To the Grand Canyon

We headed towards the canyon, entering Arizona. We made it to Flagstaff, a town high up in the hills. Pretty cool place, but I was denied a drink anywhere I went because I wasn't carrying my passport! Guess I should keep it on me...

It rained for a few days, so we hung out in town, getting organised for the next leg of the journey. While waiting for the weather to clear, we did a quick trip to Walnut Canyon where there are ancient houses built into the cliffside.

Then on to the Canyon. We were planning to do a hike all the way down into it this weekend, but in the end we don't really have time... So we came out here this morning for sunrise, and have just done a shorter walk down into the big hole. It was still rather strenuous!

The canyon is beautiful. It's hard to comprehend something so big! Taking photos of it seems to do an injustice. I've decided that the best was to observe it is to just look at one rock face in particular and try to notice its detail, rather than attempting to take in everything!

Here's me having a good look down into the crevasse....

Into Nevada

Next destination was the Valley of Fire. A little far to get to in one day, so we stopped in Las Vegas for a night on the way. I was pretty interested to find out what that city was actually like, I didn't expect to really love it and I guess I was right. All very glitzy and glamorous, but I was in desert-camping mode.
We put down $10 on black, the minimum bet. We lost it, put down another $10 and lost that too. $20 down in a space of 2 minutes, and that was that for gambling.

We left Vegas early the next day to explore some mountains we'd seen on the way into town. Rainbow Mountain Wilderness, what a name! We walked around for quite a few hours, through desert and gullies to reach the base of the crazy cliff faces. We even saw a coyote!!

That after, we headed north to the Valley of Fire. And what an incredible place it is!!
Huge lumps of red rock protruding out of the desert floor, all rounded, twisted and full of holes. The rocks were perfect for climbing, rough like sandpaper, and home to all sorts of little creatures.
Our campsite was right in amongst it all.

This was the view from our tent!

It's hard to accurately portray the scale of these majestic landscapes in the desert... Just bear in mind that everything is HUGE.