Grand Canyon National Park

The drive up to the Grand Canyon from Flagstaff was spectacularly unspectacular. Had we not been warned in a guide book, we might have thought we were on the wrong road. The flat desert scrub seemed to continue endlessly before finally giving way to the Colorado river and it's grand canyon.

The views from the top of the south rim are spectacular:

Sedona, Arizona

Before heading up to the Grand Canyon's south rim we decided to head to a place called Sedona, just south of Flagstaff. We reached the town by driving through Oak Creek Canyon, a beautiful drive down through a woody canyon which eventually opens at the bottom to give fabulous views of red, orange & white cliffs.

A Big Hole in the Ground

After packing up in Zion, we started the drive to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, which isn't really that far away. The drive was lovely, through rolling meadows and woodland, and then we ran into this:

Angel's Landing

A notorious 5.4 mile trail (8.7 km) leads from the floor of Zion Canyon up to Angel's Landing, covering 1488 vertical ft (453m). This is a "peak" within the main canyon in the park and since it was marked as "strenuous" in the guide, we decided to give it a go.

Zion National Park

Zion is a huge canyon with 2000-3000 ft rock walls on either side. At the bottom the Virgin river flows through the canyon, before it eventually joins the Colorado river and hits the pacific ocean in Mexico. The area gets very little rain but when it does the river can go from 15cu. ft. per second to 100 cu. ft. per second causing flash floods and bringing big boulders, trees and sand down the valley. Naturally the walls of the canyon are mightily impressive and there are numerous hikes to explore the park.

We drove into Zion NP via the east entrance in the early morning:

Dinner

Mmmm mmm mmm.







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Location:Williams, AZ

Bryce Canyon National Park

The primary attraction at Bryce Canyon National Park is called “the Amphitheater,” a series of canyons that have been heavily eroded to form a huge concentration of spectacular rock spires "called hoodoos."

Random Photo #1

Beer in Utah:





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Location:Springdale, UT

Between Arches & Bryce Canyon NPs

On the way to Bryce (through the middle of nowhere, see above pictures), we stopped at Capitol Reef National Park. Capitol Reef is one of the lesser known National Parks, it's a rather recent addition to the park system and off the beaten rack. It's attractions are also small compared to some of the other parks we have visited. The park encompasses an old Mormon settlement along the Freemont River, some Native American petroglyphs, and the 100-mile long Water Pocket Fold, a long rock outcrop of some interest to geologists which was simply pushed up as this area formed millions of years ago.

Delicate Arch

The morning we headed to Bryce, we stopped back at Arches National Park to see the one attraction we didn't have time for during our first visit – Delicate Arch. Delicate Arch is probably the most famous/well-known arch in Arches. In fact, it's on Utah's standard license plate. To see the Arch, you need to hike about two miles uphill through barren rocky desert. The heat was sweltering, but the view was worth it:

Canyonlands National Park

After Arches, we headed to nearby Canyonlands National Park. Canyonlands is a remote area of Utah surrounding the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers. Whereas Arches was quite easy to access and heavily traveled as a result, the most convenient section of Canyonlands is a good hour and a half drive out into the middle of nowhere.

Arches National Park

Arches National Park is a protected desert area which contains more than 2000 natural rock arches and various other rock formations like balanced rocks, spires, pinnacles, hoodoos and more.

Visiting the formations is relatively easy as an 18 mile scenic drive takes you within short hiking distance of the biggest arches & vistas. It does mean the park is rather popular and it's unlikely that you'll find solitude.

The scenery is stunning and the pictures speak volumes. Here's a few of our favorites:

Rocky Mountain National Park

This past weekend we made our first camping stop - Rocky Mountain National Park, a large area of protected wilderness in Northern Colorado. The park boasts 72 named peaks over 12,000 feet and one over 14,000 (Long's Peak). It also includes the highest continuously paved road in North America which tops out at 12,183 feet.

We entered the park from Estes Park, a quaint mountain town that basically services park visitors. We found our first camp site, set up all our new gear (see previous post), and set out to explore the park.

Gearing Up

The next 6 weeks will spent on the road car camping from national park to national park, with a few stops in civilization on the way. In the last days we've been getting our gear ready for the weeks ahead.

Celebrating Independence

The 4th of July in the US is a big holiday and celebrates the signing of the "Declaration of Independence" where the US declared it's independence from Great Britain in 1776.  It's a big day in the American calendar (at least from what I can tell) and it was a good start for me to be able to get a better feel for the country where we'll be spending the next 6-7 weeks.

An Auspicious Beginning

And so it begins. After months of planning and many fond farewells, we left Hamburg yesterday and flew to London Heathrow. Unfortunately, an overnight stop was required to get a reasonably priced ticket from Hamburg to Indianapolis. But luckily, the stopover was a pleasant one as we spent the night at Jo's brother's place in Farnham where we celebrated the beginning of our trip with some delicious home brew and toasted our recent engagement with champagne. We were also treated to a lovely clarinet and violin concert courtesy of Jo's niece and nephew.

In the morning, we hitched a ride back to Heathrow with Jo's brother on his way to work. We arrived at the airport quite early for our flight, but luckily we were able to check our bags straight away and head to the British Airways Executive Lounge courtesy of Jo's Silver Status! (See, all of those trips to LA did pay off.) As an added bonus, when we got to the gate, we were pleasantly surprised to find we had been bumped up to business class. Quite an auspicious beginning to a "budget" trip around the world...

Waiting...

After the farewell party was over, we turned our focus to clearing out the apartment and getting ready to go. We set out to hire a van to transport everything to various destinations, but unfortunately, no company would accept Nick's drivers license as proof he could drive a van. So Jo ended up being the sole driver of a Mercedes Sprinter.

We started emptying the apartment by taking a few loads to the dump where the workers seemed endlessly amused to see us rock up with Jo driving with Nick & John as passengers. Perhaps they'd never seen a woman driving a truck before?

Once everything was out of the apartment we could focus on the next task - packing and repacking to ensure our bags were within the weight limit for each airline. With a budget of $50 / person / day, airline fees for excess baggage could wipe out a couple of nice days on the beach in Thailand.