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
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