From Grand Junction we were headed towards The Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks. This leg of the road trip took us through Arches National Park and a few other towns with great hosts as usual. Arches National Park was a good, fun day of looking at rock formations and at the end of the day we were treated with a spectacular lightning storm in the distance. Lightning storms are a daily occurrence in Utah but this one was even more extreme than usual. When we ...

We arrived at our host's house, Jason, in Grand Junction late in the evening on a Friday night to find he was in the middle of a Friday night drinks session with a group of his colleagues from the hospital. There was nothing for it, we pulled out our backup beer and wine and joined in the fun. We were very quickly convinced by Jason and his friends that we needed to stay an extra night and explore some of Grand Junction itself before moving on. The deal was seale...

From Alamosa we made our way up to Denver via Florissant National Monument, where we saw some fairly uninteresting fossilised trees, and Colorado Springs home of the very popular rock formation, Garden of the Gods. Our couch surfing host, Joey, put us up in his "man cave" and was barely around while we were there. The first time we actually met him was when he came home late at night, after a few drinks and being heavily rained on at a concert. We were woken by ...

We had to see The Grand Canyon and then made our way to Denver via Cortez, CO and Alamosa, CO. We found The Grand Canyon to be aptly titled and decided to spend our day in the park hiking down into the canyon on the south rim side to Horse Shoe Mesa. Despite the abundance of safety warnings, we still managed to start our hike without half the equipment suggested, most importantly - enough water. The day was another blazer and the big problem with hiking into a ...

After spending some time in Joshua Tree National Park our next big destination was the Grand Canyon. In order to get there we made a stop in Phoenix for a night, spent a day walking through Red Rock Country and chilled out in the tiny little town of Jerome. We ended up passing through Phoenix very quickly, arriving fairly late at night and leaving again at the crack of dawn the next morning. None the less, we had a great time staying with Lori, a proud mother, s...