It has been quite an easy going day. From Phoenix this morning, the coach took us through the beautiful red rock mountains to an old Indian settlement known as Montezuma's Castle. Just outside Camp Verde, this place just has to be seen to be believed. It's one of those attractions which people tell you about and you're not quite sure whether they're making it up or not. Originally built by the Sinagua Indians during the fifteenth century and declared as a national monument in 1906, Montezuma's Castle is, to describe it simply, a village on the side of a cliff. Well, I say "simply" but there's nothing simple about it at all - sitting on what appears to be a natural ledge half way up the cliff, and sheltered by overhanging rock, the Sinagua have chiselled a complete five storey building out of the rock face. From ground level, you're actually looking up at what is essentially a stone apartment block that's been hammered out of the limestone. I can't even imagine how the Indians got down to it to do the work - it's not as though Native Americans have ever been well known for their abseiling skills. Inside, we were told, there are twenty rooms which would've housed forty to fifty people - although nobody has been allowed to actually go inside since the fifties when it was decided that the combined effects of thousands of tourist feet weren't doing it any good and that there was a real chance that at some point the whole thing would just fall off the cliff, tourists and all. I'm pretty sure that the absence of many of the original artefacts that had once been inside the monument due to looting by visitors may have had something to do with it, as well.

Before the fifties, visitors with a good head for heights had been able to climb the cliff using a series of ladders and march around the rooms inside the monument at will - although I understand why this is no longer the case, it's a real shame as being able to look inside would have made my visit that little bit more complete.

Nobody knows quite why the Sinagua abandoned their settlement here, but the place was not re-discovered until fairly recently in historical terms. Since becoming a national monument, a visitors centre has been built to house the remaining artefacts found within Montezuma's Castle, and paved but slightly pitted pathways run through the desert shrubbery so that tourists can look up at the monument from an angle designed to attract maximum amounts of awe. These paths are littered with disconcerting little wooden signs warning people not to stray into the undergrowth in case they should be bitten by a rattlesnake - don't ask me who told the rattlesnakes that they aren't allowed to bite people who stay on the marked trails. It's also possible, after exploring the visitors centre and seeing the monument itself, to sit near the base of the cliff and spend the afternoon taking a picnic in its shadow on the shores of Beaver Creek, something you aren't often actively encouraged to do anywhere near sites of historical interest. In fact, being able to sit and look up at Montezuma's Castle without being moved on by the park rangers is, in itself, a pleasant surprise when you consider that many of the places I've visited have forced me to keep my distance by erecting fences some way from the site itself. Even at Stonehenge in England, it's no longer possible to get anywhere near the stones.

From Montezuma's Castle, the coach took us to the small mountain town of Sedona where we were given the opportunity to board a helicopter and weave in and out of the mountains for fifteen minutes in return for fifty bucks. I was planning on putting my dead presidents to better use, though, as I've already booked to fly back into Vegas over the Grand Canyon in the morning before heading into Utah - so I joined most of the rest of the coach in grumbling about the price and deciding to take a rain check. Whatever the hell a rain check is (1). While the others had their helicopter ride and time afterwards to look around Sedona, the rest of us managed to find a local guy with a trolley-bus who was taking people out of town on a forty-five minute sightseeing trip for the ridiculously cheap price of five dollars. The tour took us to a chapel high up in the mountains, one of the highest points I've been on the tour so far, from where there was a truly stunning view for miles around of the mountains, desert and the town itself. A rather worrying fact that our guide managed to slip casually into the conversation was that, statistically, Sedona is the second most lightning struck place in the whole of the United States. The reason for this is that the red mountains are red because they're full of iron, and over millions of years the iron has rusted away to form a sort of rusty mountain range. Of course, iron attracts lightning, so in an average electrical storm Sedona is struck by lightning a few thousand times - or at least, the mountains around it are. In fact, during an electrical storm you can stand on the street and look out at the surrounding mountains and literally watch the lightning shooting down to the ground all around - although, to be honest, standing on the streets during an electrical storm doesn't sound like something I'd be likely to want to do in Sedona anytime soon.

From Sedona, we came straight to the hotel in Flagstaff, which is seven thousand feet above sea level. For this reason, the air is quite a lot thinner here and it becomes a hell of a lot colder at night, even though we're in the desert. There's also a massive university, so the place is packed with students - they're just about everywhere and the town seems, rather unfairly, to rely heavily on them as cheap labour to keep the place running smoothly. In fact, there's a restaurant just down the road which is run entirely by students. Students wait the tables. Students cook the food. Students even play the piano for you while you eat and come and serenade you at the table, which is more than you get in the most expensive restaurants in London.

This afternoon, we took a tour out to the north rim of the Grand Canyon, where our driver played a big joke on all of us by explaining that we would just about be able to see the canyon through the trees on the left hand side of the coach if we looked very carefully. Of course, this had everybody crowding around the seats on the left hand side, straining to see over each others shoulders and gazing through every little gap in the trees in the hope of catching a quick glimpse of the canyon - until our driver suddenly said "Oh sorry, my mistake. I meant the right hand side of the coach". We all turned to look behind us, where the canyon was spread out as far as the eye could see and dropped off at least a mile below us. We felt just a little stupid.

At the north rim, we all shuffled off the coach and made our way to the viewing platform, looking around in stunned silence at everything. Words or photographs don't stand a chance of describing the Grand Canyon. Even video can't come close unless you're lucky enough to have a panoramic cinema camera and a 360 degree theatre at home to watch the film on afterwards. This is one of those places which truly makes you feel like a mere pinprick in the universe - the canyon stretches out on all sides, below you, above you, all around you. It's four miles wide in some places, ten in others. Beautiful isn't even close to being a suitable adjective to explain it - suffice to say that some of our party were almost physically sick from vertigo which they'd never suffered from before in their lives, and had to return to the coach. Others didn't want to return to the coach however much they were threatened with being left behind. At the Grand Canyon National Park Visitors Centre we got some more stunning views of the canyon, and the squirrels were so tame that they came scurrying up to me while I was sitting with a bag of crisps and admiring the view, climbed onto my lap, stuck their little heads in the bag, stole what they could and then sat on my lap eating, occasionally looking up at me as though to say "Yeah, and what are you going to do about it?"

It wasn't until we left that I noticed a sign half concealed behind a bus:

DO NOT FEED THE SQUIRRELS

SQUIRRELS IN THIS AREA MAY HAVE RABIES

So if I suddenly turn unexpectedly yellow and start frothing at the mouth over the next few weeks, you'll know why.

I haven't had a lot of chance to watch television while I've been travelling, but this evening I thought I'd settle down in my hotel room in Flagstaff and see what American telly has to offer. No sooner had I turned it on and selected one of the three billion stations available to me through the cable hook-up, than an advertisement came on. It was an ad for a non-prescription pain relief tablet - the sort of thing that pharmacies seem to sell in packets of five hundred back in England. Now, here's the thing: In the UK, people who produce medical products are required to include a little piece of paper with the product listing any known side effects. In the United States, it seems that they actually have to spell them all out when the product is advertised on television as well - which makes for quite interesting viewing. I might possibly be exaggerating here but it really does seem, thinking back on the advert after the event, that the message was pretty much along these lines:

"Do you suffer from regular headaches? Do your kids drive your migraine crazy? What you need is new extra strength Pain-B-Gone. In tests, Pain-B-Gone alleviated all pain associated with headaches and migraine within thirty seconds. That's right - just two tablets and you can kiss that pain goodbye. Possible side effects include dizziness, nausea, temporary loss of vision, paralysis, stroke and heart failure. Do not take Pain-B-Gone if you are under weight, over weight, the correct weight, pregnant, fragrant, stagnant, using other medication, not using other medication, black, white or any other colour, a man or a woman, or if there is any history of any sort of illness - such as the common cold - in your family. If in doubt, don't buy."

Well, Gee thanks. Give me a shed load right now and dig me an early grave, my good man.

But it doesn't stop there. Things are routinely advertised here that wouldn't even get past the censor at home. My personal favourite at the moment is an advert in which several beautiful ladies explain to the general public via the magic of Television that they have Genital Herpes and that they have to take five tablets five times a day of Herpes-B-Gone otherwise nobody wants to sleep with them. The product being advertised by the way, and the more astute of you may have noticed that I've changed the name, is sold in Britain as a cold-sore cream. Exactly the same product, totally different application. Now, here's where it gets really strange. At this point a doctor appears on screen and proceeds to trash the well known product, explaining to the women that he knows about another one which can do the same job in just one application although the side effects may include genitals that glow in the dark or a slow and painful death. Or I may have made that last bit up. The screen fades to black with one of our heroines skipping away down the street, arm in arm with her boyfriend - presumably the bloke who caused the problem in the first place. American television is really quite wonderfully strange.

(1) Ok, you're dying to know what a rain check is, aren't you? I can tell. Everybody and their dog seems to know that when somebody takes a rain check, they are either politely declining an invitation or asking you to put something off until later - but very few people outside the United States know where the expression comes from. So I looked it up for you - aren't I nice?

Apparently, a rain check is a replacement ticket given to spectators of a baseball game if the game has started but is then abandoned, allowing them to return for the rematch. The word "check", in this case, refers to the American usage of the word - a ticket, receipt or bill of some kind. A replacement ticket, or check, is being issued because the game was rained off, hence you're being given "a rain check"

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.