Phoenix Desert Botanical Gardens
The desert may seem like the last place you’d expect to find beautiful flowers and flora. The main reason we came to Phoenix was to visit their world famous Desert Botanical Gardens. It’s home to thousands of species of cacti, trees and flowers from all around the world but it specialises in local desert species […]
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Five Different Worlds On The Way To Phoenix
Over our rather long drive from Gallup to Phoenix, we passed through five quite distinct surroundings. An early start got us on our way on this 455 kilometre day (one of our long ones on this trip). It was cold when we left. The minimum overnight temperature (just before dawn) had fallen to -8C and […]
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Culture and History along Route 66
We left our very nice hotel in Santa Fe (La Fonda on the Plaza) to head west early after breakfast. It was a sunny morning and the temperature was -1C. It took a little over an hour to get to Albuquerque. ( have awful trouble spelling that name!) It’s not the capital of New Mexico, […]
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Our Scenic Drive to Taos
Today, we had the idea of doing a scenic drive to the town of Taos, a little north of Santa Fe but it turned into a bit of a flop. Taos is the home to a World Heritage Pueblo community. We knew that the community was closed to visitors today, but we thought that we would […]
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Santa Fe
We are staying at the La Fonda on the Plaza Hotel right in the centre of Old Santa Fe. I thought it might have been named after the actor Henry la Fonda but the word ‘fonda’ in Spanish simply means an ‘inn’ The site of this hotel has been the location of various inns since […]
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Driving to Santa Fe
Today was just a driving day to get to Santa Fe in new Mexico where we have more things to see. We drive about 300 kms which took us about seven hours including our many stops. It had snowed overnight and everything was dusted with a light cover of snow. It was a bit thicker […]
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Mesa Verde National Park
Today, compared to our previous days, was just a relatively awesome day. We had far less stunning scenery, however, it was an exceedingly interesting day. We were on the road by 9.30 am and well into our usual travel plan. It seems that we spend the mornings getting to our next destination and arriving in […]
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A Day in Monument Valley
Today’s drive was to one off the most outstandingly scenic places in Western America – Monument Valley. It’s just a hop step and a jump across the border into Arizona and on Navajo tribal land. Most of our trip was across a large plateau with occasional small mesas and buttes rising from the landscape. We […]
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Moab – The Colorado River
The Moab area is blessed with a number of State Scenic Byways that travel through some very rugged and beautiful countryside. We decided that today would be an easy one for us, so we just pottered along a couple of these roads and enjoyed a semi-restful day. After breakfast, we drove north to the bridge […]
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Moab – Arches National Park
It was about 9.00 am by the time we were ready to leave Torrey this morning, fill up with fuel, and get on the road to Moab, about 160 kms away in Western Utah. We left Torrey by driving along the Fremont River and through the valley where the original Mormon Settlers had planted orchards […]
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Capitol Reef National Park
Tonight, we are in the town of Torrey, Utah which is where the Capitol Reef National Park is located. We woke up at Bryce Canyon this morning to find it snowing. Overnight there had been almost 25 cm (one inch) of snowfall. but even though the temperature was -1C it was still very beautiful – […]
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Bryce National Park
This morning we were up and on our way by our target time of 9.00 am. We drove back into Zion National Park, up the mountain through the tunnel and then on our way to Bryce Canyon National Park.It was just a 160 km drive today so we pottered along through some tiny inconspicuous towns […]
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