Phew, its finally hot here, and we're having a day off after a huge walk yesterday to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. This is a 17 mile walk normally, and in the summer they have cables on posts with steps to help you up the last few hundred nearly vertical feet to the top, 4,800ft above the valley floor. However, it not being 'summer' yet they just have the cables hanging down the cliff face. Its the kind of thing where you get there and think...

Canyons, canyons everywhere... They tell you not to do all the South Western National Parks in one go, and we began to see why as the canyon overload kicked in at about here. These are amazing landscapes, huge, picturesque, wild, and also fairly similar. Having said that they were all that bit different - bryce canyon with its intricate wind carved hoodoos, Canyonlands had, well huge canyons to the horizon, Capital Reef has rocks that stick up in th...

Its Yellowstone - hold on to your pikanik baskets Boo boo. Well we looked pretty hard, we even took an evening hike through the woodlands in neighbouring Grand Teton National park but we didn't see any bears at all, not even a measly little black bear. Still there's much much more to Yellowstone than old Yogi - geysers, waterfalls (more) canyons, frozen lakes, bubbling mudpots, bison/buffalo, elks, rain, cloud, beaver type things,and hot thermal springs. W...

Welcome to ZION... Its another canyon, sure , but a whole world away from GC - small, steep, red and green, not snowing... We decide to go for the best views in town by climbing Angels Landing a precarious route to the top of a rocky outcrop at a bend in the river. Not helped by the force ten gale that was blowing, but we don't let that kind of hazard get in our way! Worth every step, even those when we were crawling on hands and knees (mostly Louise i...

WOW!! We just hiked the Grand Canyon! Going down pretty easy - we set off at about 9, stopped loads to take in the views - they change every time you look. Still made it to the bottom for lunch. EASY! Even managed to find a bar down there, and sipped red wine under the stars. The way back up was somewhat more taxing... 10 miles and 5,000ft up. We were a little bit tired by the top, but still made it in just over 5 hours. A great experience that...