Napa Valley, California, USA

Early yesterday evening we arrived in Napa just north of San Francisco after a long drive from Winnemucca that took us past Sparks, Carson City and Reno, then into California and through Sacramento to Napa. The countryside changed abruptly as we passed the Nevada/California state border and climbed the Sierra Nevada Range. Desert was replaced with green fields, and small dry bushes with spruce and pine trees.

We spent today visiting wineries in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys and sampling their fare. This area is very beautiful and currently bathed in late autumn colours. One downside is the very heavy traffic that weaves through the valley. All the autumn colour must have made me a bit tipsy, so after our picnic lunch of San Franciscan salami, cheese, sourdough bread and grilled capsicum that we had purchased at one of the wineries, we put the seats back and had a long deep sleep in the car, not waking to 4pm. Not much driving was done that afternoon.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

“From the crossroads of the west in Salt Lake City, in the Tabernacle in Temple Square, we welcome you to a program of inspirational music and spoken word.”  So began weekly broadcast No. 4,077 of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at 9.30am this morning.

We spent yesterday walking around the centre of Salt Lake, a city about the size of Adelaide and with a definite Adelaide-feel about it. Flat, green, well laid out with conservative architecture and not crowded. In the city centre we came upon Temple Square, the world-headquarters of the Mormon church, so we decided to have a look around. Mormons put a big focus on researching one’s family history and they have a large bank of computers and genealogical materials available for use by visitors free of charge. A display poster in the family research centre made the point that if you go back far enough you may be surprised at whom you are related to, albeit distantly. For example, the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith was an eighth cousin several times removed to George Bush, and an 18th cousin to the Queen of England!

At Temple Square we also learned that the world-famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcasts weekly on Sundays at 9.30am from the Tabernacle. More than 2,000 radio and TV stations worldwide take the broadcast, and visitors are welcome to attend the performance. And so it was that at 9.30am this morning we were seated in the Tabernacle to hear the same warm welcome and introduction that has been given at all previous 4,076 broadcasts, making this the world’s longest continuing network broadcast. The 360 choir members are all unpaid volunteers and there is a limit of 20 years’ choir membership to facilitate renewal of the choir over time.

This morning’s performance was impressive and certainly displayed the polish that comes from having done it 4,076 time before!! At the end, the choir and the 12 of its members who were to retire this very morning received a standing ovation from the capacity Tabernacle audience. The choir’s music has received many awards, including a Grammy for its 1959 rendition of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, and the Choir has performed at the inauguration of five US presidents. The Tabernacle organ has 11,600 pipes and the large golden pipes in the centre of the attached photograph are 31 feet high and made not of gold but of Utah Pine.

We left Salt Lake immediately after the performance to begin our long journey back across the Nevada desert to California. We left feeling very favourable towards Salt Lake and to the Mormons we had met at Temple Square. They were friendly, welcoming, polite people, not pushy. We made good progress in the afternoon, past the vast salt lake and on into Nevada where we've stopped for the night at the town of Winnemucca just off Interstate Highway 80.

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Moab to Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

From Moab we headed north towards our destination of Salt Lake City, Utah’s capital, stopping on the way for lunch at the pleasant town of Price. We arrived in Salt Lake City late in the afternoon, surprised at how fast and hazardous the traffic was in the approach to the city. Although the Salt Lake City environs has only two million people, it has a busy freeway system that in places is as fast and furious as that in Los Angeles. The truck drivers are much too complacent, and unnecessary chain collisions must occur when there are vehicle accidents. It had been a risky few hours’ drive, and we were relieved to park the Pontiac and check into a motel in downtown Salt Lake City. Time for a day’s break.

Arches National Park, near Moab, Utah, USA

We checked out of the Apache with the intention of visiting the Arches National Park for a couple of hours, then heading for Salt Lake City. But Arches was so different and interesting in its own way that we spent the whole day there. This Park’s unique geology has led to the formation of many, you guessed it, rock arches. Each is different, and many are elegant. Delicate Arch is beautiful and appears on almost every promotional document for the Park.

After picnic lunch at Devil's Garden, we hiked to Delicate Arch, arriving about an hour before sunset, the best time to photograph it. A crowd had gathered on the rim of the amphitheatre overlooking the Arch to see it light up as the sun touched the horizon, and cameras clicked from all directions. It was a long walk back to the trail-head in the moonlight and it was after 7.30pm when we left the Park.  Being too late to travel on, we returned to Moab and checked back into the Apache.

Dead Horse Point State Park, and Canyonlands National Park, Utah, USA

Both of these great parks are close to Moab.  In the 1800’s, Dead Horse Point was used by cowboys as a corral for rounding up wild mustangs that roamed the area.  The horses were herded across the narrow neck of land only 30 metres wide onto the point.  The neck was then fenced off, and the horses sorted.  Legend has it that on one occasion, for some unknown reason, the rejected horses were left trapped on the point, and many died of thirst, in view of the Colorado River 2,000 feet below. Hence the name Dead Horse Point State Park.

The view from Dead Horse Point is as dramatic a view as anyone could ever see.  The Colorado River goosenecks at the base of the deep canyon it has cut over the eons, and all around are other twisted canyons and escarpments.  The Colorado has been a busy river. Much further downstream, it has been responsible for the creation of the Grand Canyon, as well as countless others.

We then moved on to see the northern part of Canyonlands National Park, and after a picnic lunch at Grand View, we hiked to Grand View Point, Upheaval Dome and Mesa Arch.  This Park is at the heart of the Colorado plateau and presents a tortured landscape of hundreds of canyons, mesas, buttes and spires.

Canyonlands National Park to Moab, Utah, USA

We checked out of the very nice Hat Rock Inn in Mexican Hat and headed north, turning west at Monticello to see the southern region of the Canyonlands National Park. This park is very rugged with dramatic canyons and soaring escarpments at every turn. We had our picnic lunch in the park, then after a short hike we continued north to the picturesque town of Moab, our base for the next three nights. Moab prospered in the 70’s Uranium boom, and is now big in adventure tourism. We booked into the Apache Motel where we were greeted in the office by John Wayne memorabilia. We learned from the affable manager that Moab was once the centre of western movie production and that John Wayne had stayed at the Apache when he was filming on location, anywhere between Moab and Monument Valley.

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Arizona, USA

We toured through Monument Valley, admiring the spectacular red sandstone pillars and pinnacles standing in the desert.  Just like monuments as the name of the place suggests. The area has been settled and used for herding for generations by the Navajo Indian people, and the valley is only a small portion of the 16 million acre Navajo Reservation, home to 300,000 Navajo people.

Monument Valley was the setting for many western movies, beginning in 1938 with Stagecoach and Fort Apache, and followed by many other TV shows and commercials. A fantastic place.

Bryce Canyon to Mexican Hat, Utah, USA

We were back at the Bryce Canyon rim at 6.30am ready to take some sunrise photos. Then it was time to check out of the motel and hit the road again, this time heading for Monument Valley in south-east Utah. We drove through the small towns of Tropic and Boulder, stopping in Torrey for lunch where we also stocked up on supplies at the Chuck Wagon General Store. The section between Boulder and Torrey took us through Dixie National Forest, high country with beautiful stands of birch, pine and spruce. We passed several hunters walking along the edge of the road with rifles slung over their shoulders. Lee Tuan remarked that hunters must have good eyesight; I replied that I certainly hoped they did. Later though, I read in the newspaper that a hunter elsewhere had been shot and killed when his companion's rifle trigger had become "snagged in a bush".

After lunch in Torrey’s town park we drove on, passing by Capitol Reef National Park and through Hanksville and Fry Canyon, finally arriving in Mexican Hat just on sunset. It was a fascinating drive that took us through several very different canyon and escarpment environments, some that did not seem to belong on Earth but were more Mars or Moon-like in appearance.

Mexican Hat is just inside Utah’s southern border with Arizona and about 35 km north of Monument Valley, tomorrow’s planned destination. Monument Valley is on land owned by the Navajo Indian Nation, and was the setting for many of the western movies that were once so popular. The motel we are staying in tonight has westerns as one of its featured TV channels. Being in cowboy-lore country, I was looking forward to seeing a re-run. But all that channel delivered was snow. Other channels, however, delivered various forms of much more realistic and chilling violence, like the actual courtroom footage of the young man convicted of having his mother and brother killed in an attempt to cash in on insurance, and another program that glorified the knock-down power of the latest machine gun. A serving of John Wayne would have been more palatable.

Bryce Canyon, Utah, USA

Bryce Canyon in south west Utah is the product of millions of years of erosion of uplifted sediments originally formed when the area was covered by the sea about 150 million years ago. The result today is a fantastic display of brightly coloured pink, orange and white hoodoos (thin rock pillars). This landform, more an eroding plateau than a canyon, is much smaller than the Grand Canyon, more on a human scale, and there are several fabulous hikes below the rim amongst the spires and hoodoos.

The area was originally settled by the indigenous Paiute people, but they were displaced by Mormon settlers in the mid 1800s. The canyon takes its name from one of these settlers, Ebenezer Bryce, whose property was nearby.

We admired the view from each of the lookouts in the park, then did a 12km hike down into the canyon, taking in the Queen’s Garden, Navajo and Peek-a-Boo Trails. It was an awesome, other-worldly walk, and it had just turned dark when we made it back up to the rim. We think Bryce Canyon is more beautiful than its bigger cousin the Grand Canyon, and is a must-see destination if you're in the area. It's possibly the most stunning natural sight we've ever seen.

Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah, USA

Next destination after Zion was Bryce Canyon, but on the way we took a short detour to see the Cedar Breaks National Monument.

The Pontiac climbed to 10,000 feet and the temperature dropped from 18 to 3 C within 30 minutes. Cedar Breaks monument is a landform resulting from the erosion of an ancient lake bed. The erosion has revealed a spectacular display of differently coloured sediment layers, and pillars, caves and arches. Nearby is a stand of ancient bristle cone trees. This species is the longest living thing on earth, with some bristle cones living to over 3,000 years! The area around Cedar Breaks is a snow-skiing area in winter, and we passed many ski cabins, but currently there is no snow – the fields are all late autumn gold.

We continued on to Bryce Canyon and booked into a motel just out of the park, ready to make an early start tomorrow.

To Zion National Park, Utah, USA

From the Grand Canyon we came to Zion national park in south-west Utah via Desert View, Cameron, Gray Mountain, and Page on the shore of Lake Powell. On the way we stopped for an enjoyable few hours at Tuba City where there was a large Navajo Indian Nation fair this weekend. The food was great and the people friendly. Further along the road not far from Kanab we stopped briefly at the ghost town of Pareah to see the old Paria movie set. This region was used to film several westerns including a few episodes of Gunsmoke. Paria is set within an intensely multi-coloured sandstone canyon, well worth seeing. http://www.kanabguide.com/articleDetails.cfm?recordID=16

Zion national park http://www.nps.gov/zion/ is a very beautiful place with a spectacular canyon cut by the Virgin River the main focus of tourist interest. The area was first settled thousands of years ago by indigenous Americans and the first European settlers were Mormons who came in the 1800s. Most of the peaks and other sights, and the park itself, bear religious names given by the Mormon settlers.

Maple, box elder, pine and cottonwood trees grow in the park, and amongst these live mule deer, bighorn sheep, wild turkeys and the occasional cougar. We saw deer but not the others.

We visited the sights of Zion, and went on several hikes including to the Emerald Pools, the Three Patriarchs and to the peak of Angel’s Landing. The latter hike contains sections only a few feet across with cliffs on both sides and a chain along the top to assist the hikers to stay on the path and to haul themselves up the rock. An exciting and satisfying afternoon.

We spent three nights in Zion and left with the opinion that it tops Yosemite, the park that is touted by some as the best in the USA.

Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA

The Grand Canyon. Vast and majestic. Like most of the hordes of fellow visitors, we viewed the canyon from many of the rim lookouts, and also went on a four-hour dawn hike down into the canyon on Kaibab Trail to see it from a different perspective. Words are inadequate to describe this place; it’s in a class of its own.