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Our first view of the Grand Canyon impressed onto us exactly why the canyon was named as it was. The Grand Canyon is every meaning of the word ‘grand’. There are two entrances to the Grand Canyon – the South Rim and the North Rim. We stayed in the South Rim which is the more accessible side of the canyon.

Since we arrived late in the afternoon, we had time to catch our first glimpse of the canyon before heading to our hotel, getting refreshed and having dinner. Then onto some much anticipated star gazing and capturing the stars and night sky on camera in one of the car parks.

The next morning we woke up super early to catch the first rays of runrise at Yavapai Point. It was pitch dark and of course being total noob explorers we didn’t even have any flashlights with us so were walking blindly what we hoped was the track to the lookout. We made it there and set up as a tiny bit of light started to filter into the sky.

More and more people arrived. Sunrise at the Grand Canyon is a spectacular affair, the canyon glows and changes colours as the sun rises through the sky.

After sunrise we headed down to the canteen to stuff our faces with oatmeal and milk (our 5am muesli breakfast didn’t tide us over very far) before starting our hike. We picked the Bright Angel trail which was a 10km round trip hike. Hikes in the Canyon are unconventional in that they start off by going down into the canyon and finish back up where you started. There are signs on the way down saying “Down is optional. Up is mandatory.”.

We had a few false starts because I got scared by the signs warning you that you might DIE if you don’t bring enough water so I made us go all the way back up after 10 minutes of walking down just to get more water. Once we were going we got on a roll: we saw a baby mountain goat scale a sheer cliff face to bound towards its mother, we walked through ‘holes’ in the stone and even a mini frozen waterfall. Then we started seeing people going back up… they looked like they’d just walked to the bowels of hell and back. Gulp. Not a good sign.

The hike down was fun but there was only one view. Lucky the canyon is an amazing view. After the 1 Mile Rest Stop we got caught waiting for some mules being trained by the rangers to go up and down the canyon. They were sweaty and stinky and covered in flies. Which, on passing us, they transferred to us too and everyone else they met along the way. And they met a lot of people on their way up and down, we saw them at least 3 more times on the hike. This meant that I was fighting with insects for the rest of the trip down. We got to 3 Mile Rest Stop with ease. The plan was to have lunch there but you could not stand still without getting swarmed by flies (and I say that without any exaggeration) so it wasn’t even a nice little lunch stop. We promptly turned around and started the long and tortuous 5km long, 700m high ascent back up to where we started.

I won’t lie, going back up the canyon on this trail was tough. It was steep switchback after switchback with no relatively flat spots to ease your legs. And half this time we were still being trailed by flies. It was super uncomfortable.

Struggle Town

By the end of our hike back up we were passing bright eyed and bushy tailed people going down and I’m sure to them we looked like we’d just descended into the bowels of hell too. There was nothing to be done after that but go straight to dinner and crash in bed.

On our last day there we did a section of the South Kaibab trail which we decided we should have done the day earlier, as the full South Kaibab trail leads right down to the plateau section of the canyon and would have been much more interesting than the Bright Angel trail. The fine powdery sand has yet to come out of my shoes too…

Sunset at Yaki Point. Amazing.

Kran wanted to climb anything and everything that was high and scary. And the pinnacle shot – over the Grand Canyon!

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After seeing photos of this surreal looking canyon on another blog, Antelope Canyon shot straight to the top of the must-see destinations on our list of potential roadtrip stops. It’s located in Page, Arizona and was a day stop on the way to the Grand Canyon. Now, there are two Antelope Canyons: Upper Antelope Canyon and Lower Antelope Canyon. We picked the Lower canyon to visit after reading up on both, as the Upper tends to get much busier and a lot more crowded. If you decide to visit the Upper canyon you’ll probably find it fine since there is obvious signage on the side of the road where you park your car.

We got lost trying to find Lower Antelope Canyon, and almost mistook someone’s house for the tour office until we noticed the four vicious dogs rising up silmutaneously on the front porch, surely mistaking our Ford Edge for a fresh meal. We made a quick U-Turn out of the front gate and gunned it back down the freeway. Eventually, after driving around with no luck, we had to ask the Upper Antelope Canyon tour guides for directions to the Lower Canyon. FINALLY we arrived at the right tour office and signed up for a guided tour.

Traversing this canyon is slightly tricky with narrow openings through the canyon walls, and manoeuvring around steel steps and ladders in sections while trying not to hit your camera on the walls. But it’s totally doable, and absolutely worth it.

Nina squeezing into the canyon entrance

The canyon itself is spectacular – sandstone waves and arches, with the most brilliant pink, purple, red and orange colours glowing from the sandstone.

Our guide pointed out some of the named sandstones as we passed them – the Lion, the Rose, the Chief, the Fish and the Shark. He played the flute and his music echoed hauntingly through the canyon as we took photos.

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On our last morning in Moab we walked along the main strip which was full of outdoor shops and Native American shops as we sipped on more coffee while we had the chance. Half the shops were closed though, presumably since summer had long finished and autumn was well under way. We spent the rest of the day driving to Mexican Hat, where we stayed the night as it was close to Monument Valley.

Almost everyone is guaranteed to have seen shots of Monument Valley before, probably in a movie. If you think of a quintessential Western movie, chances are high that there is a shot of Monument Valley in it.

You can drive right up to the formations, but we decided to stop at mile marker 13 to hang out for an hour and take in the view and shoot some sunset shots of the entire valley.

Then, because we were starving and it was cold, we headed back to the motel for dinner where the food was surprisingly good and we tried Navajo fry bread – a cross between naan and puri, which was served with honey. Yum!

We were also super intrigued by the fact that Monument Valley and the surrounding area was a night sky park, which I had read earlier when we were looking for things to do around there. This meant that the area promotes limited light use, and discourages light pollution which happens when there are lights everywhere and many of these lights shine into the sky, limiting your view of the night sky and the stars. Light pollution is found in most parts of the world, especially in cities. In the Monument Valley area, outdoor lights must be of a certain lux level, strategically placed and shine downward.

This meant that when we drove 5 minutes out into the desert from our motel and turned off the car lights, it was like we were in our own HUGE planetarium. We couldn’t see in front of our faces but we could see all the stars in the sky and the Milky Way. It was one of the most special moments of our trip.

Here is a time lapse photo of the star movements near our motel.

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As mentioned before, Moab is an adventure playland housing two national parks, and we wanted to explore both. On this day we drove to Canyonlands National Park, full of canyons and buttes carved over the years by the Colorado River and its smaller tributary rivers. The national park itself is gigantic and is divided into four districts: the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze, and the rivers themselves. Each district has a different park entrance miles and miles away from each other. Since the Island in the Sky was the closest park district to where we were staying and most car friendly (some of the other parks require you to have a four wheel drive to traverse the park areas), we drove the 20 minutes to the park in the morning.

It’s always a good idea to check out the park’s visitor’s centre when arriving at a park to find out more information about trail conditions, ask for suggestions on trails and get any other information from the park rangers. On that day we headed straight to the Neck Springs Trail which is the longest trail in the park (9.8km long), which took us right down into the canyon and back up into the rim. Because it was a Monday we were the only people on the trail and didn’t encounter anyone else throughout the entire hike.

It was snowy, cold and looked like we were in Narnia in the canyon where we were in shadow, and sometimes we had to trek through the snow.

When we weren’t in the shadow of the canyon it was sunny and warm and t-shirt weather! Outside of the canyon we could see the expanse of desert and miles of other canyons.

Once again we followed the little stone markers called cairns and sometimes got a bit lost when the cairns were covered in snow and not clearly visible. That added to the fun though. Some highlights also included scrambling across lots of slickrock and getting lost on a steep slope of slickrock, then having to hunt for the cairns which ended up being right in front of our faces!

Once we had circled the entire canyon we drove to Mesa Arch where we saw a family happily skipping down the top of the arch – two of them were kids around 8 years old. Kran naturally wanted to climb the arch so up he went and across the arch. As Kran got to the middle of the arch, I asked him if he wanted to do a jumping shot. He turned around promptly and walked right off the arch. Oh. I guess not. I went over to the edge of the arch and what I saw was that the Mesa Arch is basically a cliff edge with a sheer drop of hundreds of metres straight into the canyon. I still can’t believe Kran walked on that!

For sunset we headed to Green River Overlook which was another cliff edge with a panoramic view of the canyonlands.

We were bestowed with an amazing colourful and spectacular sunset. It was like the sun was painting the sky with pinks, purples, oranges and reds as it dipped below the horizon.

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The town of Moab is nestled in the perfect spot to explore some fantastic and vast National Parks in Utah, namely Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park which are both popular with hikers and mountain bikers. We decided to explore Arches National Park on our first day in Moab.

It was freezing cold when we left for the park, about -3 degrees C with the promise of a top of 6 degrees for the day. When we arrived we were amazed as usual by the incredible scenery, but this time it was like a martian landscape with red rocks, red sand, and eroded rock faces. It is called Arches National Park because of all the natural stone arches throughout the park, with interesting names such as Double O Arch and Pine Tree Arch.

The first trek we did was the Delicate Arch which warmed us up for the longest hike through the park – the Devil’s Garden Hike, where we saw 6 amazing and dramatic arches carved into the canyon.

The hike was relatively easy in terms of incline but quite technically challenging in terms of terrain. Half of the hike was on what they called “primitive trails” which aren’t defined, and are only marked by little rock piles called cairns scattered along the trail. We did some scrambling over slick rock and made some scary jumps across deep cracks in the rock. But that didn’t detract from the amazing scenery!

For sunset we went to the Windows arches where we were blessed with 10 minutes of perfect glowing red-orange rock before the sun set across the Moab desert.

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On the way to Bryce Canyon from Las Vegas, we had lunch in Mesquite, Nevada. Little towns like Mesquite are so cool, we love making a pit stop on the way through and checking out what they’re all about. Mesquite has an amazing view of the mountains in the background, and we also saw a cool old green Chevy pick up truck driven by a real cowboy.

Another small town we passed through was called Hurricane … where we saw an honest to goodness tumbleweed.

We planned to stop at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in Kanab, Utah to play around in the sand and maybe drive some ATVs or slide down sand dunes and but we had left Vegas a bit too late and by the time we arrived at the entrance to Coral Pink we were chasing the sunset. It was still worth it just to see the peach pink sand which was so fine like powder it went through into our shoes and socks. We were pouring sand out of our shoes and car for a few minutes!

The next morning we awoke to freezing cold conditions and rain – the first minus zero temperatures we’ve encountered so far. We decided to wait until the rain subsided before heading to Bryce Canyon. When we arrived at the canyon, I think the temperature dropped even further, and it started to snow while we were there! The canyon itself is spectacular. It is made up of red and orange crevices and ‘cones’ carved out of rock. These ‘cones’ are called “hoodoos”, and look like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

The plan to hike the canyon was nixed thanks to the weather, so our revised plan was to head back to the canyon for sunset but we got snowed in and I came down with a horrible cold.

One of the things we considered when planning this roadtrip was the amount of snow (or lack thereof) we might encounter. I hoped for none, Kran hoped for a sprinkling. What we actually encountered was this:

We woke up to a snow covered view, with the sun peeking out. Our car was smothered in snow and we spent a good half an hour trying to defrost it with a couple of water bottles (walking back and forth from the hotel to refill them). The car was so cold and frozen over that the windscreen wiper fluid froze on the snow immediately as it weakly streamed out. Once we defrosted the car enough to drive, we drove it in the snow to Bryce Canyon for one last look.

Then we headed off and intermittently drove in a heavy snow shower.

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We drove through Barstow, a small town located on the famed Route 66 highway.

Barstow is like the town out of the cartoon movie Cars! It seems to be stuck in the sixties, with kitschy Americana style restaurants and diners and lots of closed down shops and motels. You wonder what it would have been like at its prime before the interstates took over.

The drive was an amazing 400 odd miles through rugged desert country with hills and shrubs and cactus like plants scattered through the desert. There were also fruit farms and although we were keen to visit one to pick some fruit to snack on, we sadly missed the turnout to the last farm and never saw one again.

The first sign that we had hit Nevada was a small town called Primm full of casinos in the middle of nowhere, just off the freeway. The second sign that we had reached Las Vegas proper was the unnerving amount of traffic and concentration required to navigate and manoeuvre around the 5 lane freeways, which have turn-offs at every mile to every direction imaginable. There are freeways on top of freeways intersecting with other freeways!

By the time we arrived at our hotel it was getting late so we ate at the buffet with “interesting” other patrons who kept us amused throughout dinner.

Las Vegas sunset sky

The stop in Vegas this time was to visit the Hoover Dam, which is a mammoth concrete dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border of the states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed in the Great Depression and provides power to Nevada, Arizona and California. The drive to the dam was an easy 1 hour, which felt like 15 minutes after our massive drive effort the day before.

The sheer scale of the structure hits you immediately when you arrive. Photos don’t do it justice. It is a mammoth of a structure, stretching out and above you. It’s hard to imagine how they designed and built it without any of today’s technologies.

We walked along the dam and admired the views, not even realizing that we had crossed the state border from Nevada to Arizona until we saw the clock and sign on the spillway tower.

There were lots of people there, I can’t imagine what it would be like in the summer!

We’ve also been playing a game to try and spot number plates from all 51 states which has been fun. Some number plates are just plain awesome – like the Georgia one with a peach in the middle and the New Mexico plates which are turquoise with a Native American symbol in the middle. So far we’ve spotted 41 states, not bad! It’s going to be a struggle to get the last 10 I think. Wish us luck!

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