(click to enlarge each photo)
Link to more photos.
We went on this tour. After a night in Phoenix, we traveled to
- Sedona, Arizona
- Grand Canyon National Park
- Monument Valley
- Lake Powell (Glen Canyon National Recreational Area)
- Bryce Canyon National Park
- Zion National Park
It was very good. The weather was mostly hot, as expected, but not overly so. We had a bit of rain at Bryce and Zion.
We had time after lunch in Sedona to walk around. It's a pleasant town, but it's impossible to avoid all the nonsense there:
I had been to the Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion as a kid, but not since. We had time to hike a bit at most places. At Grand Canyon, we went a short ways down into the canyon. (Victor went twice as far down as I did.) Here I'm looking up at the canyon wall, and you can see the trail:
At Lake Powell, I would have traded the boat ride for a chance to visit slot canyons and Rainbow Bridge.
At Zion, Victor tried the bison meatloaf:
It was a large double serving. Victor enjoyed it. I ate a bison burger on Catalina Island years ago, and I had a bite of Victor's meatloaf.
On this trip, we saw loads of amazing geology, but very little wildlife — deer several times and elk twice. These deer are in front of Zion Lodge:
The tour ended at the Las Vegas airport. I scheduled our departure later in the day, hoping to show Victor a bit of Vegas. We did see the Strip and we went to the Bellagio, but the timing wasn't right for the water show there, and the buffet was much more expensive than I remembered, so we didn't do that, either.