Wednesday 18th October - day 29. Canyonlands and Arches to Capitol Reef. Another self inflicted early start today. Several guides had mentioned that when visiting Canyonlands ‘Island in the Sky’, watching sunrise at the Mesa Arch was a great thing to do. Luckily we were an hour later here in Utah so that sunrise was set for 7.30. We aimed to get to the Mesa Arch by 7 and set our alarms for 5.45. We bumped our way out of the campsite and drove the one ho...

Thursday 19th October - day 30. Capitol Reef to Bryce and Zion, then on to Mesquite. Another pre-dawn departure - we creaked and bumped our way out of the dust road camp site and back onto highway 24. We left the towering buff coloured cliffs and boulders of Capitol Reef behind us and drove up over Hells Backbone. Today the skies were cloudy. Not the dull uniform pale grey that kills colour, these were a whole patchwork of inky blue-black, smokey grey smudges...

Tuesday 17th October - day 28. Navajo monument to Moab. Woke to beautiful sunrise with pink skies reflected all around us from our hilltop desert camp. The Navajo Monument free campsite turned out to be an absolute treasure - secluded forest parking amongst pines and Navajo Juniper trees at 7270 metres with great views and - to our surprise - an extraordinary historical site too. Before breakfast, we set off to run round the local area to explore and made o...