After our last night in Vegas we managed to get up at a decent time of day, still in the morning, and got ourselves checked out of the hostel before sitting down to check out the internet and make some plans.

Originally our plan had been to head east to Flagstaff in Arizona before seeing the south rim of the Grand Canyon. However, after chatting to Mike, a guy we met in the hostel who had been good enough to lend me his hair clippers, we changed our plans to head north to Zion National Park in Utah. Originally we hadn't thought we'd had time to make it there but after Mike's recommendations and some investigation of routes on Google Maps, we decided we'd have enough time, so planned out a route.

With our plans made, we said goodbye to everyone in the hostel and headed off. Our first stop was a few miles west of Vegas, Red Rock Canyon. We drove out to the canyon and managed to get onto the Scenic Drive road which looped around the canyon using our 'America the Beautiful' park pass which we had originally picked up in Olympic National Park and had been well worth the money.

We drove along the 13 mile scenic route, which skirted the huge hills of amazing red and orange rock formations created from ancient sand dunes, stopping to take some photos, before getting back on the highway and making our way to Interstate 15. We took the interstate north, along the long, straight roads through the Nevada desert, always surrounded by mountains in the distance.

Eventually the scenery began to change as we passed through a rocky canyon, with the landscape on all sides taking on many of the characteristics of the Red Rock Canyon we had visited earlier. Tall buttes and mesas of layered red-orange sandstone with perfectly flat tops surrounded us, straight cliffs rising up from their sloping bases, formed from scree.

I had never seen a landscape like it other than in books or in films so it was amazing driving through the scrubland between these awesome formations. Eventually we reached our destination, the small town of Hurricane, Utah where we planned to spend the night before heading to Zion in the morning.

We got checked into our motel room before heading out for an excellent mexican meal at a place recommended by Mike in Vegas. I tried my first horchata, a milky drink made from ground up rice or nuts with cinnamon and vanilla, which was far more delicious than it sounds. After our meal, we walked back to the motel and had a relaxing evening with more late-night talk shows, interspersed with news of the devastating tornado which had flattened the town of Joplin, Missouri the previous day.

The next morning we got up around 8, having lost an hour by changing from Pacific to Mountain time when we crossed into Utah. We grabbed breakfast at the motel and headed off for Zion, about 25 miles up the road. The scenery on the way was the same as we had seen so far in Utah, with tall flat-sided and -topped mesas forming the landscape around us.

As we neared Zion, the rock formations around us became taller and taller until we were surrounded by towering red and orange mountains dotted with greenery growing on ledges all the way up their sides and on their often flat tops. We reached the entrance to the actual national park and left the car by the visitor centre before catching the free shuttle bus which travels along the scenic road which runs all the way up Zion Canyon.

We took the bus to the furthest stop, where the road ends at the top of the canyon. Along the road, which follows the small but turbulent Virgin River up the canyon, we were surrounded by the towering sandstone walls on all sides, taller and taller all the way up the canyon, often with hanging valleys breaking up their flat tops with small waterfalls pouring down. It was incredible scenery, on the same epic scale as that of Yosemite but with a completely different feel.

Once we got off the bus at the top of the canyon we took the riverside walk, which follows the Virgin River a further mile through the steep canyon, providing incredible views around every bend. At the end of the paved path, some steps led down into the fast-flowing Virgin River. This is the point where the trail enters 'The Narrows', where the canyon walls close in and often overhang. Unfortunately, following some heavy rain, the river was running quite high and so the Narrows were closed for safety reasons as the path was completely submerged. Even at the best of times, the path is in danger of flash flooding as water rushes down the narrow canyon, as evidenced by warning signs posted around the entrance to the trail. Along the walk, the bright hot sunshine of the morning was obscured by cloud which soon provided a good shower of rain, slightly reducing the awesome appearance of the canyon around us.

Nevertheless, after walking back down the riverside path, we took the bus down the canyon to Weeping Rock, where a stream pours down constantly over one rocky face, resulting in a lush little valley alongside the stream as it flows down to meet the river.

Our next stop on the bus was the Zion Lodge where we grabbed some lunch in the by-then pouring rain, before setting off on the trail to the Emerald Pools, a series of pools named for green algae which grow in them, formed at the base of waterfalls in a series of steps down a canyon off to the side of the main canyon. The smooth paved path we initially took, along the river then curving to climb up into the canyon, led us to the lower pool, where small waterfalls dropped from high over our heads into a small shallow pool in a large, smoothly rounded out hollow in the giant canyons.

By the time we reached the lower pool the sun had once again broken through the clouds. In the hot sunshine, we continued from there along the steeper and rougher path which looped round to the middle pools, at the point where the water dropped over into the lower pools. Next, we took the even steeper and rockier path up the hillside to the upper pool, where a small waterfall poured from hundreds of feet above over the main canyon wall to splash on the rocks down at our level.

We spent some time at the upper Emerald Pool in the cool shade of the towering cliffs, before making our way back down to the middle pool, watching the progress of some rock climbers high above. We then took another path which wound along the side of the canyon a hundred or so feet above the river, which provided incredible views up and down the length of the canyon, with various giant sandstone faces jutting out at intervals far into the distance, and tall green cottonwood trees filling the canyon floor around the winding Virgin River.

After making our way back to the road, we caught the shuttle bus again and got off for one more photo opportunity at the Court of the Patriarchs, a point which overlooked three massive jutting peaks of sandstone on the opposite side of the valley, named by early Mormon explorers for the three Old Testament figures Jacob, Abraham and Isaac. After taking a few snaps of the huge cliffs we got back on the bus for our final journey back to the visitor centre, before driving back to Hurricane, where we had booked another night in our motel.

Back at the motel, we made some of our remaining camping food in the microwave for dinner to save some money, before watching some more american late-night talk shows, which we were becoming worryingly attached to.