We woke up early to pack up the bus then we drove the short distance to Monument Valley where we went on a jeep tour round some of the monuments. Our tour guides were two of the natives who live there and they were brilliant; they stopped at all of the main viewpoints and explained what the different monuments represented in their culture. The hjghlight of the tour was when we stopped at a big natural dome in the rocks with a hole in thetop called the 'sun's eye'...

Today we began with a trip back to the town of Moab for people to pick up some supplies. We headed straight to the state liquor store for some stronger beers for tonight (supermarkets can only sell beer upto 4% strength) to find that it didn't open til 11am , so we sat on the path outside and waited..we must have looked like tramps! After leaving Moab we drove to a swim spot in a reservoir (can't remember the name!). Was really good to cool off (the water was fre...

We woke up in our 'cave' as the bus pulled into Arches National Park. We made a quick breakfast at the side of the road and experienced our first 'pit' toilet (first of many) - nice! After breakfast we drove on to the entrance to the Arches trail which we were doing that morning. This was another amazing place and we saw some amazing arches. It was nice to walk so early in the morning before it got too hot and before too many people were about. We saw a lot of t...

After a surprisingly good nights sleep out under the stars we were awoken to the sound of breakfast being prepared. It was a strange experience sleeping outside, in the middle of the night I woke up as there was a bright light shining in my face - turns out it was the moon! I've never seen the moon that big or bright before! We got changed in our sleeping bags (!) and then chatted to a few more people over breakfast. After packing up the bus we made our way to Br...

We had an early start today - picked up by the Green Tortoise bus at 7am, both still suffering from our bonus night out in Vegas! We slept all the way to Zion where we transferred onto another bus, our home for the next week on the Canyons of the West tour. We weren't really in the mood for a day of hiking but we managed to make the most of our day in the park We took the free shuttle bus to the end of the line and did one of the trails marked 'Easy' on the map ...