The Canyons – Breath-taking landscapes
From Vegas we started our journey to the South-East in the direction of Grand Canyon. Before we made a stopover at the Hoover dam. It was shocking to see how low the water level meanwhile is. After our stopover we continued our drive to the Grand Canyon National Park. We bought directly an annual pass for all the US National parks, it´s worthwhile after visiting 3 parks already. We walked along the rim trail of the Grand Canyon, it´s at the upper level of the Grand Canyon. The weather was perfect, it was not too hot and the sky was blue with some little clouds, perfect for some hours of walking. The view was absolutely gigantic, unimaginable huge is this Canyon. Around afternoon we drove to Flagstaff where we stayed for one night.
The next day we started in the early morning to drive to Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, the ride took us around 3hrs. The landscape around the Monument Valley is famous due to the plenty of movies which was taken here, especially western cowboy movies. John Wayne shot around 5 movies at this area, the landscape is really wonderful. The same day we continued our trip and drove to Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend and stayed in Page for one night. We visited the Lower Antelope Canyon and walked through the narrow gorge for around 1 hr. The colours inside the canyon is magnificent, very unique. Those of you who have Windows 7 for sure know the screensaver, it was taken here in this canyon.
On the third day we drove from Page to the Bryce Canyon, the trip took around 2.5hrs. Here at this area we directly felt the cold weather, plenty of snow was still lying at the slopes. We were meanwhile at a height of 2000 to 2500 m above Sea level. We had a few hours of walked at the Queens Garden trail and partly the Navajo Loop trail. Also here the landscape is absolutely breath-taking. After our walk we drove to some lookout points inside the park area and enjoyed the beautiful view. Around afternoon we drove to Cedar City where we stayed for one night, the drive took us around 1.5 hrs. On the way to Cedar City we had to pass a mountain pass, there were snow everywhere and the car thermometer was showing the outside temperature of 1°C, it was really cold.
On the fourth day we drove from Cedar City to Zion National Park. We drove to Springdale where we took a bus to get into the park. The journey from Cedar City to Springdale was only 1h. Unfortunately we were there on a Sunday and therefore the park was very crowded. We took the park bus until the last station of the park and walked back along the river in the valley for a couple of hrs. The view war great and we saw also some rock climbers at some of the steep rock face. The weather was perfect, it was around 20°C and beautiful blue sky. From Zion National Park we drove to St.George where we stayed for one night before we drove back to Vegas.
The Canyon round trip was absolutely marvellous, the landscapes are tremendous beautiful. It was quite exhausting driving the long distances but it was worth to do it. During our trip we pass through 3 different States: Nevada, Arizona and Utah. Now our journey continues from Vegas back to L.A. where we will drive along the Pacific Coast heading north. We will as usual keep you updated about our journey ;-)
