Along the way today, we've been surrounded by nothing but mountains topped with snow, turquoise lakes stretching off to the horizon and hillsides covered in forests almost from the moment we set out - but the highlight for me has been the animals of Yellowstone. First thing this morning, our guide gave us a long lecture, I supposed half-heartedly, on what to do if we should be attacked by a bear while in the park, and then went on to say that our chances of actua...

Our tour ended at the Mormon Tabernacle, home of the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir, who obviously hadn't planned for our arrival as they let us down rather badly by not performing while we were there. Still, you can't have everything. The building is certainly impressive, being a domed structure 250 feet long and 80 feet high - but I decided not to mention St Paul's Cathedral as our guides were clearly very excited about the whole thing and under the impression ...

Well, Salt Lake City is one of the places I've been looking forward to visiting for a while, although most of yesterday was spent on the road actually getting here and I didn't even see the outskirts of town until something like three in the afternoon. This is the famous city of the Mormons, and my father has been telling me for some time how beautiful it is ever since he came here himself on one of his trips to the United States, so I was obviously going to be q...

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Arches National Park is probably not the most originally named park in the whole of America, with the possible exception of Nothing To See Here National Park, Alaska. It is, however, accurate. It's a national park, and it's full of arches, so I really don't think you're likely to be taking anybody to court for fraud on this one. If you turned up at Arches National Park to find it full of spires, mesas or sixty foot ...

If you cast your mind back, you may remember me enthusing recently about a place called Montezuma Castle down in Arizona. You may also remember that one of the few things I was disappointed with was the fact that visitors are no longer allowed to climb the rickety collection of ladders which lead up to the ancient Sinagua village embedded in the cliff face, due to the fact that previous generations of tourists have not only eroded away much of the priceless histo...