After leaving Las Vegas we basically headed to San Diego which was very cool especially the zoo where I saw my first live Giant Panda - I could have sat there watching them all day!!! After this came the low lights of the trip (with the exception of Santa Barbara which was cool) as we moved up the coast to San Francisco. In Los Angles experienced the crappy traffic and smog on entry. Went to Hollywood which was crowded with people swooning over the board...

We've been in the Grand Canyon for two days now and the only thing that I can say is that it deserves every accolade that it gets. However because of its grandeur it does attract hordes of tourists (many of them on massive tour buses with matching tracksuits and badges, following tour leaders with little signs). Nic and I had an experience that I think typifies the 'big tour bus' mentality. We'd taken Andrus up on his offer to go and see the sunrise. Getti...

The road to Monument Valley has one very cool location on it. The scene from Forrest Gump where he is running into the distance with through the desert was filmed there. Our bus got parked on the cleared ground that housed the movie crews and then we all took photos and videos of us doing the Forrest run at the same time dodging the oncoming traffic from both directions. Monument Valley was amazing. Touring around with a Navajo guide we not only got to see...

Been pretty busy seeing and doing things for the last week. Nothing superblogable so I'm just putting a quick summary in now of the places visited. Canyonlands National Park - we stayed in an area with a rocky formation which was very conjucive to scrambling and climbing. Sat on the rocks and watched a storm - played around with group photos - the video of which I must get and post on Facebook. Got up early and went and sat on the top of the rocks and...

People who know me well and some who don't know me so well will know that I have a very low tolerance threshold for stupidity. I'd just like to recount a tale of abject stupidity that I was privy to on Friday morning, it involved the fearless DJ Q. I came down with the flu on Thursday night so I opted out of Friday morning's early hike (which from all accounts involved some awesome scrambling :(). Being sick I wouldn't have had much fun out in the heat....