than Mount Rushmore – and and 641 feet long. In 1929, Lakota Sioux chief tribes led by Chief Henry Standing Bear invited Korczak Ziolkowski, a sculptor from Boston, to carve Crazy Horse’s image on a mountain in what is now a privately owned land. Ziolkowski had just worked briefly on Mount Rushmore ... read more