Iron like a Lion in....

Driving on through the Grand Canyon we pass the nearby Glen Canyon Dam which we were told was letting a huge amount of water out for 36 hours in a 5 yearly release to maintain water levels. It turns out that nothing was happening and we only saw it on TV days later. Still, the Glen Canyon seemed picturesque enough with it's deep blue contrasting with the red surrounds. Clearly a popular place for boating too. Bloody windy though.



Zion National Park is in the South Western corner of Utah and it's nothing short of stunning, no surprise then that it's Utah's most visited park. Huge scarred mounds of rock tower over the narrow strip of tarmac weaving it's way through the park down below.


The smoothed domes of rock once were mighty sand dunes and over time have solidified.

A mile long tunnel cut into the rock in the 30's delivers us into yet more monolithic stone, some vertical and smooth others craggy and triangular.
Even just entering Utah can't help but be staggering. Red, and sometimes yellow and purple, landscapes with scattered Indian habitations. Stepped red rock mountains and wide dusty scrub land make up an hour or so of driving. Sometimes the road ends literally where the vertical precarious rocks begin and it's clear rock slides are common.


We pass through a majority Indian town called Page. This was an odd place in a way as it's the first predominately non-white town we'd seen. The kids on the streets seem happy enough unlike the adults who seem largely miserable. The housing is dilapidated and overgrown with weeds wrapped around rusting vehicles of all sorts. This seems a common theme in many towns we've seen, shells of cars rusting away and seemingly thrown about the area randomly.


Back in Zion, the name actually mean 'Heaven', and we take a couple of walking trails through the snow and ice and past semi-frozen pools of water atop soft sand, also covered in snow, on which freezing clear water falls.


Groups of Antelope prance around looking nervous at anybody or thing that gets close. We pass under stone arches and caves in the rock dripping with ice cold water that seeps through feeding hanging moss and the plants below.
We walk along a fossilised sand dune trail leading us around the edge of a deep canyon which brings us to more stunning views. This place truly is jaw dropping. I think we've taken more photos here than any other single place and I'm not even totally sure why. I think it all came together at once, the good weather, the stunning place and the relative quietness of it all.

The sun constantly changing the rock faces in front of us throughout the day and the shadows of mountains flung across oppositely faced mountains.


It's difficult to rely the beauty we saw in the two days we spent here. Utah is off to a great start.

The big dip

One of the big ones. One of the most commonly pictured and referred to sights in America. It is the Grand Canyon.
A couple of hours north of Flagstaff is the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, the North Rim is not accessible in Winter. We pass a couple of view points along the way that have Indian stalls set up hawking jewellery. This is indeed Indian land and it almost has a South American quality to it, run down shacks selling rubbish near amazing scenery. The Grand Canyon National Park does not allow such sales so at least you're spared any hassles here like you possibly would be at other major world sights.
We arrive into the park and walk to the first view point of many throughout the day. To be honest it wasn't that impressive at first glance. Many people have said they were awestruck and the like but I felt a bit 'blah' about it. There's a watchtower built next to the lookout and we climb it in hope of a better view and it is slightly. It all seems a bit unreal. Luckily along the scenic rim drive the many lookout points get better and better to become spectacular views over differing parts of the vast canyon.


It's a wide canyon for sure and the river that caused most of the carving, the Colorado, seems but a thin brown line at the canyon's floor. It's a bit messy at points meaning that getting a good photo is difficult in that the whole thing is just too vast and has too much things going on for the camera to capture.
You can see the lines of rock in distinct colours along the canyon's face and pillars not yet eroded fully by wind and time. Some parts of the canyon have eroded faster than others creating many 'islands' of rock that seem to jut out from the ground. It seems strange that the top layer of land is completely flat all the way across the canyon. Yet the floor seems to just drop away at given points uncovering layers of rock beneath that are all in a perfect line also.
The whole place seems like someone has put a huge photograph in front of you. Walking into the canyon would probably give a more real perspective to this huge place.


Snow lies around the start of most trails into the canyon itself and it's a long hike, not that we're going to attempt it in these conditions. Besides it's a much longer hike back up than down and camping in these cold temperatures didn't appeal. People are doing it though and you can see the donkey trains carrying the baggage down below, from the cliff edge they look like ants.
We stop at a variety of lookout points with a variety of idiots from around the world, one guy climbing over a wall next to me slips on ice and staggers towards the edge of the canyon. I felt a cold chill pass over me at what I thought I might see next but the guy regained his balance in time. At another lookout a group of American Pensioners are feeding a crow cheesy wotsit-type crisps and gasping with delight, the bird has probably since fallen to the floor of the canyon from gastrointestinal disease. After a few hours I've seen enough.


We do stick around for the sunset and although it is decent enough I've yet to see any sunset in the world to rival that of the stunning sights over the Lake District.
We try and stop overnight in the park but the lodgings are just too expensive and we get a much cheaper deal just on the edge of the park in a small town.
The next morning we head back into the park for some breakfast over looking the canyon. It is an awesome sight, of that there is no doubt, but I'm not wholly sure it ranks up there on a world scale of amazing sights.


I've started to think that the Colorado River may have carved this huge canyon but it was the American hype machine that made it.
Thankfully the great American hype can't ruin everything and we head North over the border of Arizona into some of the strangest and most stunning landscapes I've ever seen. All this in a state I know only a couple of things about, and one of them is that it was set up and run by Mormons. Hello Utah!

Not that canyon, yet

Surrounding Flagstaff, Arizona, is a couple of decent national parks and monuments, the monuments being not big enough to qualify for national park status ,probably.
Anyway, Walnut Canyon is a place where native American people once resided in houses cut into caves on the canyon face. Native American may not be the right term as they're not quite the same as the Indians most of us think of but they're said to be related and they did live here before Europeans so it's fair enough. The name of these peoples is 'Sinagua' which was given to them by Spanish explorers meaning 'no water', which explains their surroundings.


Unfortunately due to a rock slide the main path is closed therefore we can't walk down to the cave dwellings. We can see them from a lookout enough to realise that life here must've been very hard. Living on the cliff face in a cave can be treacherous and the weather conditions in winter could be harsh. The people most likely left the area due to lack of food and water rather than being attacked by another tribe. The homes they left behind in the cliff have lasted for hundreds of years in the natural shelter of the caves and must've been a tough task to construct on the cliff edge.
They're not the most advance of structures although from the canyons edge we can't really tell, but the surroundings are OK so I don't begrudge the visit.
From here we drive north to Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monument. This is a sort of joint park that includes nature and old civilisations rolled into one. First up is the volcanic activity. All of a sudden we're driving alongside ancient black lava flows that have long since turned to ragged rock.

The landscape varies from black, red, dots of green and sprinklings of white snow amongst the trees and shrubs trying their best to survive. The main feature is Sunset Crater which is a volcanic cinder cone created from violent eruptions that deposit black and red ash in a cone formation. There are many in the area but Sunset is the most impressive. The wind really pounds us as we try and walk to the foot of the crater but it's just too icy to continue. The volcanic rock covers the floor like giant black pumice stones and is warm to the touch from soaking in the sun's rays.


Doney Mountain is another such cone, in fact two cones, that are similar and thankfully less chilly to climb up. Sunset Crater is out of bounds to climbing to preserve it but Doney isn't.

Once at the top you can see the lay of the land and the distant volcanic San Francisco(named after a guy not the city) peaks.


Further up the road is the houses of an Indian civilisation called the Wupatki. In the flat land a red bricked house built onto rock stands out. Due to it's position it was thought this was a look out post for the natives but it is a three storey construction which suggests it was more than that.


Behind the visitors centre is a larger living area and more signs of a community of people including a ball court and meeting place. The multi-room building which makes up the main building was also inhabited by U.S. Park Rangers in the 1950s to look after the site. Oddly enough they lived inside the structure and even fitted gas and installed a fridge. They've definitely made some odd decisions over the years.
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It's too cold to stick around any longer and we head back to Flagstaff all in a days work. On the way we pass the Ski Bowl where skiing and snowboarding take place. I never once imagined that the state of Arizona, which has a desert scene complete with cactus on it's car registration plates, had a ski area. But now I'm here I can believe it. The sun may be strong but the ice cold wind is stronger.
This is the start of nearly a month of spending every single day in a national park of some description. That goes to show just how amazing the land of western America really is. One of those amazing features is world famous and our next destination.

Dam, red rocks and flags

Just 20 miles out of the bright neon and over the top nature of Vegas is Red Rock Canyon. It is, as it says, red. You can see it from quite a way off and it's certainly striking. Considering how close it is to Vegas it's actually a fairly quiet place and a great escape from the madness. A 13 mile scenic drive takes you around with the option of a few walking trails.

We were tired from Vegas and had already walked miles from casino to casino so weren't up to any more.
Still the landscape looks tremendous with it's visible layers of bright red rock and bizarre formations.


Even though it's the end of February it's warm enough to decide to camp. That evening we camp on the national park with a red rock backdrop and a clear sky, with a slight glow to one side.
Once that sun goes you soon remember it's still February. It's difficult to remember that we're still in the desert with Vegas being so close. It's an awful nights sleep as the hard gravel floor is a bit of a comedown to a king size motel bed.
In the morning we have breakfast in the baking sun under clear blue skies and everything is good.
On the way out of the park a few cyclists dot the scenic road, some of only very few we've seen in America so far. Probably due to American roads being not conducive to cycling and even national parks seem to have little or no provisions for cyclists of any type.
Only a few days in Nevada and already we're over the border and into Arizona. Crossing the border itself is the Hoover Dam.
We have to pass through a car checkpoint to drive across it and as we do so do many others in a long line of traffic that seemed to appear out of nowhere in the desert. The place is packed. We park up and walk back across to have a nosey.
To be honest, although the dam is a great engineering achievement, it felt a bit like making a tourist attraction out of a power station. A bit dull.
Lake Mead, which has been created by the dam, is a large blue mass that looks much better than the large grey concrete mass of the dam. I'd heard that the dam produces all of the power for Vegas and even some for California but the truth is only 7% of Vegas' power is generated from the dam. But as we've seen on the Strip that's still a hell of a lot of power.
Onwards we go onto the famous Route 66 into Flagstaff, so named due to a tree made into a flag pole by a group from Boston on a scouting mission celebrating the centennial year of America.


There's not a great deal to Flagstaff, it's a decent enough looking place in which we manage to walk the main streets in less than 20 minutes, and that includes buying some guitar strings.
A nearby University make the town a bit more lively than it otherwise would be. Downtown is fairly dead but many evenings the handful of bars hosts live music and a small theatre draws in some of the best bands in the world. I wonder quite how they manage it but it seems Flagstaff is a town that is placed well enough to be near enough to other major locations. A hub of sorts with the added bonus of a student populous.
It's certainly a transport hub, as well as a freight train thoroughfare, around 100 trains pass through town every day, partly splitting a main road in the process.
For some reason, as we've learned in a lot of towns in America, the train drivers will sound their horns at all times of day and night, great.
We need a break from crap fast food and spend 4 times as much to eat at another great Mexican place. We didn't come here for the food or music though. There's a certain world famous canyon up the road that we can not miss.

Viva fear and loathing!

By the time we'd driven through the mountain pass out of Death Valley the night had drawn in and we'd left California for good. I doubt there's a more diverse and interesting state in America. The scene around us is completely black except for straight ahead in the distance where a soft white glow is peaking around the edge of shady hills. It takes a couple of hours to get closer to the white glow and we drop down from the altitude of the mountains towards a vast flatland in the middle of a desert that seems to have sucked all the light from the land surrounding it. Yep, it's Vegas.

This place in the middle of nowhere has now become an expanse of neon flashing lights and shining casinos is mainly due to the power of water and money in the desert.
Gambling is not widespread throughout the US and when gambling was made legal in Nevada the casinos began to appear. Now they're everywhere. I went into a petrol station in the middle of nowhere and 4 people puffing away on cigarettes were sat at jackpot machines pouring coins away whilst sat next to packets of Doritos and Planters nuts.


Las Vegas is again another Spanish named town that actually means 'The Meadows' due to Spanish explorers passing through the area making use of the water springs available that also supported surrounding green areas. After Americans came this way Mormon con-man, ahem, I mean 'leader', Brigham Young sent a load of missionaries to convert the Indians to the Church of Latter Day Saints. I didn't see much evidence of this while I was there as I was mainly walking around gob-smacked at the over-the-top silliness of it all. For some reason though I quite liked it.
The original casinos were mainly funded by the American-Italian Mafia that pumped money into the places to get the tourists in and they came in their droves. As well as some of the biggest acts on the planet having long stints here, Elvis and Frank Sinatra being to giants that initially come to mind. The current Beatles Cirque du Soleil is plastered everywhere and is just one of many shows going on almost 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
People come here from all over the globe with the intention of losing a certain amount of money just so they're not disappointed with the experience when they do. Even so people all over the casinos look completely miserable. Endless 24 hour a day gambling has over-tired, over-boozed people making rash decisions with cash in a vain effort to make some good of the disaster of a holiday they're having. Every now and then a cheer goes up as a group of guys on a roulette wheel win big and then proceed to gamble their winnings away the rest of the night chasing the ever elusive and almost mathematically impossible big win.
But rationality isn't what Vegas is all about, one look down Las Vegas Boulevard(a.k.a. The Strip) will tell you that.
A four and a half mile road of casinos and hotels runs the length of the Vegas Strip that is actually out of the city limits itself. It comes as no shock then that 18 out of the 25 biggest hotels resorts in the world are right here on The Strip.
The cheap option for us here is pretty decent, if not right at one end of the strip itself. We stay in the Stratosphere Casino/Resort that also claims to have the biggest tower in the world.
Well it is, sort of. I think it gets that moniker due to it's commercial use rather than most other towers being used for communications purposes. Anyway, it's cheaper than nearly every motel we've stopped in so far on the trip. It's only slightly more expensive than the hostel we stopped in Mexico City. We have no money to gamble or eat but that's by the by. Ok so we do have enough money to eat and, as it turns out at the Casino Royale's $1 beer offer, drink.
It would help if we could find our way out of the building to see the city though. During the two nights we stop here we constantly get lost trying to find our room or the exit, they try to make it as difficult as possible for people to leave without being lured in to putting money in metal boxes and pressing flashing nonsensical buttons.
We go in almost all of the casinos on the strip and they all merge into one blur after a while. Each casino has it's own ideas and themes to get people in to lose their money by gambling, eating or drinking their way into oblivion. One of the most impressive resorts is the Venetian which models itself on Venice complete with full gondola rides on a man-made indoor/outdoor canal around a fake Italian shopping street all within a building covered in Roman architecture.
The money spent on the casinos themselves must be staggering. The actual casino floor itself looks like every other casino, there's not much glamour you can add to a fruit machine.
When we finally find the exit to these casinos we walk outside amongst near deranged Americans carrying all manner of semi-alcoholic luminous drinks. As we learn, carrying alcoholic drinks on the street is legal here so any time of day the otherwise lightweight drinkers of America, usually named Randy, Billy or Chad, look even more lightweight carrying large yards of bright green 'booze'. Harsh? Nah, I don't think I'm being harsh enough!
Other Casinos of note are the MGM Grand which has a lion enclosure in the casino, quite why I'm unsure. New York New York resort not only has a mini skyline of New York created outside and New York style streets inside but has a roller-coaster twisting it's way through it.
Excalibur is in the style of merry olde England, except the castle now has blue spires and conveyor belts(travelators) moving the unlucky tourists inside. The round table is devoid of knights and has been covered in green cloth and manned by a depressed Chinese person on the brink of suicide dealing cards to Hawaiian shirt wearing Americans smoking cigars. It's just like Camelot I tell thee. King Arthur is probably in the back room with some stripper trying to pull his sword out....ok too far.
The Luxor is an impressive sight, all Egyptian pyramid, made out of tinted glass, and the sphinx with it's nose still attached. We go inside and sneak in a guest lift, which moves on an incline up the pyramid, to get a decent look.

The list of casinos and obvious interiors goes on, Ceasar's Palace has a Roman theme, Tresure Island has a gay outdoor pirate show and Circus Circus has, amazingly, a circus big top inside.
After two days I've had enough of this end of town and the whole gambling thing. We generally bet a dollar in each casino on the blackjack machines, easiest card game obviously.
The next two nights are spent in the downtown of Vegas where the older classic casinos are, Fremont Street. This used to be the classic street shown in all the movies whenever the bright lights of Vegas and the neon cowboy needed to be shown.
Now it's lost out to the flashier Strip casinos but it still has old-school charm. The Golden Nugget casino being one of the most famous.

Inside most of the casinos look the same, except the Golden Nugget has a swimming pool and a shark filled aquarium in which a water slide passes through. We stop for even cheaper than the Stratosphere at the 4 Queens Casino. This is almost the highlife!


Fremont Street has undergone significant changes to keep the punters coming to this end of town. The main change is the pedestrianisation and being covered by a huge curved screen which shows different short films every hour of the night until 11pm. It's decent but not great.
After two nights here I'd thoroughly had enough and we use the days to buy camping supplies. A tramp approaches me during the day, 'Can you help me man I'm getting sick, I need a beer.' I replied, 'I could do with a beer too!'. For some reason he wants to give me the change he's collected and come for a drink with us, odd but still no chance. On the second evening whilst stood watching the screen above the street another homeless guy, clearly hammered, approaches me. Just as he opens his mouth I stop him dead, 'Before you say anything, no. No! I don't care what your story is, I don't care.' He kept on walking, I've clearly lost all patience with these idiots.
After this we watch a street performance by 3 motorcyclists in a small spherical metal cage. They buzz round at 30mph like loud bees for a while, it makes me dizzy just watching.
A slight mention has to go to the Mexicans on the street here who pass out cards for sex phone lines. They can't actually say anything to the public by law so they clack the cards together to draw attention to themselves and the cards they're giving out day and night. Normally towns have boxes on the street in which free local magazines can be taken about the area and businesses therein. In Vegas these boxes instead include magazines full of sex lines and strip club adverts which show what Vegas is about, the fact that all the models have huge hair shows America's slight stuck in the 80's feel at times.

In the end 4 days in Vegas is too much for me. 2 or at a most 3 days is enough even if I don't mind the place. Would I go on holiday just to Vegas? Not in a million, but I would go back if passing through, probably. I'm sure if you had a lot more money than us your time would be different but looking at it from what we've already seen on this trip, it's alright and that's all.
I've thoroughly had enough of city life here and luckily enough Vegas is on the tip of some of the greatest landscapes on Earth. Therefore, we can spend the next few weeks away from any city and almost everyday in a national park of some sort. Bring it on.