Well, we are on our way home. We had a great trip but now it is time to head east. This will be my last entry for the trip. We mainly just drove all day though we did stop at Petrified Forest National Park for lunch. We didn't see much of the park but did see a bit more of the Painted Desert that was more in keeping with what I expected. ( see cover photo) To think back over the whole trip, I must say the Grand Canyon was probably the most impressive stop. ...

Friday we said goodbye to Utah and headed for the Grand Canyon. Our drive took us through the Painted Desert which was very unimpressive, I expected some colors For the last half of the drive there were Navaho Indian stands selling jewelry every few hundred yards. None of them can make any money at it. At our lunch stop we bought some roasted piñon nuts from a local. They were sort of smokey and very crunchy, not at all like the pine nuts we buy at the stor...

Tuesday was a short day. We took the opportunity to drive to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Most visitors never get to this side of the canyon. Since I haven't yet seen the more popular side, I don't have a basis for comparison though this side was pretty spectacular. We were at Point Imperial, the highest point anywhere at the canyon at 8800 feet. It was seven miles across to the Colorado River. That is seven horizontal miles, no vertical component. ...

Today was our day at Zion. We got a fairly early start because we heard about the potential crowds. We arrived at the parking area a little before ten and there were already very few parking spots. We were prepared to be underwhelmed by the scenery after everything else we've seen but we were wrong. This was completely different! We didn't try to take a lot of pictures of the cliffs and mountainsides but trust me, they were impressive. Another difference wa...

We learned our lesson from yesterday so today we started out earlier to hike up an 860 cliff. Now this hike was rated easy to moderate with a few strenuous parts. Hah!!! At times it felt like we were going straight up the 800 feet over huge boulders on a narrow trail where one mis-step would send you tumbling over the edge. With that said, it was a pretty climb and the view from the top was pretty amazing, of course then we had to go down over those same bould...