In 2010 I took a road trip with my family in America. We drove the ‘Golden Circle’ – a route which goes in a loop around the Grand Canyon visiting some famous National Parks in Nevada, Arizona and Utah. In total I drove around 3000km in about two weeks.
After a few days in San Francisco we flew to Las Vegas and picked up our rental car. As it was late at night we just drove to a hotel that day. The next day we left Vegas and drove to Zion National Park. It was November and some of the trees still had their red and yellow leaves. It was maybe the most beautiful place I had ever been to. American National Parks are usually very big so you need a car to visit them. We drove for about two hours inside Zion National Park to get to some of the best sightseeing spots, but we probably only saw about 10% of the park!
The next day we continued to Bryce National Park. This park is famous for its unusual rock formations, called ‘hoodoos’. After a few hours enjoying the views we left and drove along Route 12 heading east. This road is nice and quiet and runs along the north side of the Grand Canyon. Sometimes we drove for an hour without seeing another car! The views were amazing the whole time we were driving. Just endless emptiness on both sides of the road, with a few small towns or farms here and there. We often stopped to take photos along the way, including of some petroglyphs carved by Native Americans hundreds of years ago.
After visiting Escalante National Monument and Capitol Reef National Park we continued to Torrey, where we had booked a hotel. Unfortunately it began to snow quite hard when we were about 50km from the hotel. I wasn’t expecting snow in November and my rental car was small and didn’t have snow tyres. It took about two hours to get to Torrey! And when we arrived, the hotel was completely dark – no lights in any rooms. We drove into the car park and I noticed a flashlight in the reception area. A receptionist was waiting for us. The hotel had actually shut as soon as the snow started because they didn’t have heating at that time of year. The staff said they had phoned all the other customers but I didn’t have a phone so they couldn’t contact me and had to wait for us to arrive. Luckily, they had called another hotel and arranged for us to stay there instead.
The next morning we headed towards Moab and Arches National Park. The views as we drove in the morning were amazing because there was snow everywhere. In the afternoon we arrived in Moab and visited Arches National Park the next day. The scenery is amazing there! Hundreds of natural arch rock formations.
After that was another six hours of driving to get to Monument Valley. The road leading to the famous ‘monuments’ was so straight – I think I drove about one hour without ever moving the steering wheel! In Monument Valley we stayed in a hotel run by the Navajo, which had amazing views of the rock formations. It wasn’t cheap, but the view from the bedroom window was stunning!
The next day we headed to Page. Just outside Page is Antelope Canyon – a famous and really beautiful slot canyon. If you can time it well, you can visit when the sunlight comes through the slot canyon in a shaft which hits the canyon floor. It’s unbelievable to see!
The next day we passed Horseshoe Bend – a famous horseshoe-shaped bend in the Colorado River before the Grand Canyon – and drove south towards the east end of the Grand Canyon. We stopped off at an area famous for dinosaur footprints – there were thousands of footprints from all sorts of dinosaurs! Finally, we reached the South Grand Canyon visitor center. Many people say it is the most amazing thing they have ever seen. But for us, after already seeing Zion, Bryce, Arches and Monument Valley, and then driving for an hour along the Grand Canyon, it was a little disappointing. If you arrive on a tour and go through the main building and suddenly see the canyon for the first time, it is far more exciting.
The next day we drove along the famous Route 66 back towards Las Vegas. We crossed the Hoover Dam and arrived in Vegas in the evening.
After a few days in Las Vegas enjoying the sights (no gambling because my son was only four) we drove to Death Valley for a daytrip. It was still really hot, even in November, but it was fantastic to see the rocks that slowly move across the valley floor and some old ghost towns.
It was the longest I had ever driven on one trip, and every single day was just full of amazing scenery and beautiful views. We could have taken thousands more photos and spent far longer at each National Park, but we only had three weeks so we missed a lot. We could have spent three or four days in Zion National Park, or in Arches National Park, just hiking around the easy trails! The only part I didn’t like was driving into and out of Las Vegas – the highways are very wide and busy and I was worried about missing my exit and getting stuck going the wrong way!
But this wasn’t the biggest road trip I have done. A few years later we went to America again and went even on an even bigger loop…