We really enjoyed our USA road trip in 2022 and knew that one day we'd want to return and do something similar again. We visited five national parks last time but there were still so many amazing places we hadn't seen, most notably Yellowstone. Yellowstone had been part of our original itinerary for 2022, but we ended up having to change our route at short notice after some horrendous flooding washed away one of the key roads into the park. We spent a few days in Idaho instead, an experience which we definitely enjoyed but nevertheless didn't quite compare to what we originally had planned. I was particularly gutted because I had spent hours researching Yellowstone and planning our route around it; not an insignificant feat when you consider that the national park is approximately the same size as Cyprus. I was adamant that one day we were going to return and I was going to get to use my itinerary

The Points Pay Off

Around this time last year we started looking at flights in a BA end-of-summer sale and realised that it was possible to fly directly from Heathrow to Phoenix. After our experience trying Qatar business class back from Doha last summer, we were quite keen to try it again on a longer route. At close to 11 hours, Heathrow to Phoenix is definitely a long route! And business class tickets are definitely not cheap. But my new-found hobby of collecting air miles meant that we had just enough points to get one return journey for free, meaning that we only had to pay for one ticket. That one ticket cost £2,400 – which is obviously still a lot – but only £1,200 each, which is effectively what it would have cost us each to fly return in economy anyway. When we flew from Dublin to Raleigh in 2022, my return flight on Aer Lingus cost £1,300 and Aer Lingus messed us around quite a lot with delays and cancellations, to the point where I ended up having to make a complaint to the regulator once I got home to encourage them to pay some compensation we were owed. I was hopeful that flying business class with BA was going to be a more positive experience!

The journey certainly got off to a very civilised start by the standards of our holidays, as the flight wasn't until 15.40. That meant we didn't have our typical early morning drive to the airport, instead leaving home some time around 10am. The downside of a later flight was that there was more traffic on the motorways than there normally is at 3am, but despite a few random traffic jams we made it down to the airport parking at Heathrow by 12.30.

Stress-Free Pre-Flight

Checking in for business class was a very pleasant experience; there are separate check-in desks, so we barely had to queue for more than a few minutes. Very different from when we flew Wizzair back from Istanbul earlier in the year and queued at check-in for over an hour! Our boarding passes entitled us to use the fast-track security lane, which was very smooth, and in no time at all we were sitting in the BA lounge.

It took discipline not to get carried away. Fortunately for Tim, a man to whom sipping does not come naturally, the Lounge offered alcohol-free beer, which meant that he could still indulge.

The lounge was really lovely and slightly classier than Wetherspoons at Stansted, which is where a lot of our holidays have historically started  We were torn between making the most of the free food and drink and not having too much of the free food and drink, because we would also be getting food and drink on the plane. I started with a cup of coffee, while Tim went to investigate the food buffet and reported back that it was all quite edible, with a choice between chicken curry and cheesy pasta. I sometimes find the food on the plane too posh to eat, so decided to have some pasta now to be on the safe side. We also sampled a little bit of the wine and prosecco and had some amazing lemon drizzle cake. Tim had a scone with jam and cream, plus utilised some of the free crisps. 

Time flew by and soon it was time to board the plane. It was a huge plane!

We were sitting behind each other rather than next to each other this time, which was nice as it meant we both had window seats, though did make communication slightly more difficult.

We were served a welcome drink of champagne between boarding and take-off, then a cranberry cocktail once the fasten seat-belt sign had been switched off.

Meh-nu!

Soon it was time for the (first!) meal service and the flight attendant came round to ask for our choices. As I mentioned earlier, my main problem with flying business class is that the food is too adventurous for me  I decided I was going to have to pass on a starter, then choose the chicken as the least-bad main course option. 

Tim was slightly more adventurous and went for the tuna tonnato to start, although I think it's fair to say that he did not really enjoy it once it arrived.

The bread was nice!

The chicken main course was actually fine, if you concentrated on the chicken breast and ignored everything else.

Pudding was sticky toffee, which was very nice indeed ...

... and to finish it off we got coffee and biscuits, which was also great.

Seeing an Old Friend

As you can see from the pictures with the route map, the plane had flown north across the UK initially, before flying south of Iceland and heading towards the southern tip of Greenland. The meal service had finished and most of the other passengers in business class seemed to have decided to go to sleep, when Tim alerted me to a view outside the window.

It had been quite a cloudy journey until this point, but there were no clouds over Greenland today!

We flew over ice and glaciers ...

... and saw big fjords down below.

Southern Greenland is actually the least icy part of Greenland, and so not all of the mountains were snow-covered.

I was particularly excited to fly over this bit of Greenland because we'd originally been due to visit the south during our 2023 trip, something which ultimately didn't happen due to a series of weather-related flight cancellations.

The views from the plane were incredible – such an amazing experience

I think we were lucky to get a glimpse of Greenland today because just as we were coming to the edge of the coast, the cloud cover began moving in again.

The plane ultimately then flew across Canada, but we didn't really see anything through the cloud. Tim ordered us another cocktail.

It was only really during the final two hours of the flight when we started flying over the USA that we were able to get a view. 

At this point we were having the second meal service. I chose gnocchi, which was actually genuinely really nice. Tim had a chicken tikka pie, which also sounded good. It was technically about midnight in the UK by this point so an odd time to eat dinner, but it was such a long flight that time had lost all meaning  

The USA from above

As we ate we flew over Grand Teton National Park, which we visited back in 2022.

We're not 100% sure, but slightly later we flew over a large urban area next to an even larger lake; we think it must have been Salt Lake City in Utah.

We were over Utah, and there's only one huge lake and conurbation in that spot ...

Within the final half an hour or so of the flight, we flew over a large canyon.

It was quite cloudy so again I'm not 100% sure – could this have been the Grand Canyon?

It's right where the Grand Canyon should be ... and if it isn't the real thing, then we've discovered an imposter!

Touchdown!

We landed in Phoenix at 18.42 local time, which was 02.42 on Sunday morning for our UK body clocks.

Now we had the most nerve-wracking part of any US trip; getting through immigration! It turned out to be a breeze  Another benefit of business class is that you're one of the first off the plane and so there wasn't any queue at all when we got to the desks. We got the friendliest passport control guard ever – definitely a lot friendlier than recent experiences I've had in Helsinki and Berlin! – and we were through in no time at all. There followed quite a long wait for our luggage which had an extra frisson of excitement added by the fact that we kept hearing announcements over the tannoy that there had been a problem with a luggage belt at Heathrow, resulting in 70 bags failing to be loaded onto the plane   Luckily our bags were not included in that 70 and they did eventually emerge onto the baggage carousel. We walked through customs and then we were officially in Phoenix. (As you can probably tell, I was quite tired by this point!)

The final challenge was to get to our hotel. As it had been a long day, I'd booked us a hotel near the airport but Phoenix airport is absolutely huge and "near" was actually quite a few miles away. The hotel was supposed to have a free shuttle but I didn't have any details of how often it ran and it wasn't obvious when we stepped outside the airport. We ended up taking a taxi, which cost $18. I think we offended the taxi driver by not tipping on top of that.

When we got to the hotel we found we had a really big, spacious room.

It was about 8pm in Phoenix by this point but 4am in the morning back in the UK. We unpacked a few essentials, then went straight to sleep with the alarm set for 7am on Sunday morning. As you may have gathered from the cover photo of this blog, we have quite an adventurous itinerary planned for the next two weeks!

I'd set the alarm for 7am this morning, but it turned out to be unnecessary. We both woke up around 3am, a circumstance not that surprising when you remember that that was 11am back in the UK. We tried to sleep for a bit longer but it takes a while to get used to an 8-hour time zone difference and by 06.30, we were well and truly awake!

That was fine, 06.30 was the time breakfast in the hotel started. Hotel breakfasts in the USA are often a bit weird, served on paper plates with plastic cutlery that you have to put in the bin afterwards. There was no bread or cheese like you'd typically see at a European breakfast buffet. But we had scrambled eggs with sausage burgers and it ultimately wasn't any weirder than some of the breakfasts I ate in Finland recently

We were booked on the hotel's complimentary shuttle bus back to the airport at 8am – it turns out it runs when required/requested, not automatically all day. We turned out to be the only passengers – and the driver seemed inclined to believe in conspiracy theories – but it was good not to have to pay for another taxi. We were dropped outside departures at one of the terminals, from where we needed to make our way to the “Sky train”, a monorail which runs from the various terminals to the car rental centre. I'm not sure whether this is something new – when we flew to Phoenix back in 2022 we had to take a bus to pick up the rental car – but it was all pretty efficient. 

Picking up the car was pretty efficient too, as these things go. We normally resist all efforts to be sold additional insurance at the desk, but today we succumbed when we were offered roadside assistance for an extra $8/day. The lady told us that in the exceptionally hot weather of Arizona car tyres can sometimes just blow out, which sounded rather concerning. The roadside assistance means they'll rescue us/bring us a new vehicle if something like that happens, which sounded like a good service to have.

The car, pictured here later in the day, is a Mitsubishi Outlander. It seems pretty big to us, but simultaneously not that big by American standards.

Just look at how much space there is in that parking bay!

Once we had the car, our main aim for the day was to drive approximately two hours south of Phoenix to the city of Tucson. Tucson itself wasn't particularly on my bucket list, but it's next to a place that definitely was: Saguaro National Park.

The most difficult part of the entire road trip will probably be the first 30 minutes or so of today, as we negotiated our way out of Phoenix. The highways when you leave the airport are absolutely enormous – six lanes across at times – and it's a very confusing road system. Luckily our Sat-Nav has US maps on it, otherwise I think I would really have struggled to navigate us! It was a fascinating journey, the road lined with adverts for everything from evangelical churches to personal injury lawyers. There were also the remains of multiple dead tyres scattered along the hard shoulder, so I guess the car rental lady was telling the truth about the impact of the heat!

It was around 11.30 in the morning when we arrived at Saguaro National Park. I think it's quite an unusual national park because it's split into two halves – western and eastern – with the city of Tucson in the middle. We had arrived at the Red Hills Visitor Centre, which is the entry point for the western side of the park.

Our first task was to go inside and purchase an “America the Beautiful” pass. For what feels like the bargain price of $80, this pass lets you into all the national parks for a year. The passes are per vehicle, so we only needed to buy one. It would have cost $25 just to enter Saguaro today, so we will definitely be getting our money's worth out of this over the course of the holiday.

If you haven't already worked it out from the photos, Saguaro National Park is famous for its cactuses.

Saguaro is the name of these distinctive tree-like cactuses.

They can live for over 150 years...

...and grow to be over 40 feet tall.

They're native to Mexico and to the Sonoran desert, which extends into this part of Arizona.

It certainly felt like we were in a desert, with temperatures of around 37 degrees as we set off on a short nature trail.

When I say short, I really do mean short – I think it was 0.8 miles – but I was very alert for wildlife after having seen a sign at the visitor centre warning about rattlesnakes!

Although the trails were short, there were some beautiful views as we walked along it.

As well as the large saguaro cactuses, there were plenty of smaller ones.

We both loved these cactuses with bright red flowers.

But it was the huge saguaro which really stole the show  

Every so often we came across shelters on the trail, designed to provide a bit of shade from the desert heat. 

We didn't feel the need to stop, heading back to the car and drinking one of the many bottles of water we'd brought with us before continuing on our journey. We were driving along a scenic loop road through the park and there was another short hike I thought we'd be able to manage.

This one was taking us to a viewpoint where we could see the so-called “cactus forest”.

I'd literally never seen anything like this in my life – just cactuses sticking up out of the ground as far as the eye could see!

It was a nice trail, with lots of variety.

It was feeling incredibly hot by this point though and my phone decided to give up the ghost, giving me a message every time I opened the camera app that it was too hot to take any more pictures   All these pics are from Tim's real camera.

Before too long we made it to the viewpoint.

Here's me with the cactus forest in the background.

It was really cool

We were hot and hungry by this point, so we walked back to the car and Tim started driving us towards Tucson (pronounced tu-son, not tuk-son, as Tim keeps having to remind me!).

It turned out to be a really scenic drive.

When we got to Tucson we headed to a branch of Denny's, a diner chain which does great all-day breakfast. Tim had french toast with berries, while I had a huge breakfast sandwich. The best part for me was the unlimited coffee refills!

Suitably refreshed, we were able to continue our journey to the eastern side of the national park. We headed to the visitor centre, where the flag was at half-mast because of the recent school shooting in Minnesota. There was a free water refill station here, where we were able to refill all our water bottles.

The eastern side of the park has a circular route called the Cactus Forest Scenic Loop Drive, and that's what we were planning to drive along.

This side of the park felt quite different, because in addition to the cactuses we had views of the Rincon Mountains in the distance.

If there's anything better than views of cactuses, it's views of cactuses and mountains

My phone had recovered from its heat-stroke by this point, so I was able to jump in and out of the car as we paused at various viewpoints and grab photos.

There were plenty of cactuses just growing by the side of the road.

We parked and did another short walk on a marked trail.

There were some pretty big cactuses here...

...and some small ones too...

...plus the odd cactus that was in flower.

As we drove further around the scenic loop, we got even better views of the mountains.

I walked a little way along a forest path and got my favourite photo of the day, which is this one:

If there'll be a better photo all holiday, I'll be amazed!

I think there will be a lot of cactus photos going onto my digital photo frame once I get home

The remaining stopping points on the road gave us more views of the cactus forest...

... the Rincon mountains...

... and enormous Saguaro cactuses.

It was definitely worth visiting both sides of the park  Once we'd finished driving around the loop, we set off towards our hotel for the night, which is just outside Tucson. It turns out to be an aparthotel, so we've got quite a big living area and kitchen...

... plus two separate bedrooms.

We had a short nap, then set to work on sorting through today's photos and catching up on the blog. It's been a great first day for our road trip  

We made a fairly early start this morning, setting the alarm for 05.30 and managing to check out of the hotel around 06.15. I definitely could have slept for longer, but we were conscious that we had a long day of driving ahead of us as we aimed to get from Tucson (which is almost at the bottom of Arizona) to Tusayan (which is quite near the top). On the way we were going to visit another one of America's lesser-known national parks: Petrified Forest. As Tucson to Petrified Forest was a drive of around 4.5 hours, the plan was to drive for a couple of hours and then break the journey by stopping somewhere for breakfast.

We left Tucson, following a road which was initially lined by the tall Saguaro cactuses we'd spent yesterday admiring. After the first hour or so of driving the scenery began to change, suddenly becoming a lot greener. We also spent a considerable amount of time driving uphill, which made sense: Tucson is at an elevation of around 800m, whereas our ultimate destination of Tusayan is at 2000m.

When we came to a layby at the top of a mountain pass, we stopped to take a picture of the views.

It was a really beautiful landscape, and so different to yesterday's desert that you'd barely think you were in the same country, never mind the same state.

A sign informed us that this was El Capitan Pass.

We were pretty hungry by this point so we stopped in the small town of Globe, where we filled up both with petrol and with breakfast. As we continued along the road afterwards, we began to drive along the side of a canyon.

As you might just be able to make out in the picture below, we drove down one side, across the river on a bridge and then back up the opposite side.

I have to confess that I had absolutely no idea that this was on the route(!), but having googled it I've now found out that it is the Salt River Canyon.

For a place I'd never heard of, it was really quite spectacular  

We kept on driving and by around 11.30 we were finally approaching Petrified Forest. As this sign indicated, we would still ultimately have a way to go before getting to Tusayan (which is just a couple of miles outside the Grand Canyon) in the evening.

Petrified Forest National Park

We entered the national park, getting another $25 of value out of our America the Beautiful pass, and parked at the visitor centre.

I'm not normally that enthusiastic about museums, but Petrified Forest is such an unusual place that going inside to take a look felt like it would be useful. The national park is home to something known as “petrified wood”.

The museum explained that millions of years ago, the land we were currently standing on would have been located very close to the equator and home to a tropical rainforest. The map below shows the location of Arizona relative to the equator back then.

Further exhibits gave information about what Arizona would have been like then and the sort of animals which would have lived there.

It would have been quite different from today, with all sorts of scary-looking creatures.

There would have been dinosaurs too, of course ...

... and the museum was home to some interesting fossils.

Although the dinosaurs were cool, my absolute favourite were these fossilised ferns

The whole area would have been a swampy floodplain, covered in trees. When the trees died and fell, they were quickly buried by a mixture of river sediment and volcanic ash.

Because the trees were buried so quickly, there wasn't enough oxygen for them to decay in the normal way.

Instead they became fossilised and effectively turned to stone.

Over time, minerals in the ground seeped into the wood. Specifically something called silica, which crystallised into quartz.

The quartz gradually replaced all the organic matter in the wood. Other minerals crept in too, resulting in rainbow colours in some of the logs.

While they retain the look and shape of wood, millions of years on they are now solid stone.

It's quite a complicated process to understand, but absolutely fascinating!

There was a short trail called the Great Logs Trail just behind the museum, so we strolled around that and enjoyed the views.

I particularly liked this viewpoint.

At first glance it looked like the ground was covered in rocks, but when you looked more closely you could see that all the brown lumps were in fact pieces of petrified wood.

I have to admit that before today, I didn't realise that “petrified” literally means “turned into stone”.

There were some bits which really did still look just like tree trunks ...

... and then others where you could see much more clearly that they were stone.

The Crystal Forest

Once we'd completed the trail we jumped back in the car and drove through the national park to another viewpoint. Quite apart from the wood, the landscape of the national park itself was really striking.

We parked next to this enormous rock, marked on the map as the “Battleship”.

From there, there was another short trail of a mile or so which we could follow.

The bits of petrified logs on this trail weren't necessarily quite as big as on the initial trail ...

... but the landscape was really interesting.

Once again it was so different – both from the desert around Tucson and the greener countryside we'd been driving through for hours this morning.

Although it was very barren everywhere, the sun didn't feel quite as intense as it had yesterday and it was a bit easier to walk around.

Though if you felt like a rest, there were plenty of logs to sit down on  

It was hard to believe this one was actually petrified; it looked so much more “wooden” than many of the others.

Once we'd completed this trail, we'd seen the best of the logs.

The Badlands

There was one more bit of the national park I wanted to see though, which required driving along a little side road called Blue Mesa Scenic Loop.

This bit of the national park was less about the petrified wood and more about the views.

Apparently these are “badlands”, a dry landscape with steep slopes formed by erosion and stripes of different colours resulting from different layers of sedimentary rock.

As we approached the first viewpoint, we could definitely see stripes in the rock and some of them did have a rather blue hue to them.

There is a short 1-mile circular trail which you can follow through the badlands, so we decided to do that.

The trail started out flat, then began to lead quite steeply downhill.

The views were absolutely spectacular.

It was all so surreal, it felt like we were on a different planet!

Soon we were down in the bottom of the valley.

There were a few other people around, but mostly we had the views completely to ourselves.

The lack of crowds was particularly remarkable because today was actually a public holiday (Labor Day) in the USA, so I suspect that some of the more popular and accessible national parks will have been very busy.

A 1-mile circular trail sounds like it's going to be quite easy. 

Because we'd come quite a long way downhill, however, there was quite a lot of uphill to do to get back to the car.

It was totally worth it though to get to visit such a unique place

In the Neighbourhood of the Grand Canyon

From Petrified Forest we drove for another couple of hours through Arizona until we reached the town of Flagstaff. On the way we spent a little bit of time driving on the famous Route 66, though I didn't manage to get a very good photo of any of the signs.

We stopped at an IHOP in Flagstaff to have a late lunch/early dinner. We both had breaded chicken, which was really tasty ...

... and shared some doughnut balls covered in cinnamon for desert.

It was after 17.30 by the time we left Flagstaff and we still had about 90 minutes of driving left to get to Tusayan. We caught sight of a beautiful sunset in the distance ...

... and pulled over into a layby to get a better look.

It's always hard to capture the colours with a camera, but it was really gorgeous  

Around 19.30 we finally arrived in Tusayan, where we're staying in the same hotel we stayed in back in 2022. It's quite expensive for what it is, but we're paying for the fact that we're just a few miles away from the entrance to Grand Canyon National Park. And the room is nice and spacious

We were pretty tired by this point - as you'll see from the map below, we covered a lot of distance today – but it was definitely worth it to see some amazing places  

When we visited the USA in 2022, the first stop on our road trip was the Grand Canyon. At the time it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of visit, but when we were planning this year's road trip to start in Phoenix, it felt like an excellent opportunity to see the canyon for a second time. Part of the reason that we did such a long day of driving yesterday was so that we could wake up in Tusayan this morning, just a couple of miles down the road from the entrance to the national park.

Sunrise was due to be at around 6am this morning, so we set our alarms for 5 and got to the park around 05.45. There were no queues to get in at that time and no problem with finding a parking space. As we left the car park behind us, we got our first glimpse of sunrise on the horizon.

A few more steps and we had our first view of the canyon

Yep, still looked as impressive as last time we were here!

As ever, it felt like our cameras weren't doing an adequate job of capturing all the amazing colours of the sunrise.

At first, it was still quite dark ...

... but, of course, gradually it began to get brighter.

We walked to the first official viewpoint (or “scenic overlook”, as they call them in America): Mather Point. That was busy – lots of people with serious cameras and tripods!

We got the best views not from the viewpoint but just from gaps in the trees along the trail.

By 6am the sun had indeed risen as promised.

We decided to try a sunrise selfie  

It was such a beautiful view!

Once we'd finished admiring it, we set off to walk along the canyon's rim trail.

The advantage of being up this early was that it was nice and cool for hiking.

The rim trail is a really easy path which goes along the top of the southern rim of the canyon.

It's so easy that it's actually tarmac for most of the way. The first time we came, we enthusiastically turned up in walking boots. Today we didn't bother and had just worn trainers. There aren't many walks you can do in trainers and get views like this!

Once the excitement over sunrise had died down, a lot of people seemed to go back to their cars and so it was quite a peaceful walk.

We stopped every so often and tried a Grand Canyon selfie. My new selfie stick makes it really easy

The first part of the trail had info boards with all kinds of geological information. I was surprised to learn that the canyon is “only” six million years old; quite young compared to the petrified wood we saw yesterday!

As we walked along there were regular timeline markers ...

... and then examples of different types of rocks in the canyon and how long ago they were formed.

The ages of some of the rocks were mind-blowing!

As we got a bit further along the path, we had views of some of the trails which go down into the canyon. You should be able to see one zig-zagging down the canyon in the picture below.

Now that the sun was fully up, the views into the distance were incredible.

There has been a serious wildfire at the Grand Canyon this summer, but at the north rim rather than the south rim where we were.

The fire still isn't completely out, but we couldn't see any smoke on the horizon today.

Eventually we reached Grand Canyon Village, where there are various hotels and restaurants (and a big flag!).

There was a group of people here who looked like they were about to set off on a horse-riding trip.

Tim made friends with some of the horses.

After the village the trail runs more or less parallel to a road, which is served by a system of shuttle buses. There are bus stops at each scenic overlook and helpful signs along the route which let you know how far  you have to go before you get to the next bus stop.

The shuttles are really helpful, because walking along the rim of a canyon is by definition not a circular route!

This system means that you can walk along for as long as you want, then get the bus back to where you started.

They're free too and seem to run every 15 minutes, so you don't really have to plan in advance to be at a specific point for a specific time.

It wasn't even 8am in the morning yet, so we felt we'd be able to walk to a few more viewpoints.

From the next one we had a view of another trail leading down to the floor of the canyon ...

... and realised that we could see the people on horseback now making their way down.

They still had a very, very long way to go though.

People die every year from hiking down into the canyon and then struggling to hike back up.

Signs warned in multiple languages not to try and make it all the way down and back up in the same day.

We were quite happy just strolling along the rim

The trail itself is actually really pretty, with a lovely smell of pine trees. Every so often chipmunks ran out across the path, though they were too quick for us to get a photo.

We did encounter the odd lizard, but they were fairly small.

And we walked past some cactuses, which also looked rather small after our trip to Saguaro the other day.

The most exciting wildlife we saw were California condors.

These huge birds are a type of vulture and went extinct in the wild in the 1980s, before being reintroduced to parts of Arizona and Utah.

We saw lots of them gliding above the canyon, though it was hard to capture them in photos.

They really did look enormous as they flew over us.

I've lost track of how many viewpoints we'd been to by this point, but they were all spectacular.

We passed this fascinating rock which had a visible gap in it.

Shortly after that we made it to Powell Point, definitely one of the most scenic viewpoints that I remember from last time around.

I love the red rocks of the canyon that you can see from here.

The views were so good that we decided they warranted another selfie attempt

It's hard to see in the photos, but from here we could just make out part of the Colorado river at the bottom of the canyon. It's a very muddy brown colour!

It was approaching 9am now and the day was starting to heat up, so we decided to walk to one more viewpoint, then catch the shuttle back towards Tusayan so we could have breakfast.

The final viewpoint was called Hopi Point and the views from here were superb too.

Once again, we could just make out the river at the bottom of the canyon. 

It looks so small – it's hard to believe it carved all this!

I could have stood here and looked at the canyon all day, but we'd walked about six miles and food was starting to feel like an increasingly appealing idea.

I wasn't as close to the edge as it looks here!

We started walking to the nearest bus stop, from where we were able to get a shuttle back to Grand Canyon village.

From there, there was a second shuttle which took us back to the visitor centre where we had parked the car. Once back in Tusayan we had a rather belated breakfast, then got inside just before a series of thunderstorms set in for the afternoon. It was a really great morning at the Grand Canyon and I definitely don't regret coming back a second time!

We set our alarms for 6am this morning in Tusayan. Once we'd packed up and stepped outside to get breakfast, we were surprised to find that it was quite a damp, rainy morning. Not what you expect in Arizona! I had been looking forward to wearing my new Grand Canyon cap, but it felt like I might not get chance today.

We were on the road shortly after 7am, driving back into Grand Canyon National Park. The plan for today was to drive through northern Arizona and ultimately cross into Utah. The best way to do that was to drive along a road called Desert View Drive, which goes east along the southern rim of the canyon. We needed to be at a location just outside the town of Page, around 140 miles away, by 10.40. By setting off this early, we were giving ourselves plenty of time to enjoy the viewpoints along the road.

And we really did enjoy the viewpoints

We were looking at the canyon from a slightly different perspective to yesterday and while it was a rather dull morning, the views were still superb.

I was particularly excited when we got to a viewpoint called Duck on a Rock.

If you look at the rock closely, you should be able to see the shape of the duck's head and beak.

At some of the viewpoints where we stopped, the view was slightly restricted by trees.

At others, we had really clear views of the Colorado river down below.

I don't think I'd ever get tired of looking at the Grand Canyon!

We did need to progress with our journey though, because we had a busy day of activities planned! So after a final look, it was back on the road

The day continued to be quite wet as we continued through Arizona. You can probably see some raindrops on the windscreen here.

There was some spectacular scenery, particularly as we got closer to the town of Page.

By this point we had crossed into the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation in the USA. 

Antelope Canyon X

We had come here to visit Antelope Canyon, an attraction you may never have heard of. But, if you saw a picture of it, you would very probably recognise it; the canyon became famous after Microsoft used a photo of it as a desktop background for Windows 7!

It's a very photogenic place and in the era of Instagram, the original Upper Antelope canyon which featured on Windows has become a very busy and overcrowded place to visit. We were visiting a slightly different – but equally photogenic – canyon called Antelope Canyon X.

Because the canyons are on land that belongs to the Navajo Nation, you are only allowed to visit as part of a tour with a Navajo guide. We don't normally enjoy being part of guided tour groups, but on this occasion we felt like it was going to be worth a try

We arrived at the starting point for the tour and checked in. Our group boarded one of these large white vehicles and was driven a few miles down the road towards the canyon entrance.

We then had a steep downhill walk via a series of staircases.

Then we got our first glimpse of the entrance to the canyon.

Antelope Canyon is what is known as a slot canyon.

It was formed by the erosion of sandstone rock by flash flooding.

Flash flooding still occurs, so we were lucky that it had stopped raining and turned into a bright sunny day now; otherwise our tour would have been cancelled.

Our guide explained that recent flooding had resulted in lots of sand being washed into the canyon, which they'd had to try and dig out. We could see the big pile of resulting sand just outside the canyon entrance.

We were touring the canyon in a small group of around 12 people. Our guide was really good at pointing out the best places to take photos and making sure that everyone got a chance for a good shot.

She even helped advise on the best settings to use on your phone to make sure that the red colours of the canyon walls came out.

She took a photo of us together too  

When you see people alongside the canyon walls for scale you can really see how huge it is.

The wave-like shapes of the canyon walls almost don't look real. 

It's such a beautiful place

Walking through the canyon was a lot of fun. It was sandy underfoot, but mostly quite flat.

In places it was quite narrow.

There is a different part of the canyon – Lower Antelope Canyon – where the tour involves climbing up and down on ladders. I deliberately hadn't booked us on to that!

The part of the canyon we were visiting was divided into two bits. We emerged from the first part and began walking towards the second.

Even outside of the slot canyons, the scenery here is quite spectacular.

I really loved the red colours of the sandstone.

We came to the entrance of the second part of the canyon.

This part gives the canyon it's name: Antelope X. Our guide told us to look upwards, and we could just make out an x-shape in the roof of the canyon.

Tim captured it best in this photo

That was really cool to see and this side of the canyon was really beautiful too.

We'd ended up at the front of the tour group, which meant it was easy to get good photos without anyone else in them

It was hard to resist taking a photo every time we turned a corner.

Eventually we emerged at the far end of the canyon.

The rest of the tour group were still a bit behind us, taking their photos.

We admired some more of the canyon walls while we waited for them to catch up.

This was definitely one of my favourites

Once everyone had caught up, it was time to turn around and make our way back to the starting point.

Our guide took another photo of us by one of the prettiest walls

Then it was back through the sand ...

... and up the enormous staircases.

Getting back up was tiring, but it was such a unique place to visit that I definitely don't regret it

Horseshoe Bend

On the agenda for the rest of the day, we had another rather unique place: Horseshoe Bend. We visited Horseshoe Bend back in 2022 and we loved it so much that it was hard to pass up the opportunity to see it for a second time when we were just a few miles away. 

We drove down the road for a few minutes, paid $10 to park, and then began a short walk through the desert.

The route is only about 1.5 miles as a round trip, so it wasn't long before we got to the spectacular viewpoint which we remembered from 2022.

Horseshoe Bend is a place that got very popular on Instagram a few years ago, so there were tonnes of people there today. But that didn't detract from how stunning the location is.

The Colorado river – the same one that flows through the Grand Canyon – makes a huge loop in a horseshoe-shape here.

The viewpoint we were at is about 300 metres above the river, which is why the views are so fantastic.

Though it's sometimes difficult to get a photo of the view without other people in it  

We experimented with taking selfies from a few different angles.

It was a bit challenging to fit ourselves in, and the bend too!

Some people were clearly here for more elaborate photo shoots than us!

We climbed a little bit higher up the rocks and found a good spot which was a bit less busy.

The new selfie stick I've got is really great

And I eventually got to wear my Grand Canyon cap, although it was a bit windy so I had to be careful it didn't blow away down to the river.

For some photos it felt safer to take it off  

After a final look at the view, we set off back to the car and drove into Page to get some food. We both had variations on breaded chicken for lunch. Mine came with a side of macaroni cheese ...

... while Tim's came with the white sauce that American's call gravy.

Onwards to Utah

We had a further two hours or so of driving ahead of us to get to Springdale, our destination for the evening. Springdale is in Utah, and it wasn't long before we were crossing the border into a new state

We'd had a fantastic day in Arizona, but the scenery in Utah seemed pretty impressive too.

At first everywhere was quite sandy ...

... then later the rocks began to look redder ...

... before ultimately turning sandy again.

The plan for tomorrow is to visit Zion National Park and we got a sneak preview of it this evening, as our route took us right through the middle of the park.

It looks like another really beautiful location.

We've seen so many beautiful places within the past few days that it already feels like we've been on holiday forever!

The road took us through a long tunnel ...

... and then we emerged to more incredible scenery.

Within another couple of miles we'd arrived in the small village of Springdale, just outside the park limits. We're only staying here for one night but we've got a really nice room where we could definitely have stayed longer.

It has been another long day of driving though, so after catching up on the blog it was definitely time for an early night!

It was another early start for us today, with the alarm going off at 6am. Zion is in the top three most visited national parks in the USA and trying to park there can be a nightmare. We wanted to try and leave the car in the main car park at the visitor centre, which I'd read online often fills up shortly after 7am. If we couldn't find a space, we'd have to leave our car at the hotel and catch a shuttle bus from the town of Springdale into the park instead. It wouldn't be the end of the world, but a bit of extra hassle.

It looked like quite an overcast morning as we stepped outside and walked to the car.

The benefit of staying overnight in Springdale was that we only had a couple of miles to drive to get into the national park. We joined a column of other vehicles heading in the same direction. I was confused when, a couple of minutes into the journey, the cars in front of us ground to a halt. Not a very good photo below, but it turned out to be because a family of small deer was crossing the road

They weren't the only deer we saw; as we got closer to the visitor centre, another one ran down the road in front of us.

The good news was that we were in luck and we found a parking space with no problem  It was a rather scenic car park.

Because Zion is so busy, you aren't allowed to drive along the main road through the canyon. Instead, there is a free shuttle bus service which runs from the visitor centre and stops at all the main starting points for hikes. We managed to get on a shuttle straight away and were soon on our way. The driver gave commentary about the park as we made our way down the canyon and even stopped for everyone to take photos of a group of wild turkeys by the roadside.

We got off the shuttle at the final stop. The road ends here as the canyon becomes increasingly narrow after this point.

Our plan was to follow a short trail called Riverside Walk.

As the name suggests, the trail follows the route of the Virgin River as it flows through the canyon.

Within a few minutes of walking we had our best wildlife encounter of the day, when we caught sight of a deer in the undergrowth just a few metres off the path.

Although it was still early in the morning, the path was reasonably busy as it leads to the starting point of one of Zion's most famous hikes: the Narrows.

That hike, which was definitely not on our bucket list, involves hiking for miles in the river itself through the narrowest part of the canyon. The water in the river can be waist-deep in places and the whole experience sounds absolutely terrifying to me. But there were lots of people passing us in waterproof gear, armed with big sticks to help them stay upright in the river, so it was clearly a very popular choice!

In the gaps between the shuttle-loads of hikers coming to do that, we were able to enjoy a little bit of peace and quiet on the trail.

The canyon walls are really very impressive here.

We had some lovely views of the river too.

It was a beautiful shade of light blue

After about a mile of walking we got to the point where the paved trail ends and the river effectively becomes the trail.

In the picture below, you'll be able to see hikers armed with big sticks and wearing special waterproof boots, ready to head into the river. There are stores in Springdale where you can rent equipment for the hike.

We definitely weren't going any further, so it was time for us to turn around and head back out through the canyon.

On the way we had some more beautiful views of the river

We took the shuttle back down to the visitor centre, where the car park was now completely full. We disappointed quite a few people when we went back to the car to stock up on water for our next hike; there were lots of vehicles circling round and hoping that a space would open up.

We weren't planning to leave the national park just yet, though. There was a second hike we wanted to try: the Watchman Trail.

I didn't know lots about it; just that it was about three miles and lead to a viewpoint. Three miles sounded like it ought to be manageable

The path was initially flat, leading alongside the river, before crossing over a road.

On the opposite side of the road we began to climb upwards via a series of steps.

It looked like the views were going to be fantastic.

Before too long we were able to see the peak of the Watchman mountain, from which the trail gets its name.

Our route led steadily uphill towards the viewpoint.

The higher we got, the more we could see of the canyon.

Although they're both canyons, visiting Zion is quite a different experience from visiting the Grand Canyon. At the Grand Canyon, you're at the top of the canyon looking down. At Zion, you're at the bottom of the canyon looking up.

The trail continued to wind uphill.

It was a bit rocky in places, otherwise not too difficult.

It's also one of the park's less popular hikes – which was part of the reason why I'd chosen it – so although we did meet other people, it didn't feel overly busy.

I'm finding it a bit harder to be impressed by normal cactuses after the amazing ones I saw at Saguaro National Park earlier in the week, but we passed plenty of them as we walked. This may be my favourite view of the day

This one was pretty cool too, though.

We passed a sign warning us not to roll rocks down onto people below us  Hadn't even though about that as a potential hazard!

While it had been quite a dull morning and even rained slightly at one point when we were on the Riverside Walk, the sky was now looking really blue.

We'd come up quite a long way by this point and the visitor centre was far  below us in the distance.

We weren't quite at the top yet, but we were nearly there.

Yep, there we were: Watchman Overlook.

What a great view  

The view was great in all directions. In the distance we could see down to the little town of Springdale, where we'd spent the night.

In the other direction, we could look down to the road that winds its way through the canyon.

And we could look down to the trail we'd just climbed up too

The views of the Watchman were great, and I loved this little tree.

There were only a handful of other people at the top when we got there, so it was pretty quiet by Zion standards – if you do a Google image search for “overcrowding at Zion”, you'll see what I mean!

Once we'd finished admiring the views, it was time to start the hike back down.

Going down was a lot easier than going up, although it was after 11am by this point and the day was definitely starting to heat up.

Before too long, we were back down at ground level.

We walked back along the river to the visitor centre, then made someone's day by giving up our space in the car park.

We were starving by this point, so drove into Springdale where we shared a delicious pizza and some garlic bread at a local restaurant.

We parked the car back at the hotel we'd been staying in while we went to get food. The sky was looking a lot brighter than it had been when we'd checked out of there in the morning!

Tomorrow we are visiting a different canyon and a different national park, so after lunch it was time to leave Springdale behind and set off towards Bryce Canyon City. Our route took us back along the road we'd driven into the national park yesterday evening.

We had some more fantastic views ...

... as we made our way around corners ...

... and through tunnels.

The rocks here are so unusual.

Eventually we left the national park behind and began driving northeast through Utah.

The scenery seemed to change around every corner.

We drove through a place called Red Canyon.

The rocks here really were incredibly red ...

... and we even drove through a couple of little tunnels in the rock.

Eventually we made it to Bryce Canyon City, where we are staying for the next two nights.  We've got a pretty standard hotel room, with two queen beds.

It wasn't the biggest day of driving by our standards, though after the early start and hiking I still feel quite tired this evening  

As is becoming normal on this holiday, we had an early start again this morning with the alarm set for 6am. Bryce Canyon National Park, which we were visiting today, is not as prone to overcrowding as Zion, but it can still get pretty busy and parking spaces are limited. We were hoping to avoid the busiest time of the day – and also bad weather forecast for the afternoon – by getting into the park for sunrise.

Luckily – and as the name suggests – Bryce Canyon City where we are staying is only a couple of miles from the entrance to the park. Sunrise was scheduled to be at around 7am this morning and we got into the park around 06.45, easily getting a parking space. Slightly controversially, given that we were coming to see the sunrise, we'd chosen to visit a viewpoint called Sunset Point, rather than a similar place down the road called Sunrise Point. I'd read online that Sunset Point was slightly less crowded and that the views were just as good as from Sunrise Point.

Within a few minutes we had walked to the viewpoint and had our first glimpse down into the canyon.

It was a bit cloudy this morning and while we could see the sky starting to get tinged with red, there was no sign of the sun yet.

Bryce Canyon was one of the national parks that I was really excited about visiting and the first views really didn't disappoint.

As the sky began to get brighter it really brought out the bright red colours of the rocks below us.

A couple of minutes after 7am, the sun made its appearance on the horizon.

We've already watched sunrise at the Grand Canyon this week and it's hard to beat that as a sunrise location, but this was pretty amazing too.

We attempted to take a sunrise selfie, but slightly mistimed it so didn't get much of the sun in  

Never mind, it was still a really cool experience

Once the sun had risen we went back to the car to put on our walking boots, in preparation for the hike we were planning to do this morning. We spotted a beautiful little bird sitting on the sign for Sunset Point, but not 100% sure what it was. It definitely had a bluish tinge!

As the sign indicates, Bryce Canyon is at quite a high elevation; 8,000 ft or approximately 2,400 metres. That meant it really felt quite cold this morning.

I'd worn long sleeves and leggings, but Tim was braving it in shorts and t-shirt.

Our walk started by following the rim of what is known as the Bryce Canyon “amphitheatre”.

It's a giant, bowl-shaped area, filled with thousands of tall rock spires known as “hoodoos”.

Although it has “canyon” in the name, this isn't technically a canyon.

Instead, it's a plateau where over time a combination of water and ice has eroded the rocks to make the steep drops and strange formations we can see today.

A helpful info board explained to us that it takes the rain and melting snow a century to erode somewhere between one and four feet of rock.

Although I always imagined Utah to be a warm, deserty kind of place, the elevation here means that night-time temperatures are below freezing for half of the year.

That gives plenty of opportunity for water within any cracks in the rock to freeze and expand overnight, gradually increasing the size of the cracks.

Over time, the cracks become windows within the rock. You can see one in the photo below.

Eventually the roof of the window collapses, leaving the pillar structures we could see so many of.

Different layers of rock erode at different rates, ultimately resulting in these hoodoos made from pillars of softer rock, with a cap of harder rock on top.

There are more hoodoos at Bryce Canyon than anywhere else in the world.

The rock here is a mixture of sandstone and limestone, which are relatively easy for water and ice to break apart.

We could certainly see the stripes of different coloured rocks in the distance, with some whiter rocks contrasting against the more common red colour.

After walking from Sunset Point to Sunrise Point along the rim, our route began to take us quite steeply downhill as we followed a trail called the Queen's Garden Loop.

This was supposed to be any easy trail with great views, but I didn't end up finding it quite as easy as I'd anticipated.

The downhill slope of the path was quite steep at times and the path was quite gravelly underfoot, as you can probably tell from this chipmunk photo!

I'd have felt happier if I'd brought my poles but unfortunately I'd left them in the boot, so I just had to make the best of it.

The views were incredible, though!

We experimented in a couple of places with taking selfies, which is so easy with my new selfie stick.

Some of them turned out pretty well

Today is another day where we have taken an enormous number of photos overall, because everywhere was just so beautiful.

As we progressed further down the trail, we were able to see the amphitheatre from different angles.

And although there were other people around, it wasn't currently too busy.

As we got lower down, I didn't enjoy some of the steep corners on the trail!

But soon we'd made it about as far down as we were going to go.

The landscape and the slopes became a bit gentler.

Eventually the Queen's Garden trail came to an end at this particularly unusual rock formation.

From here we were following a second trail called the Navajo Loop Trail, which would ultimately take us back up to the rim of the canyon.

There were some more spectacular hoodoos along this trail.

The path itself was really interesting, leading us through a couple of little doorways in the rocks.

You had to crouch a bit to get through ...

... before emerging to more amazing views ...

... like these.

This part of the trail wasn't scary like the initial steep downhill had been, although it may look like it was from this photo.

For most of the way it was actually quite wide and easy to walk on.

We walked through another doorway in the rock ...

... and the views continued to get better.

You could see the stripe of colour through the rocks really clearly here.

As we continued on our way, the trail began to get a bit busier and we started meeting people who were coming round the loop in the opposite direction. It still felt quieter than Zion, though.

We also started to see more and more trees, which grow in this part of Utah because the air is cooler.

We reached a hoodoo known as “Queen Victoria”.

This one is supposed to bear resemblance to a statue of Queen Victoria in London. I can't say I'd have noticed it if it hadn't been explained by an info board!

From here the route became flat for a while, taking us through the trees.

The day was getting brighter and it was starting to feel a bit warmer than it had first thing.

We knew it was only a matter of time before the path started going steeply uphill ...

... and soon it started to slope upwards a little bit.

All of a sudden, a very friendly chipmunk crossed our path!

This one didn't seem anywhere near as timid as the ones that were running away when they heard us coming at the Grand Canyon.

I guess maybe people feed them here, though there was a sign in the car park threatening a fine of $100 for feeding wildlife.

After the chipmunk, the steep uphill started.

We started climbing up a series of steps between the rocks.

So far so good and I was starting to think it might have been easier to come down this way and go up the way we'd come down.

But then the trail got significantly steeper and I was glad we were going up rather than down.

The path zigzagged via a series of really steep switchbacks.

I normally prefer photos without other people in but in this instance I think people are helpful to demonstrate the path!

This part of the trail is called “Wall Street”, because you're walking between such high walls of rock.

It was quite an exhausting climb, but eventually we made it to the top.

And the view at the top was fantastic

We were now back where we'd started – at Sunset Point – and with the sun being higher in the sky, the colours of the rocks were even more impressive than they had been at sunrise.

We'd been hiking for a couple of hours at this point and it was around 09.15. We set off back towards the car, in the hope that we could make it to the hotel before the free breakfast buffet closed at 10.00. On the way out of the park we passed a family of deer

We got back to the hotel and parked outside our building.

Then we walked over to the main hotel building to explore the buffet.

The inside of the hotel is very rustic.

The lobby is decorated with a collection of mounted animal heads ...

... the most impressive of which is this wild cat catching a bird.

We made it just in time for the buffet, which turned out to be quite extensive. The french toast with maple syrup was particularly good.

After breakfast we explored a little bit around the town ...

... and went into the general store.

It was good that we'd got our main activity in during the morning, because the rest of the day turned stormy and wet!

The morning was great though and I think Bryce Canyon is definitely one of the most impressive national parks we've visited so far  

We had a relatively relaxed start to the morning today, eating breakfast in the hotel at 8am, then checking out and setting off to our next destination around 9. We had a drive of around two hours ahead of us from Bryce Canyon City until we reached our next national park: Capitol Reef.

As we began driving through Utah, the scenery was surprisingly green and pleasant.

I've always imagined Utah as being exclusively sandy and desert-like, but that's obviously not the case.

We passed various cattle ranches and at one point even had to slow down for some cows who were crossing the road.

We also drove past a large reservoir, which was part of Otter Creek State Park.

The entire area was really sparsely populated. We passed through a handful of villages – all of which had Mormon churches – but otherwise there were barely any signs of human habitation.

It was only when we got close to the entrance to Capitol Reef National Park that the landscape began to change.

This is quite an unusual national park, with an unusual name.

To me, a “reef” is something you get in the ocean, but in this part of the world the word is used to refer to a rocky barrier that is difficult to travel across.

This landscape definitely looks like it fits the definition of being difficult to travel across!

There's one paved road through the park and that is what we were following.

It was a really spectacular drive.

Every so often there were lay-bys where we could pull over and take photos.

It was so different to the views at Bryce Canyon yesterday!

Our plan was to do a hike to a large natural arch called Cassidy Arch. To reach the starting point for the hike, we had to drive a couple of kilometres down an unpaved road.

In my head, Capitol Reef was quite an obscure national park and I wasn't expecting it to be terribly busy.

That turned out to be a miscalculation – there were lots of people, including entire coach parties at the visitor centre – and when we got to the end of the unpaved road, we found the parking lot was completely full. We had to turn around and drive back to the main road again.

The main road itself was very beautiful, but we wanted to get out somewhere and have a walk.

We stopped briefly at a roadside viewpoint which advertised petroglyphs.

These are ancient pictures carved into the rock by native people. They were quite hard to make out, but in the photo below you should be able to see some people ...

... and in this one you should be able to see some sheep.

A bit further down the road we came to the starting point for our second-choice hike to a place called Hickman Bridge. The car park here was technically full too, but Tim managed to find a spot to park by the side of the road and we set off, initially walking alongside a river.

From here the path led between rocks ...

... up steps ...

... and over stretches of smooth rock.

Soon we had gained some height above the road.

The landscape we were walking through now had some black rocks which looked like they might be volcanic.

There was quite a lot of variety in what was a fairly short trail; we only had 0.7 of a mile to go before we got to Hickman Bridge.

I explained earlier where the “reef” part of the name “Capitol Reef” comes from. The “Capitol” part apparently comes from the white, rocky domes in the park like these.

Apparently their rounded tops are supposed to look like the dome of the US Capitol building in Washington DC.

Some of the domes we saw were definitely more pointed than rounded, though!

Our trail continued upwards.

It was quite hard work at times.

Eventually we made it to the end of the route, where the trail began to loop round to take us to the viewpoint we'd come to see.

We clambered over more rock ...

... and then got our first glimpse of Hickman Bridge.

You may struggle to make it out in the photo above. It's perhaps a bit clearer in the one below; a huge natural arch in the rock.

The closer we got, the easier it was to admire.

Though getting close to it was a bit challenging at times.

Once we'd climbed down to the optimal viewpoint, the arch was much clearer to see with the blue sky behind it.

We experimented with fitting both us and the arch into a selfie

The trail then took us right under the arch.

From there we made our way across more rock ...

... towards another viewpoint.

We passed a few little cactuses on the way

When we got to the viewpoint it was really stunning.

We realised there was a rock we could climb up onto for an even better view.

It's not as scary as it looks; there was only a very shallow drop on the other side!

We tried another selfie with the view.

And with this view too  

From that point it was a relatively short walk back downhill towards the car.

From Capitol Reef we had a drive of another two hours or so to get to Moab, which is where we are spending the next two nights.

The landscape continued to be fascinating as we drove out of the park, with lots of striped rocks.

You were never quite sure what kind of view you were going to get around the next corner!

I found all the rock formations really fascinating.

This one looked to us like it had a face in it  

As we left the national park, the countryside became a bit flatter for a while ...

... but soon there were huge rocks rising up out of it again.

We got glimpses of mountains in the distance ...

... and eventually saw the rocks change from a light sandy colour ...

... to a deeper red.

When we eventually got to Moab some time after 4pm, we were starving and found an Italian restaurant where we both had an absolutely enormous serving of spaghetti with meatballs.

Then we checked into our hotel, where the room is surprisingly big and spacious

It wasn't an extreme day of driving today, but you'll see from the map below that we still covered a fair bit of ground!

It was another early start today, with the alarm set for 6am. The plan for today was to visit Arches National Park, the entrance to which is located just a few miles outside of Moab. This is another national park which gets extremely busy, with the result that it's only possible to enter between the hours of 7am and 4pm with a timed entry permit. I'd had to be online at the right time to secure one of these for today back in April! I'd chosen the 7–8am slot in the hope that we could see some of the park before the worst of the crowds hit.

We made it to the park entrance in plenty of time and were pleased to see that there wasn't much of a queue to enter. As we began driving along the main road through the park, the sun was just beginning to rise.

As you can probably guess from the name, Arches National Park is famous for its concentration of natural stone arches; more than anywhere else in the world. We hadn't driven as far as any of the arches yet, but the scenery was still impressive.

The rocks here are sandstone and they're a beautiful shade of red.

Arches is the sort of national park where parking spaces can fill up very quickly, so we needed to be strategic about where we wanted to visit while it was still relatively quiet.

There were two arches I definitely wanted to see: Delicate Arch and Landscape Arch. Delicate Arch is the most popular of the two, so we decided to drive in that direction first.

As we did, we passed all sorts of impressive rock formations and had to resist the temptation to stop and take a photo of absolutely everything  

From the roadside we got our first glimpse of two arches in the distance; it was an incredible view with the sunrise behind them.

The sun was getting higher in the sky when we made it to the car park from which we could walk to a viewpoint of Delicate Arch.

Probably the most popular thing to do in the park is to hike all the way up to Delicate Arch and queue to take a picture under it. I'd ruled out doing that, because the trail sounded quite challenging. So we were walking towards a place from where we'd be able to see the arch about a mile away.

Before too long we turned a corner and caught sight of the arch on the hill in front of us.

We continued following the trail, which took us slightly uphill for a closer view.

Delicate Arch is the largest free-standing arch in the park.

It's become a symbol of Utah, featuring on the car licence plates for the state.

If you look closely at the picture below, you should just be able to make out a line of people queuing to take pictures with the arch.

It was only 07.30 in the morning and already looking pretty busy up there! It was fun to see the arch from a distance but if I'd climbed over really difficult rock to get to it, I think I'd be a bit annoyed to find so many other people up there!

I'm sure it's impressive close-up, but seeing it from this distance felt like a good compromise

We headed back down to the car park and began driving to the starting point for the hike to the second arch I wanted to see: Landscape Arch.

We got a parking space without any problems and started walking through an area of the park which is known as Devil's Garden.

I don't know why it's got that name, but it was a very impressive landscape.

There was a really bright blue sky this morning, which contrasted against the colours of the rocks.

The aim of the hike was to see Landscape Arch, but a slight detour offered us the opportunity to see two additional arches. The first of these was called Tunnel Arch.

As we got closer to it we could see how it got the name; it really does look like a tunnel!

We decided to take a selfie with it

From there we had a short walk to our next arch.

This was Pine Tree Arch.

You can see with us for scale that it's a pretty big one!

And the view through it was gorgeous

After Pine Tree Arch we had to retrace our steps back up to the main trail towards Landscape Arch.

It was getting close to 9am by this point and the trail was starting to get busier, although not unbearably so.

And the views were still fantastic.

It was turning into a really hot sunny day and I was glad I'd put sun cream on, despite the fact it's a struggle to find the motivation to do that when you're going out in the dark!

Outside of the rocks, everywhere was quite sandy and it really did feel like hiking in a desert. On a few bits of the trail there was so much sand that it felt like walking on the beach.

Eventually we turned a corner and got our first view of Landscape Arch.

It's hard to make out against the background in the photos because of the rock behind it, but this arch is huge.

The length of the arch is 306 ft, which makes it the longest natural arch in North America.

At it's narrowest point, the arch is only 11 ft wide.

A large slab of rock fell off the arch in 1991 and since then it hasn't been possible to walk under it. Theoretically the arch could collapse at any point.

I'm glad to have seen it before that happens

The trail continues on to more arches after this point but it becomes a scramble over rock that I didn't fancy. We turned around to go back to the car.

After driving a short distance down the road, we pulled over again to walk towards another arch which we'd caught sight of earlier.

This is Skyline Arch.

It's not quite as big as the others we'd seen today – only 71 ft wide – but it was still pretty cool

It was getting incredibly hot by this point – and the park was starting to fill up with tour buses – so we started driving back towards the hotel.

On the way we passed some more incredible scenery.

One of my favourites was Balancing Rock, a huge boulder perched on a sandstone column.

We've had another fantastic day and it's getting increasingly difficult to decide which is our favourite national park!

It was another early start this morning, as we had an ambitious itinerary planned; a visit to our fifth national park in Utah, followed by a drive all the way across the state to neighbouring Nevada. The remaining national park in Utah which we hadn't yet visited was Canyonlands, about 30 miles away from Moab. It's generally a less visited national park than Arches, although I'd read that since Arches implemented a timed reservation system, the rangers there have been directing anyone who turns up without an entry permit to Canyonlands instead. We wanted to get there early to beat any crowds and also avoid the worst of the heat, as it was forecast to be another very warm day.

The road into Canyonlands was impressive.

There are tonnes of viewpoints here; some which you can drive to, some which require a short hike. The first one we stopped at – Shafer Canyon Overlook – was one we could drive straight to.

From the car park, a short path led us down some steps towards the viewpoint.

It was just after 8am by this point and the sun was very bright, making it difficult to take photos in some directions.

It was a spectacular viewpoint, though.

And we had definitely beaten the crowds, because there were only a handful of other people there.

We made our way further around the viewing area.

From here we could see all the way down the canyon, to the road running through it.

I really loved the view

It was possible to walk round the corner and stand on this rock for a different perspective.

(The path wasn't quite as narrow as it looks!)

The view from here was pretty spectacular too

So far, first impressions of Canyonlands were very good!

The second viewpoint I wanted to visit was called Mesa Arch. This one required a walk of around 15 minutes to reach it.

We made our way downhill, initially down steps ...

... and then over rock. 

I'm not a huge fan of hiking over rock.

It was only a short section though and then we got our first glimpse of Mesa Arch.

This is one of the most photographed arches in Utah, so even at this time of the morning (it was still before 9am) there were plenty of other people there.

We still managed to get some good photos though

Admittedly, our selfie didn't come out amazingly well because of the sunshine.

The photos I tried to take of Tim suffered the same fate!

But it didn't matter, because a nice lady offered to take a photo of us together, and that came out a lot better 

I was glad we'd got to the arch this early; I can only imagine how busy it would have been after 9am.

Our next stop was a place called Green Canyon Overlook.

This was another viewpoint which you could more or less drive straight to.

There was just a short walk from the car park to get to the viewing platform.

Then we could see all the way down to the Green River.

The next viewpoint on my list was something rather different: Upheaval Dome. This one definitely required a hike, which started with some steep uphill from the car park.

A sign at the car park warned us against a longer hike, which starts from the same point.

It was still only about 09.30, but it did already feel like a very hot day.

The path was taking us to two separate viewpoints. We got to the first fairly quickly and had our first view of the huge depression known as Upheaval Dome.

Upheaval Dome is believed to be the site of a meteor impact which took place around 170 million years ago.

It was really huge and absolutely fascinating to see.

How often can you say you get to visit the site of a meteor impact?!

We decided to carry on to the second viewpoint, but that turned out to be harder to get to.

It involved walking over this slickrock, which was quite steep in places. I didn't hugely enjoy the experience!

We didn't quite make it as far as the official second viewpoint in the end, but we did get to another point from where we could look down into the crater.

Time for another selfie!

Then we retraced our steps, back over the rock.

I was pleased to get off the rock and back onto a more normal path.

The final viewpoint on my wishlist for today was Buck Canyon Overlook.

We could tell the park was getting busier by the time we got to this one; we only just got a parking space.

I'm glad we did because it was superb view of the canyon.

I found a nice spot to sit and enjoy it

I could have spent the whole day exploring viewpoints in Canyonlands, but we were conscious of the need to press on. We still had a lot of driving ahead of us today.

We drove for two hours through Utah, stopping in the small town of Price for lunch. We parked next to what is possibly the biggest American flag I have ever seen.

After Price we had another 3.5 hours of driving to go. A lot of it was actually very scenic; I was pleasantly surprised by how green and mountainous this part of Utah seemed to be.

The journey became a bit more difficult later on when we had to negotiate our way around the outskirts of Salt Lake City. The highway we were on had seven(!) lanes at times and we had what felt like a very American experience, driving past more huge flags ...

... roadside adverts for personal injury lawyers ...

... and bright yellow school buses.

We also drove past several Mormon temples.

Once we got past Salt Lake City, the road became a bit calmer again.

We drove along the bottom of the Great Salt Lake ...

... and got a few glimpses of it from the motorway.

We were about 100 miles from the border of Utah with Nevada at this point and it began to become obvious from the roadside advertising. Utah is a very religious state and gambling is completely illegal. We drove past lots of signs advertising casinos just across the border in Nevada.

Nevada also seemed to be advertising other types of entertainment, which presumably aren't legal in Utah  

The closer we got to Nevada, the more mountainous the scenery seemed to become.

And the more frequent the casino adverts became!

Although we had passed the Great Salt Lake now, there was still a lot of evidence of salt in the landscape.

In places, we drove past literally huge piles of it.

There was so much here, it almost looked like snow.

We were driving towards a place called the Bonneville Salt Flats.

These are a remnant from an ancient lake, which dried up around 14,000 years ago, leaving behind huge deposits of salt and other minerals.

The area is completely flat and stretches for around 30,000 acres.

We were able to pull over into a rest area by the side of the motorway and walk down onto the salt.

It was like walking across a huge salty desert.

The surface of the flats was fascinating; full of cracks and ridges.

When you looked at the ground close up you could tell that it was covered in salt.

It was such a unique place, and bizarre to be able to just step onto it from the side of the motorway.

Once we got back in the car, we were only a couple of miles from Nevada. This is a new state for us

We are staying for the night at a casino hotel, just across the state border in a place called West Wendover.

The outside of the hotel looked like it was trying to be quite grand!

We checked in and have a room with two large beds.

We're not planning to spend time in the casino, but we did pop in to have a look  

It's been a long day of travel but a very exciting one

We had a long day of driving ahead of us today; possibly the longest of the entire holiday. We were certainly going to be making our way through the most different states.

Our morning started off in Nevada, where we had a brief walk around West Wendover in search of breakfast. There really isn't a lot there, except casinos.

When we checked into the hotel last night we were told that there was a shuttle bus that could take us between casinos. Seems bizarre given the town can't be longer than a mile from start to finish, but I caught sight of the shuttle buses parked outside one of the hotels!

We were on the road shortly after 9am, initially driving north through Nevada.

It felt a bit like we were in the Wild West. We passed a train that reminded me of a rollercoaster at the American Adventure theme park back in the day  

We were definitely in the middle of nowhere, but it was very scenic.

After half an hour or so we left Nevada...

...and drove back into Utah.

This part of Utah was quite mountainous too.

We caught sight of some water in the distance.

Consulting the map revealed that the route was taking us around the top of the Great Salt Lake.

After that we said goodbye to Utah and drove into Idaho.

We drove through miles and miles of Idaho on quite a small road, only passing the occasional farm.

After four hours on the road, we arrived at the town of Pocatello, which is where we were planning to have lunch. We ate at a restaurant called Applebee's, where there was a great deal to get a starter and two main courses for $25. We had boneless chicken wings as the starter...

...then I had macaroni cheese with chicken as my main course (though it was technically penne, not macaroni!)...

...and Tim had lime chilli chicken with Mexican rice.

Both our meals were really good. Fortunately, we hadn't wanted to order anything that involved broccoli because we overheard the waitress having to explain to several tables that it was off the menu as a result of a national broccoli shortage

From Pocatello we were back on the road, travelling north through Idaho until we reached a road called the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway. We parked the car in a forest car park and set off on a short walk to find the falls.

The river here is called Henry's Fork and it's a tributary of the Snake River, which we saw in several locations last time we were in Idaho.

We could hear the falls and soon we got our first glimpse of them.

A series of wooden steps and walkways enabled us to get a closer view.

It was a really beautiful waterfall

We walked a little further and came to the place where the river goes over the top of the falls.

It reminded me a bit of some of the waterfalls we visited in Bosnia last autumn

Another nature trail led away through the forest.

We followed it for a little while then turned around, conscious that we still had 100 miles of ground to cover before the end of the day!

Once back in the car, we left Idaho behind and entered Montana

We are staying for the next few nights in the town of Gardiner, Montana. From where we were, just outside the town of West Yellowstone, there were two ways to reach Gardiner. The first route, which was 165 miles and would take three hours, avoided driving through Yellowstone National Park. The second was only 54 miles and involved driving straight through the centre of the park. We opted for the shorter route  

This geography was essentially why we had had to cancel our trip to Yellowstone in 2022, after the road from Gardiner into the park was washed away by flooding. We had had accommodation booked in Gardiner that year too, but after the flood the only way to get into the national park from there would have been to do the three-hour drive to and from West Yellowstone every day. It definitely wouldn't have been sustainable!

The good news is that, while the collapsed road from Gardiner into Yellowstone has not been rebuilt, the National Park Service has been able to upgrade an older route which was previously a single-track dirt road, tarmacking it and turning it into a two-lane road. This Old Gardiner Road is now the new way in and out of the national park from Gardiner. And that means we've been able to rebook our 2022 trip for 2025

I was very excited when we finally drove through the entrance gates of Yellowstone National Park. It was after 6pm by this point and we wanted to get to Gardiner before dark, so the plan was just to drive straight through and resist the temptation to stop and look at anything. That resolve lasted for approximately 10 minutes, after which Tim caught sight of something amazing from the side of the road...

Our first bison! Wow!

There are around 5,000 bison living in Yellowstone, but I didn't know whether we'd actually succeed in seeing any. We'd looked for them in Custer State Park and Grand Teton National Park during our 2022 road trip, with no success, so this was super exciting

After that we drove for miles through the park, every so often passing places where steam was visibly coming out of the ground.

Then all of a sudden, the car in front us ground to a halt. I figured there was probably a deer in the road or something.  And then...

I guess I needn't have worried about whether or not we were going to see bison!

That wasn't even our final wildlife encounter of the day. As we drove through a small settlement within the park called Mammoth, we saw a group of elk by the roadside.

This one with the antlers was the most impressive - significantly bigger than the reindeer I'd seen in Lapland this summer.

Wow, what an exciting journey

From there we only had a couple more miles to drive, down the new (/old!) road into Gardiner.

We checked into our hotel, where the room is quite basic (but still includes two beds!). Prices around Yellowstone are incredibly expensive, so this is costing around USD 300/night.

Before settling down to do the blog, there was one more task we needed to complete: tracking down the general store in Gardiner and buying some bear spray. While we're very much hoping not to meet any, there are an estimated 1,000 grizzly bears living in the Yellowstone area. While bear spray (essentially a pepper spray for bears!) is illegal in the UK as an offensive weapon, it's readily available in grocery stores in Montana and we were able to pick some up with our crisps and wine, without even getting ID'd  

Suitably armed for the rest of our adventures, we went back to the hotel for an early night. As you'll see from the map, it's been a very long day!

It was a dry day when we woke up in Gardiner this morning, though a bit chilly. The weather app on my phone indicated that it was about 6 degrees at 7am. Gardiner is at an elevation of 1,810 metres (about 6,000 ft) so it's not quite as high as Bryce Canyon, but still pretty high.

From where we're staying we had a drive of less than five minutes to the northern entrance gate of Yellowstone. This is why it is worth paying $300/night to stay in Gardiner! We passed the Roosevelt Arch, which was built in 1903 at the historical entry point to the park. The cornerstone was laid by Theodore Roosevelt.

Yellowstone National Park is huge – literally the size of a small country – so despite the fact that we were staying so near to one of the entrances, we will still have a fair amount of driving to do over the next few days. Our first stop today was just five miles away, though: Mammoth Hot Springs.

Mammoth Hot Springs is one of the most striking features in Yellowstone.

The hot springs here flow over a series of giant white steps, known as travertine terraces.

The terraces are formed by the calcium carbonate in the hot water that comes up out of the ground; as the water reaches the surface and cools, it deposits minerals which, over time, build up into these unusual formations.

It's hard to give a sense of scale in the photos, but this area is huge. You can explore it via a series of wooden boardwalks and we must have spent around an hour walking around them.

A sign at the car park warned us against stepping off the boardwalks onto any of the thermal surfaces.

You'd have to be pretty stupid to step off the path when you can see actual steam coming out of the ground, but apparently it does happen!

The area is divided into upper and lower terraces. We climbed up a lot of steps to reach the upper terraces. 

I loved the terraces where you could see pools of light blue water.

And just the fact that we could see so much steam coming out of the ground was amazing.

We took a couple of selfies. Towards the bottom of the terraces ...

... and higher up.

Quite apart from the thermal features, once we got up higher the views of surrounding mountains were fantastic.

We realised, after we'd been admiring the views for a while, that we could see the remains of trees which presumably hadn't been able to survive the thermal activity here.

They were really striking!

It was after 9am by this point and the sun was starting to get higher in the sky.

Once we'd finished exploring the upper terraces, we started climbing back down the steps towards the car park. Downhill was definitely easier!

What an amazing place

Our next stop was another amazing place, about 20 miles further south: the Norris Geyser Basin. The drive through the park to get there was really scenic.

We stopped at a viewpoint to admire the mountains.

They didn't look that high to me, but an info board informed us that the peaks were over 3,000m.

Although our journey was only 20 miles, it took quite a while. There was some road resurfacing going on, reducing the road through the park to a single track, so we had quite a long wait before it was our turn to follow a pilot vehicle along the relevant stretch of road.

Just before we got to our destination, we stopped at a scenic overlook from which we could see the Norris Geyser Basin from afar.

Wow, it definitely looked like there was a lot of steam coming out of the earth over there!

Competition for parking spaces at the geyser basin was intense, but we got lucky and managed to get into a space that someone else vacated after only 10 minutes or so of waiting. Then we were off to see the sights!

There are two separate geyser basins here; one called Back Basin and one called Porcelain Basin. I'd read that Porcelain Basin was more visited, so we decided to start with the Back Basin. A 1.6 mile trail led us around it in a loop.

Almost immediately we came to a place called Emerald Pool. There was so much steam here that we could barely see anything.

You could just make out a small amount of the emerald colour in the water if you looked closely.

We followed the boardwalk through the trees. We met groups of other people, including a school trip at one point, but overall it didn't feel too busy.

Our next stop was Steamboat Geyser.

Steamboat Geyser is the tallest active geyser in the world.

When it erupts it can shoot jets of water up to 120 metres into the air.

It erupts quite infrequently and unpredictably – the last time was in February 2025 – so we didn't get to see it today.

It was still really cool to see the steam coming out of the ground here, though.

The geyser gets its name precisely because of these huge clouds of steam.

Next to Steamboat Geyser is Cistern Spring.

Again, I loved getting a glimpse of the bright blue water.

There was lots more to see, so we continued onwards!

The Back Basin is full of geysers which erupt quite infrequently. This one is Veteran Geyser, so-called because it was active back in the 1800s when the Norris Basin was first discovered.

This one was Corporal Geyser, though no idea how it gets its name!

Geysers aside, there was just so much to see here.

We passed bubbling mud ...

... boiling water ...

... and even more splashing mud.

This pool which was shooting boiling water into the air was particularly impressive.

I got excited whenever I saw bright blue pools like these.

I just loved the colours

We even took a selfie with this one

As we finished the loop around Back Basin, we came back to the Emerald Pool where we'd started. I don't know if the wind was now blowing in a different direction or it had just started producing less steam for some reason, but we could now actually see the emerald colour of the water.

I did read an info board with an explanation for why the water takes on these colours – it's something to do with microbes which live in the pools – but we've seen so much geothermal activity today that I can't remember the specifics of everything!

Now that we'd finished the Back Basin loop, it was time to move on to Porcelain Basin.

This one did have a busier feel, partly I think because it's a shorter loop to see everything (less than a mile). It was no less impressive, though.

As we walked down into this basin we passed more incredibly blue pools ...

... and crossed a river which appeared to be bright green!

There was more boiling mud ...

... shooting water jets ...

... and bright blue water.

It was all amazing, but on balance I think we probably both preferred Back Basin.

From the Norris Geyser Basin we drove another 25 miles south through the park, until we reached the car park for a trail that leads to a viewpoint above another impressive feature. It was midday by this point and parking was crazy, with rangers out and about trying to police people parking by the roadside. We were extremely lucky when a nice man in the car park told us he was about to leave and let us have his space.

We were doing a short hike, which initially took us on a bridge across this river.

Then we followed a nice flat gravel trail for a while. It was incredibly busy, but at least that meant there was no chance of surprising a bear!

The trail then led uphill through the forest, until we came to the scenic overlook and got a view of Grand Prismatic Spring.

This is the third largest hot spring in the world and it's known for its dramatic colours. 

The colours are supposed to be best seen in the middle of the day, when the sun shines down on it. Although today had developed into quite a warm day by this point, the sun was a bit intermittent so we didn't get to see it at its best.

As you'll see from our attempted selfie, it was also incredibly busy at this viewpoint. Probably the most crowded spot we've been in a national park so far!

Never mind, it was really cool to see it anyway  It was around 2pm by this point and we were starving, so we drove another 25 miles east to the resort of West Yellowstone to get some food. It was a quaint little town ...

... with plenty of opportunities for entertainment.

We strolled around a bit and found a restaurant with Italian food, where I had a pizza so huge I had to take part of it home in a box ...

... and Tim had a spaghetti dish, which unfortunately included some unexpected mushrooms.

Then it was back into the national park for the 54-mile drive back to Gardiner. Gardiner is in the state of Montana, as is West Yellowstone, but the majority of Yellowstone itself is in Wyoming. So we drove from Montana into Wyoming, then out of Wyoming and back into Montana.

As we passed through the Mammoth area towards the end of our journey, we saw some more grazing elk.

No big bull elk today, though we did see what looked like a teenager just growing antlers.

No bison on the road either today – think we were just incredibly lucky to see one up close yesterday! Before long we were driving out of the Roosevelt Arch and were nearly back at the hotel.

Although all of today has been within Yellowstone, we've still done 131 miles of driving!

We made another reasonably early start to the day today, leaving our hotel in Gardiner around 8am. As we drove down the main street of the town, we realised the traffic had slowed for elk in the road.

That wasn't our only wildlife encounter of the morning. Shortly later, while driving through the national park, we caught sight of a bison not far from the side of the road.

And shortly afterwards we were passed by another huge bison  

The morning had been quite rainy to start with but looked like it was starting to clear up. Although we'd seen a lot of geothermal activity yesterday, we arguably hadn't seen Yellowstone's most famous feature: Old Faithful Geyser. We decided to head in that direction this morning. Because the national park is so huge, the drive to get there from Gardiner was just over 50 miles.

We arrived some time after 10am and got a parking space with no problem. There's a collection of buildings close to the geyser, including hotels and shops.

We only had a short walk from the car park until we got our first glimpse of the famous geyser.

Old Faithful is so-called because it is a geyser that erupts very reliably; approximately every 60–90 minutes.

The National Park Service calculates and publishes expected eruption times each day. We'd probably just missed one, because we could see the next eruption was due at 11.11. 

At this point, we had a choice of what to do. We could wait on the boardwalk in front of the geyser, where there is a seating area for tourists to watch the eruptions. That would be easy, but it can get extremely busy (do a google image search for “crowds at old faithful” to see what I mean!!). The second option was to follow a short, uphill trail to a place called Observation Point. I'd read that you could watch Old Faithful erupt from above here, but wasn't 100% sure how good the view was going to be. We decided to give it a go, on the basis that we had enough time until the next eruption to climb up, assess the view and climb back down again to the boardwalk if need be.

It turned out to be a nice trail, uphill through the woods.

As we climbed, we could look down to the Upper Geyser Basin, where lots of geysers less famous than Old Faithful are located.

We reached the highest point and decided that the view of Old Faithful from here was pretty good

There were a handful of other people at the viewpoint, but overall it was pretty quiet compared to the crowds we could see amassing on the boardwalk down below.

We decided it was worth waiting up here for the eruption. Bizarrely, this viewpoint turned out to be one of the few places in Yellowstone with a phone signal (because of proximity to the hotel complex below).

The national park predictions turned out to be pretty accurate and the eruption started almost exactly on schedule.

It was so amazing to see boiling water shooting out of the ground.

Tim managed to capture the entire eruption if you want to watch  

Once the eruption was finished, we set off downhill on the trail, passing some beautiful autumn colours.

We didn't return along the same route, but walked a bit further on a path that would ultimately take us down into the Upper Geyser Basin.

After a short walk we came to Solitary Geyser.

This one is fascinating because it isn't technically a geyser. It started life as a hot spring, then in the early 20th century someone had the idea to tap it for hot water to use in the Old Faithful area. That interference made the spring start erupting like a geyser and the eruptions continued, even after the water pipes were removed.

The result is that Solitary Geyser has small but frequent eruptions. We stood around for a while to see whether we could witness one ...

... and eventually we did

I was sufficiently excited to take a selfie with it.

From Solitary Geyser we continued down into the Upper Geyser Basin. There was so much to see here!

We passed a little pool called Ear Spring; I'm guessing because the shape looks like an ear.

The water in it was bubbling away like mad!

We saw what looked like a huge geyser emitting steam in the distance ...

... and passed more bright blue pools like we saw yesterday.

We made our way from attraction to attraction via a long series of  boardwalks, which went on for several kilometres.

There were signs everywhere reminding people not to step onto the ground.

Helpfully, each geothermal feature also has a sign with its name, otherwise I'd struggle to remember what we'd seen.

We passed Tardy Geyser ...

... and Economic Geyser ...

... neither of which I'm imagining erupt very frequently or enthusiastically! We also passed bubbling mud ...

... and rivers of boiling water with a strange, orange tinge.

It was hard to know what to look at first  

Some of the geysers were huge and looked like they'd be incredible if they erupted.

They also erupt very infrequently and unpredictably, though. We passed one, for example, where there was a possible window of 90 minutes in which it might erupt.

It was fun just watching the steam blowing out of them, though

One of the most distinctive geysers we came across was Grotto Geyser.

I loved the shape – it really does look like a little stone grotto.

As we stood and watched, we could see boiling water splashing out of it.

After Grotto Geyser we walked a bit further through the colourful landscape.

We were heading towards Morning Glory Pool, one of Yellowstone's most famous hot springs.

I was really excited to see this one ... and when we finally reached it, it didn't disappoint

Wow. The colours of this one are just incredible.

Somewhat unbelievably, the pool actually used to be brighter than this.

An info board explained that, unfortunately, over time the colours have become dulled by the impact of people throwing coins and other items into the pool.

If it looks like this now, I can't imagine what it must have looked like in its heyday! 

After Morning Glory, we walked back towards Old Faithful.

Although it still felt like a sunny day at this point, the sky was beginning to darken in the distance.

As we got closer to Old Faithful, it became increasingly clear that it was going to start raining at some point soon.

There was still plenty to see, though. From boiling water running into the river ...

... to the enormous Castle Geyser.

This is another one which doesn't erupt very often, so we didn't wait around.

We went into a cafeteria at Old Faithful to get lunch. The heavens did open while we we eating, so after the meal we got back in the car and drove for a while around a part of the park that we hadn't visited yet. The rain began to let up when we reached an area of the park known as Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

The Yellowstone River dramatically cuts through rock here and the views were really fantastic.

In particular, we could see Lower Yellowstone Falls, which at 94 metres tall make the Upper Mesa Falls we saw in Idaho the other day pale into insignificance.

After admiring these falls we drove to a different viewpoint, from where we could see the Upper Yellowstone Falls.

At around 30 metres, these are not as high as the Lower Falls, but still very impressive.

From here we drove back in the direction of Gardiner, but along a road in the park we hadn't travelled on before. The views of the forests and mountains were amazing and gave us a perspective on just how huge the national park is.

When we saw a few cars stopped by the side of the road, we pulled over and found bison.

They really are absolutely enormous creatures.

We drove through more beautiful scenery ...

... and soon saw the white of Mammoth Hot Springs looming in the distance, which meant we were less than 10 miles from our hotel.

It had turned into a really sunny evening though, so we decided to try our luck and drive deeper back into the park for another attempt at seeing the Grand Prismatic Spring.

Even at 18.30, we only just managed to get a space in the official car park. We followed a trail which crossed the river.

We walked past Excelsior Geyser.

This one was producing so much steam that we could barely see a thing!

From there we followed the crowd of people ahead of us to the shore of Grand Prismatic.

We'd hoped we'd get a good view because the sun was still very bright, which is supposed to bring out the best colours of the spring. What I'd forgotten is that hot springs produce more steam at the start and end of the day, because of the contrast between the hot temperature of the spring and the cool temperature of the air. That meant that there was so much steam over Grand Prismatic that we could barely see it.

You can maybe see a little bit of the colours around the edge of it in this photo, but not very well.

Never mind, it was still a fun experience to visit

And on our way out of the area, we did pass a couple of other smaller pools which were very pretty.

That concluded what has been a very long, but exciting, day in the national park. It was around 8pm by the time we got back to the hotel. And despite the fact that we've spent the day within the national park, we've still racked up quite a few more miles driven!

We left the hotel around 8am again this morning, looking forward to another full day in Yellowstone. It wasn't long before we got our first animal sighting: elk by the roadside.

It was only about 6 degrees when we stepped outside and it had obviously been a cold night. The contrast between the cool air temperature and the heat of the hot springs was causing an incredible amount of steam as we drove through the national park.

Places where we'd hardly seen any steam at all when we drove past yesterday evening were now covered in it.

Last night we'd stopped briefly at a place called Roaring Mountain. This is what it looked like last night ...

... and this is what it looked like this morning.

The contrast was incredible. There was frost on the grass in places where the sun hadn't reached it yet and overall we had a really beautiful drive

We were driving south and around 10am we reached the Old Faithful area again.

It was starting to get a bit warmer now and everywhere looked lovely with the bright blue sky.

The next eruption of Old Faithful wasn't expected until 11.18, so we had a bit of time to kill. We decided to go for a walk along some of the paths that we'd visited in the Upper Geyser Basin yesterday.

The rapid progress we were making around yesterday's route came to an abrupt halt, when we reached a small group of people standing with a park ranger. The ranger informed us that there was a bison close to the path. So there was!

The ranger informed us that it was a male bison who seemed a bit agitated by the way he was swinging his tail. We had the option of turning around or waiting for a bit to see whether he moved away from the path. We opted to wait and see what happened.

It was a bit of a long wait, but eventually the bison did decide to cross the path.

Once he was sufficiently far away, the ranger allowed us to continue down the path.

It was really pleasant walking alongside the river.

We were just enjoying the views when Tim noticed a significant amount of steam coming from one of the geysers behind us.

It turned out that Grand Geyser – a geyser we'd walked past yesterday on the opposite side of the basin – was erupting.

This was so exciting to see, because it's one of those geysers where it's difficult to predict the timing of eruptions with any accuracy. When we'd seen it yesterday, the eruption prediction from the National Park Service came with a possible range of 90 minutes before and after, which was too long a window to stand around on the off-chance!

It was incredible to watch and we really have the bison to thank for the fact that we saw it  If we hadn't been delayed on the path, we'd have been much further around the basin by this point and have missed it.

Between the bison and the eruption, we'd spent a bit more time on the trail than we expected and we were conscious that we wanted to get back towards Old Faithful before the predicted eruption at 11.18. We set off across the boardwalks at speed.

However, we soon found ourselves stopping again when we came to the unusually named Oblong Geyser.

It's not a very good photo, but this one seemed to be in the middle of a low but wide eruption.

You should be able to see the eruption more clearly in the video, although there's so much steam it's still hard to make out the jets of boiling water.

And that wasn't the last geyser we saw erupting today! We rounded a corner and found ourselves at Vent Geyser ...

... and this one was in the middle of erupting too!

Water was really shooting out of it, which was so cool to see.

Having looked it up this evening, I've learned that Vent Geyser is connected to Grand Geyser and almost always starts erupting after its bigger neighbour.

By this time we really had spent more time in the geyser basin than expecting and we only had around 15 minutes to get back to Old Faithful. We continued at speed, though did get slightly distracted when we realised there was a bison just off the boardwalk.

Not sure whether this was the same one as earlier who had moved, or a completely different one. It seems strange, though, that they want to graze in this busy area around the geysers when they have the entire park at their disposal!

In the end, all this excitement meant that we didn't quite make it back as far as the seating area in front of Old Faithful to watch the eruption. But it didn't matter, because it turned out we had a good vantage point from the boardwalk about five minutes away.

We heard someone afterwards complaining that they didn't think the eruption was very impressive. Personally, I think I could watch this every day and still be impressed  

Once we'd finished watching the eruption, we walked down the final bits of boardwalk and back towards the car park.

Our plan for the rest of the day was to drive further south through the park than we had previously, towards Yellowstone Lake.

Yellowstone Lake is huge, covering an area of around 136 square miles. It fills the Yellowstone caldera, a huge depression caused by a historical volcanic eruption.

It's a really beautiful lake and we could see towards high mountains in the distance. That's the direction in which Yellowstone merges into the mountainous Grand Teton National Park, which we visited back in 2022.

Our first view of the lake came from a place known as the West Thumb Geyser Basin.

Here we saw an assortment of bubbling mud pots ...

.... and bright blue pools. This one was called Bluebell Pool.

This geyser basin is right next to the lake, which gives it a really stunning location.

It also meant that some of the thermal features were almost in the lake itself.

We've seen a lot of geothermal activity by this point, but these were still fascinating to see.

The highlights of West Thumb for me were a couple of bright blue hot springs.

Oddly, although this one is so blue, it is called Black Pool.

How much of it we could see really depending on which way the wind was blowing the steam that rose from its surface.

At one point the steam blew right towards us and we couldn't see anything at all.

Then it cleared and we had a perfect view again

The second beautiful pool was called Abyss Pool.

It was easy to see how this one got its name. When you peered down into it, it was really, really deep!

Such an amazing place

We'd worked up an appetite by this point, so we got back in the car and drove towards a little settlement called Lake Village. 

As we wandered down to the lakeside, we passed an elk.

We were looking for the general store, where we were hoping to get some lunch.

The store was just across the road from the lake, so we had some more fantastic views.

Once inside, we found it had a small diner section where we were able to order pots of chilli. The chilli came without rice but with something called oyster crackers. I had just about enough phone signal to google them and ascertain that they don't actually contain oysters before we ate them.

From the lake we had quite a long drive north back towards Gardiner ahead of us. We stopped after a few kilometres to view some rapids in the Yellowstone River.

They were quite impressive as rapids go, but we'd already seen so much amazing nature today that they probably didn't excite us as much as they should have done.

Shortly after the rapids, we stopped at a place called Mud Volcano.

As we followed another boardwalk around, I initially thought that this location might not be quite as exciting as some of the other ones we've visited.

I realised I was wrong when we reached a place called Dragon's Mouth Spring.

Wow.

I can definitely see how it got the name

Then we reached Mud Volcano itself.

This one was pretty cool too

It started to rain around this point and so we got into the car and continued our journey north. I figured the biggest excitement of the day was behind us. I was wrong! 

We turned a corner on the road at some point and saw a line of cars parked up, with lots of people standing outside with cameras and binoculars. Initially I couldn't tell what they were so excited about and we were going to drive on past. Then I realised ... they could see a bear

We pulled over and parked up too so we could get a better look.

I should add that we were a very long way away from this bear, using the zoom feature on our phone cameras to the max. That's why the pictures look so indistinct and grainy.

But I think they're clear enough to show that it was definitely a bear You can see his face quite well in this shot.

I wasn't 100% sure when I was taking the photos because we were so far away – and it was also starting to pour with rain – but based on this video which Tim shot, I think it was a grizzly bear (rather than a black bear). One of the distinguishing features of grizzlies is a hump they have on their backs, and you can see that more clearly in the video.

Wow, what a way to end our time in Yellowstone! As we drove towards the park exit to leave for a final time, we got another great view of the big bull elk we saw on our first day. But I don't think anything is going to compete with the excitement of seeing a bear

Despite the fact that we spent the entire day within the park yet again, it was another big day of driving. Worth every mile though for the amazing things we've seen  

We had another long day of driving ahead of us today, with the plan being to travel from one side of Montana to the other. We were starting in Gardiner, which is in the very south of Montana, and driving up to a place called Apgar, which is at the entrance to Glacier National Park, right in the north of the state.

We checked out of the hotel in Apgar around 8am and hit the road. The countryside we travelled through was very mountainous, as we initially followed the route of the Yellowstone river towards Bozeman.

We reached Bozeman in around 90 minutes and stopped for breakfast. As we drove through the town centre we noticed that it looked surprisingly attractive, with some buildings that seemed quite historical.

As we rejoined the main road outside Bozeman, I couldn't help but laugh when we passed a road sign that pointed to an exit for places named Belgrade and Amsterdam.

The scenery after Bozeman continued to be mountainous ...

... and very green.

Somewhere around the state capital of Helena, we drove over a mountain pass where the views were really beautiful.

The landscape looked quite Alpine.

We drove past a small lake ...

... and towards a very steep mountain.

After that the route became gentler, leading us through endless forests ...

... until we reached the shores of a much bigger lake.

This was Swan Lake and it was really pretty

An hour or so after Swan Lake, we stopped for a late lunch at a branch of Applebee's in the small town of Kalispell, not far from the national park entrance. We both chose a chicken parmigiana dish which was so enormous that we could actually just have eaten one between us.

It was shortly after 18.00 when we eventually arrived at Apgar, which is just within the boundaries of Glacier National Park. We're staying in official national park accommodation tonight, which means the room is a bit smaller and more rustic than the hotels we've been in for the rest of the holidays. 

There's a very limited phone and WiFi signal, with which we're attempting to do this blog. But it's worth the slight inconvenience, because we've got this outside area with an absolutely incredible view.

Look at the view!

Our terrace looks out over Lake McDonald, one of the large lakes within the park.

I'm so glad that we are able to see the views here, because I've read some things online recently saying that visibility hasn't been great in Glacier due to the impact of wildfire smoke blowing over from Canada.

I think the impact changes with the weather and which way the wind is blowing, but there definitely didn't seem to be any problem with visibility this evening.

We'd had a long day of sitting down in the car, so we went for a walk to stretch our legs and try to see a bit more of the lake.

The trail led through the forest ...

... and then took us down to little beaches ....

... where we had the most incredible views.

It was worth coming to Glacier National Park just for this

So beautiful that it definitely required a selfie!

I could have stayed looking at the lake all day, but we also wanted to get back to the hotel and enjoy some time sitting outside on the terrace before it got too dark.

As we walked back through the woods, we saw a wonderful little deer.

This one was a lot smaller than the large elk we've been seeing in Yellowstone over the past few days.

We made it back to Apgar and sat outside, watching the colour of sunset on the lake.

We've stayed in some nice places over the past few years, but this has got to rank as one of the most scenic terrace views ever.

It was beautiful!

Tim walked down to the lake to get a close-up shot ...

... and the result was impressive

Then it was time to relax in a chair with our Kindles

It was another big day of driving!

Tomorrow we'll be driving through the park and ultimately staying overnight at a place called Many Glacier, which is deeper within the park. I'm anticipating that we won't have a phone signal or reliable WiFi, there, so there may be a delay on the next couple of blogs!

Today was one of our earliest starts of the entire holiday, with the alarm set for 5am. The reason for this was that I wanted us to get a parking space in the car park at a place called Logan Pass, which typically fills up before 7am each day. Although there are around 200 spaces in the car park, it's the starting point for a number of popular hikes, as well as the location of a visitor centre, and so it's always very busy. Logan Pass was a drive of around an hour from where we were staying in Apgar, so we checked out of our hotel at 05.30 and set off in the darkness.

Logan Pass is the highest point of the famous Going-to-the-Sun Road, a scenic highway of around 50 miles which runs from the west of Glacier National Park to the east. This is supposed to be one of the most beautiful roads to drive in the entire USA, so it was quite ironic that we were having to drive it before sunrise in order to get a parking space. Glacier is one of those national parks where visitor numbers have increased rapidly in recent years, with 3.2 millions visitors in 2024. Most of those visitors arrive between the start of July and the end of September, which is the only time that Going-to-the-Sun road is open (the rest of the year, the road is covered in heavy snow). With that volume of tourists, even a car park with 200 spaces is inevitably going to fill up pretty quickly!

As we climbed up towards the pass in a column of other vehicles, I was slightly worried that even with the ridiculously early hour we had got up, we were at risk of not getting a parking space. However, in the end everything turned out fine  We arrived at Logan Pass around 06.30 and there were still multiple spaces left. We parked the car and proceeded to sit in it for a while until the sun began to rise. And it was a really beautiful sunrise! This was our view from the car park at around 06.45.

It was really gorgeous

And this is what the car park looked like at 06.45; completely full!

We didn't actually want to set out on the hike until the sky was a bit brighter, so we sat in the car for a bit longer and ate some biscuits for breakfast. By 07.30, the view was even better.

It was so pretty that it almost didn't look real!

We were planning to do one of the easier hikes in Glacier National Park today, which is the Hidden Lake trail. The path starts from just behind the Logan Pass Visitor Centre.

We immediately passed a sign warning us to be careful of bighorn sheep. Luckily, we didn't encounter any bighorn sheep today; they sound a bit scary!

Very soon afterwards, we also passed a sign warning us that this was an area frequented by bears. That was the reason we hadn't wanted to start hiking until it was completely bright (although, that didn't seem to be stopping other people, plenty of whom set off before us). We didn't ultimately see any bears today either, although we were carrying our bear spray just in case. 

The Hidden Lake trail was beautiful right from the start.

The only downside was that it was also uphill right from the start.

The trail led us upwards via a series of wooden steps and boardwalks.

As you can see from the pictures, there were other people on the trail, but it never felt overly crowded.

And there was no chance that any of us were going to take a bear by surprise given the volume most Americans were talking at  

The landscape as we climbed was absolutely stunning.

When we looked behind us, we still had the remnants of the sunrise colours in the sky too.

Here's me partway up, looking tired after getting up at 5am  

It was quite a chilly morning – around 6 degrees when we'd left Apgar at 05.30 – so I was glad to be wearing a coat and leggings.

Definitely a contrast to the extremely warm temperatures we had down in Arizona a couple of weeks ago.

The change in climate and landscape shouldn't really be a surprise, though; we've driven across the USA from within about 60 miles of the Mexican border in Tucson, to within around 20 miles of the Canadian border at Logan Pass.

Eventually we came to the end of the wooden boardwalks. From here the trail became a bit rockier.

I was excited that we could see bits of snow on some of the mountains.

We took some selfies to capture the snow ...

... and the sunrise.

Around this point we passed a group of people with large binoculars who said they could see a bear in the distance. We couldn't see anything – either with the naked eye or with our cameras. It was obviously a very long way away.

Whenever I thought we must be nearly at the top, the trail continued on uphill.

After a while we came to a slightly flatter area with a small lake.

This wasn't the Hidden Lake that we were walking to, but it was still very pretty.

Eventually, we were nearly at the highest point of the walk ...

... and got our first glimpse of Hidden Lake in the distance.

What an amazing lake!

Once we got to the official overlook point, we could see it more clearly ...

... and just about got both lake and mountains in a selfie

Most people stop walking the trail at this point, but you can continue on further all the way down to the lake.

We didn't want to climb down all that way – mainly because we didn't want to climb all the way back up again – but we did carry on a little bit further around the mountain.

It was definitely worth continuing – the further we walked, the better the views of the lake.

I found a nice rock by the side of the trail to sit and have a drink.

And then spent a moment taking in the scene.

After this point, the path became significantly rockier.

The rocks were actually really fascinating. We've seen all sorts of rocks on this holiday, but not this shade of burgundy.

The colour of the rocks contrasted with the mountain behind was really lovely.

And they looked pretty cool in this little river too.

Around this point we heard some whistling on the rocks above us. I looked up and saw a marmot, who was obviously warning others about our presence. He was quite a long way away, so the photo hasn't come out very clearly, but hopefully you can just make him out sitting on the big rock in the middle of the photo.

We had a final look at Hidden Lake ...

... then decided to turn around and start walking back towards Logan Pass.

The walk down was just as pretty as the walk up had been. Now that the sun was fully up, we could see the mountains in a different light.

There were more people coming up the boardwalks as we started climbing down, so they'd obviously managed to find parking spaces somehow! I guess some of the people who started hiking at dawn had already finished and moved on.

The car park still looked incredibly busy by the time we got down, with multiple cars circling around in search of spaces.

There was one more thing I wanted to see at Logan Pass before we gave up our parking space: the continental divide sign.

Water to the west of the pass drains into the Pacific Ocean, while water to the east drains into the Atlantic.

Once that was ticked off my list, we made someone's day by giving up our parking space and started driving east down Going-to-the-Sun road, towards the small settlement of St Mary which lies at its far end.

The road truly was spectacular now that it was daylight.

We drove alongside St Mary's Lake for a while ...

... before ultimately turning around at the St Mary Visitor Centre and re-driving the entire road from east to west, this time able to see the daylight views!

We stopped for a couple of minutes at a place called Wild Goose Island Overlook.

Neither of us have seen the film, but this viewpoint is apparently really famous because it features in the opening sequence of 'The Shining'.

It was particularly exciting to see the scenery on the return journey once we got past Logan Pass, as this was the portion of the road that we'd driven in complete darkness.

The road was quite narrow in places, with rock on one side and a steep drop on the other.

The views from over the edge were incredible.

We definitely hadn't been aware of any of this in the dark!

Once we got to the outskirts of the park, we decided to drive to the town of Kalispell where we'd had lunch yesterday. There really aren't many settlements close to Glacier National Park, so finding food is quite hard. We had a nice meal in Kalispell, though belatedly we realised it had been quite a diversion because we still had two hours of driving to do before we reached the hotel we're staying in this evening.

Glacier National Park is huge and we're staying in a different part of it this evening; a region called Many Glacier. We're staying in the Many Glacier Hotel, which was built in 1914 with a Swiss Alpine Theme.

Our room is fairly standard ...

... but the interior of the hotel itself is very grand.

We've got a little balcony outside our room, from where we can see a little bit of the mountains.

The views from the car park outside are really beautiful ...

... and in the distance we could even see the edge of one of the glaciers that give the area its name.

The best thing about the hotel is that it turned out to have way better WiFi than we expected  So despite the fact that there is zero phone signal here, we've been able to do the blog before relaxing after another fairly long day of driving!

The weather forecast was not good for today and when we woke up in the Many Glacier hotel this morning, it was indeed rather gloomy. We went downstairs to have breakfast in the hotel dining room; at $22 each it felt rather over-priced, but on a sunny day the view from here must be amazing.

After breakfast we checked out of our room and put all our suitcases in the car. It began to pour torrentially with rain and I began to question whether the hike I had planned for today was going to work out. 

The Many Glacier Hotel is situated on a lake called Swiftcurrent Lake. Our plans for the day involved getting a boat across this lake – and a subsequent lake a bit further on – before embarking on our longest hike of the holiday.

We were booked on a boat at 09.00 and had to collect our tickets from the ticket office behind the hotel by 08.30, else risk forfeiting our place.

We collected the tickets without any problems, then stood waiting for it to be time to board the boat. The weather wasn't looking any brighter!

Eventually we could see a small, white boat appearing on the horizon.

We got onboard and began the journey, which only lasted around 15 minutes or so as it's a fairly small lake. The woman driving the boat gave commentary as we went, telling us lots of interesting facts about the area. Apparently in winter, the snow gets so high that it reaches the roof of the Many Glacier Hotel  The caretaker, who lives on his own in the building when the season is over, woke up to find that a sheep in the building last year: it had fallen through a skylight!

One of the most fascinating things she told us was that all the trees in this Swiftcurrent Valley date from 1936, which is why you'll see in the pictures that they're all more or less the same height. They're a special type of tree which actually need a wildfire in order to propagate; their pine cones, which can lie for years on the forest floor, are coated in wax which requires the heat of fire to melt. The last big fire in this valley was in 1936, so all the trees here started growing then.

After 15 minutes or so, the boat docked at the far end of Swiftcurrent Lake.

We could just see back to the Many Glacier Hotel in the distance.

From Swiftcurrent Lake, we had to walk about 10 minutes or so, uphill and then down again, until we reached a second lake.

The second lake, Lake Josephine, was slightly bigger.

Our group boarded the boat and we set off across the lake.

We got lots of interesting information about wildlife during this crossing. We learned that bears eat 50 pounds of berries a day at this time of year  And that moose are able to swim and dive in the lake. It turns out that they can dive up to 18 feet; since the lakes here are about 15 feet, that means that they eat vegetation growing on the floor. We didn't encounter either animal today, though.

When we got to the end of Lake Josephine, we disembarked from the boat. The good news was that the weather was starting to look a little brighter!

We decided to start the hike we'd come to do and see whether the weather held up. We were trying to walk to a place called Grinnell Glacier Overlook, which looked absolutely stunning in the photos I'd seen online. It was going to be quite a steep uphill hike, but it started relatively gently as we made our way around the top of Lake Josephine.

I don't have (m)any photos of the trail on this hike because we were both using trekking poles, which meant our hands weren't free to take pictures most of the time. But we started off with an incredibly steep climb up above Lake Josephine.

The benefit of starting this hike with the boat journey was that a large group of people were setting off all at once. That meant we were effectively hiking in a big group that was making lots of noise (almost everyone else was American, so I do mean lots of noise!) and so we didn't have to worry that we might accidentally surprise a bear as we began climbing up through the undergrowth.

After 20 minutes or so of uphill climbing, we got our first glimpse of something blue in the distance.

This is Grinnell Lake.

I have taken a ridiculous number of photos of it today, because it is just so incredibly blue!

The striking turquoise colour is because of the silt transported into the lake from the nearby Grinnell Glacier.

I had seen pictures of this online when planning the hike, but part of me believed that they must have been photoshopped to look this colour. Turns out they really hadn't!

The lake was beautiful but the uphill trail was unrelenting. We'd been climbing for over an hour by the time we had these views and we were still going steeply up.

And when I say steeply up, I really do mean steeply up.

There's no way I would have made it without the extra support of the hiking poles.

Eventually we could see that we were making progress alongside Grinnell Lake.

When we looked back from this point on the trail we could see all three lakes: the turquoise Grinnell Lake, then further back Lake Josephine and Swiftcurrent Lake which we'd travelled over by boat.

We'd come a long way, but we still had quite a way to go. When the clouds began to clear slightly, we could now see the glacier in the distance. 

We could also now see this beautiful waterfall, pouring down the mountainside.

The trail continued around the side of the mountain, then the final half a mile or so was very steeply uphill via a series of stone steps. Once we'd conquered that, the path began to level out and the glacier looked a lot closer.

It had begun to rain again by this point, but we were nearly at the top.

We made it! This was Upper Grinnell Lake. It didn't look quite as blue today as it has in some of the pictures I've seen; probably because of the very wet weather.

And this was what we'd come to see: Grinnell Glacier.

This definitely called for a selfie.

Maybe a couple of different selfies

Even in the rain, it was such a beautiful place.

I realised we could even see tiny little icebergs, breaking off the glacier and floating in the lake.

Back in 1850, this glacier had an area of 710 acres. Today, it's only around 150 acres. It's one of only 25 glaciers left in the park; there were 150 when it was discovered.

Beautiful as it was at the top, the weather wasn't great and we still had a long descent ahead of us. We began to walk back down.

Walking downhill was significantly easier and we were able to enjoy the views a bit more.

We stopped to enjoy the incredible panorama.

On the way down I managed to get a few more shots of the trail. This was one of the rockier parts.

And this was the most difficult bit, walking downhill over wet rock due to a stream of water pouring down the mountainside.

Here's me looking glad to have survived that part

Of course, there were some more incredible views of Grinnell Lake on the way down.

Shortly after 2pm, we'd made it back down to the area of Lake Josephine.

We had a return ticket for the boat, but there was only one boat per hour and there wasn't a guarantee that we'd be able to fit on the first boat that came.

A sign informed us that it was only 2.5 miles to walk back to the Many Glacier Hotel from here, so we decided to do the journey on foot.

Walking along the side of the lakes was actually really pleasant.

The weather had dried up by this point and it was a much brighter day.

As we stood and admired the views from Swiftcurrent Lake ...

... we realised that from here we could see all the way up to Grinnell Glacier. In the photo below, it's the lower patch of snow towards the centre of the photo.

Finally, around 15.30, the Many Glacier Hotel came back into view.

We'd made it. Phew! As the screenshot from Tim's Fitbit shows, we covered a serious amount of ground today.

We stopped for some refreshments at the hotel, then had a 2.5 hour drive back to Kalispell, where we're staying overnight at a Best Western Hotel.

Tomorrow will be a long day of travelling, starting with a couple of internal flights to get us back to Phoenix in time for our main flight back to the UK. We'll be landing at Heathrow some time on Wednesday afternoon.

It's been a fantastic holiday and we will do a final post once we're back to summarise everything we've seen  

We've been back from the USA for a few days now and are starting to recover from the jetlag. It was certainly a tiring trip! By my calculations we flew a total of 11,200 miles across four separate flights (London to Phoenix, Kalispell to Seattle, Seattle to Phoenix, Phoenix to London). As our final day was mainly spent in airports I didn't write a separate blog about it, but we did get some beautiful views of sunrise ...

... as we came in to land over Seattle.

When we landed in Seattle, I could see Mt Rainier from the runway ...

... and I also got a view of the famous volcano, Mt St Helens, as we took off again for Phoenix.

We were flying back from Montana to Arizona, because it would have taken far too long to repeat our road trip in the opposite direction. By my calculations, in total we (well, Tim!) drove 3,451 miles  in our rented Mitsubishi Outlander. Luckily, it was a big and comfortable car.

The parking bays were enormous everywhere we travelled.

The longest day of driving was day 11, when we drove 474 miles from West Wendover to Gardiner. The shortest day of driving was day 7, when I estimate we drove about 10 miles to Bryce Canyon and back from our hotel.

The Six States

Over the course of the holiday, we visited 6 different states. We started in Arizona, with our flight from Heathrow landing at Phoenix airport on day 1.

After crossing Arizona, we made our way north into Utah.

We spent several days in Utah, visiting every national park in the state, before crossing briefly into Nevada, where we had the cultural experience of staying overnight at a casino hotel.

From Nevada, we made our way to Yellowstone, which required several hours of driving through Idaho.

Yellowstone itself is mostly in Wyoming, which was our next state.

However, our accommodation for the rest of the trip was in neighbouring Montana.

Of all those states, Nevada was the only completely “new” state which we'd never been to previously. The rest we'd visited to some extent during our previous 2022 road trip, albeit Utah only briefly.

America the Beautiful: the National Parks ...

The main aim of the trip was to visit national parks and I'd say that was a success as we visited a total of ten national parks over the course of the holiday.

We started in Saguaro National Park, famous for its enormous Saguaro cactuses.

That's where I took what might still be my favourite photo of the holiday

From Saguaro, we drove north through Arizona to Petrified Forest National Park, where we were amazed both by the petrified wood ...

... and by the unique mesa landscape. Out of all the national parks we visited, this one was probably the biggest surprise!

After Petrified Forest, we continued on to Grand Canyon National Park.

This was a repeat visit for us, but I don't think there's any such thing as visiting the Grand Canyon too many times.

The Grand Canyon was our final national park in Arizona. We moved on to Utah, where we visited the first of the state's five national parks: Zion National Park.

This was probably the one I loved least – or, at least, I don't feel like it quite lived up to the amount of hype it gets – but looking back on the photos, it was still a really stunning place.

Our next national park was one that definitely does live up to the hype: Bryce Canyon National Park.

This one was so beautiful. Although the hike we did there counts as one of the most difficult ones of the holiday as far as I'm concerned!

Our third national park in Utah was Capitol Reef National Park. Although this one felt a bit obscure, it turned out to be one of our busier visits of the trip, perhaps because I'd planned for us to get there in the middle of the day.

It was definitely worth a stop, though; we got to see our first natural rock arch of the trip.

There were plenty of those at our next stop: Arches National Park. We saw Delicate Arch, the most famous arch in Utah, from quite a distance, rather than join the crowds hiking there for sunrise photos ...

... but then we got to see several other arches much closer up

Canyonlands National Park was only about 30 miles away from Arches and I think this is where we had some of the best views of the whole trip.

It's also the only national park where someone offered to take a photo of us together

Our final two national parks were in Montana. Or, at least, Yellowstone National Park is partly in Montana, with the most significant portion being in Wyoming and a tiny piece also in Idaho.

We had an incredible time in Yellowstone. So happy that we finally got to visit after our failed 2022 trip!

Last, but by no means least, we visited Glacier National Park, right in the northern part of Montana, near the Canadian border.

The weather here wasn't absolutely perfect, but we still managed to hike to one of the park's many glaciers.

... and Outstanding Other Locations

Of course, there were also some incredible places we visited which weren't national parks. I loved our tour of Antelope Canyon ...

... and revisiting Horseshoe Bend was a lot of fun too.

I was very excited when we drove past piles of salt alongside the Great Salt Lake in Utah ...

... and even more excited when we got to walk on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

And sometimes we drove through amazing scenery without so much as a sign to tell us what it was.

Plenty of Activity

We've already established that it was a holiday which required a lot of driving, but it was also a holiday which required a considerable amount of walking.

My FitBit gives a total of 243,939 steps, which averages out as 13,552 per day.

Sometimes those steps were on quite difficult paths.

I learned that I don't like hiking over slickrock!

But the views at the end of the trails were always worth it

We hiked in deserts ...

... canyons ...

... and mountains.

We hiked to meteor craters ...

... hoodoos ...

... and giant arches.

In Yellowstone, we hiked through geyser basins ...

... past countless hot springs ...

... and even waterfalls.

Lovely Lakes

I just realised I haven't even mentioned lakes! We had fantastic views as we drove alongside Yellowstone Lake ...

... got tantalising glimpses of the Great Salt Lake ...

... and relaxed one evening with amazing views of Lake McDonald.

The hike to Hidden Lake was one of my favourite of the holiday ...

... and the boat trips across Swiftcurrent Lake and Lake Josephine were a lot of fun.

But the lake of the holiday has to be Upper Grinnell Lake, with its brilliant glacial blue  

In Touch with Nature

The other thing I haven't mentioned yet is wildlife. And wow, we really saw a lot of wildlife. We admired condors flying over the Grand Canyon ...

... walked past deer in Zion ...

... and saw a giant bison almost as soon as we entered Yellowstone.

We saw lots of elk in Yellowstone, too ...

... but the most exciting wildlife sighting of the holiday was definitely the grizzly bear

I was excited to see one, from a distance, and not meet it up close on any of the trails!

The Purse took a Pounding

Of course, all these experiences came at a price and this was definitely not a cheap holiday by anyone's definition. I make the total cost £9,457, which is broken down as follows:

Transatlantic flights (just one person, the other ticket was paid with points)       £2,384

Airport parking at Heathrow                                                                                                 £163

Rental car in the USA                                                                                                             £1,186

Internal flights (from Kalispell to Phoenix via Seattle)                                                   £593

Accommodation                                                                                                                     £3,504

Petrol                                                                                                                                           £250

Restaurants                                                                                                                                £888

Groceries, bear spray, souvenirs ...                                                                                        £422

Entrance fees                                                                                                                             £67

Total                                                                                                                                 £9,457

Wow  I was going to say that's probably our most expensive holiday ever but having consulted my records from last year, I think it worked out a bit cheaper than our trip to Tanzania. The biggest expense in the USA was accommodation, which worked out as £206 per night and sometimes didn't even include breakfast (hence the spending on groceries). Could we have stayed in cheaper accommodation? Yes, definitely. In most cases we were paying a premium for the convenience of the location and proximity to the national parks, so I could have found cheaper prices if I'd looked at rooms about 50 miles away from where we actually wanted to be. We did this to save money in Grand Teton last time, staying in a glorified shed around 70 miles from the national park entrance. But overall I think it was worth paying the extra money to be able to make an early start and get into the parks before the worst of the crowds arrived. I don't regret staying close enough to be able to see sunrise at the Grand Canyon ...

... Bryce Canyon ...

... or Glacier.

It was a fantastic trip and we're already making a list of other national parks we might want to visit one day