USA – Massachusetts, Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Texas & Florida

BeckyNorth America

Our USA road trip started in Boston for a friend’s surprise 50th birthday party before we drove out West with a brief stop in Missouri to see family. Our original plan was to visit a bunch of National Parks and hike Havasu Falls but unfortunately, our permits for the falls were pushed back to next year due to a devastating flash flood that wiped out Havasu campground and village. So instead, we scrambled to readjust and added a few more national parks to our itinerary. Rocky Mountain was our first national park and we opted to hike up to Lake Haiyaha for sunrise before admiring Dream, Emerald, and Bear Lakes afterwards. Driving Rt 34 (also known as the “Trail Ridge Road) was a nice way to get more sweeping views of beautiful Rocky Mountain National Park. Our next stop was Mesa Verde National Park where we signed up for two ranger led tours – Cliff Palace and Balcony House. They were both excellent and we enjoyed learning about the Pueblo people and seeing their cliff dwellings first hand.  The Four Corners Monument (where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet) was our next stop before we drove towards Monument Valley, stopping briefly to see the Mexican Hat Rock Formation and Forrest Gump Point beforehand. Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park has a 17 mile driving loop that costs $8 per person to visit. What a fantastic experience and we managed to do it in a regular vehicle (4WD is recommended but not necessary, especially if there hasn’t been any recent rain). We loved seeing the amazing rock formations that have cropped up in so many Western movies over the years. Goosenecks State Park was where we camped that night and we loved waking up to the sun rising over the double river meander the next morning. Next up was a detour to Natural Bridges National Monument where we hiked down to two of the natural bridges – Sipapu and Owachomo. Sipapu is the 4th largest natural arch in the world and well worth the effort to hike down to see it up close. Capitol Reef National Park was our next stop and we decided to hike out to Hickman and Nels Johnson Natural Bridges. What a beautiful hike and we were glad we started later in the day as the crowds were leaving just as we were beginning. Petroglyphs, Panorama Point and Goosenecks Overlook finished up our time in Capitol Reef National Park. The next day, we backtracked to the Notom Bullfrog road so we could witness the phenomenal waterpocket fold in person. This geologic landform spans nearly 100 miles so we only saw a portion of it but what we saw was stunning. In fact, we hiked out to a portion of it when we stopped to hike into Headquarters Canyon. Then we drove our favorite section of the road up the Burr Trail switchbacks…just wow! This brought us straight into Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument where we stopped briefly to sing at Singing Canyon and admire the scenery at Long Canyon viewpoint. Then we drove to Hole-in-the-rock road for an extreme hiking adventure out to Zebra Slot Canyon. Good thing we didn’t know what we had signed up for when we started our hike because we might have been deterred! We arrived to the slot canyon to discover that the knee deep water was actually chest deep, and we had to wiggle and squirm our way up the sandstone walls to actually reach the gorgeous zebra striped portion of the canyon. Luckily we had the entire slot canyon to ourselves as it would have been impossible to pass another person in such tight confines. Don’t watch the movie “127 hours” before doing this hike or you’ll never even attempt it, ha ha! Devil’s Garden was our last stop of the day where we wandered amongst hoodoos and beautiful rock formations. We still had two more slot canyons to explore in Hole-in-the-rock which were both spectacular. Spooky slot canyon (in and out) was our goal immediately after sunrise as we heard it would be impossible to maneuver if we met someone going in the opposite direction and we decided to knock it out before any other tourists decided to visit. We then hiked in and out of Peekaboo slot canyon and met the first tourists of the day as we were exiting the canyon. What perfect timing! Bryce Canyon was up next and our goal was to hike the Wall Street and Queen’s Garden Loop circuit immediately after sunrise. It was as beautiful as we had imagined it would be! A drive on Cottonwood Canyon Road with a stop at Grosvenor Arch was next before we drove onward towards Zion National Park. The weather forecast looked perfect for our bottom up narrows hike the next morning. We got up at 4 am to catch the first shuttle of the day to the Temple of Sinawava where we hiked the first hour in the dark to start our narrows hike. It was well worth it as we had the first half of our hike almost to ourselves! We had been nervous seeing other visitors wearing dry suits while we were only dressed in our swimsuits, t-shirts, shorts and a wind breaker but it was fine. The water wasn’t too cold and we were able to move quickly. The Wall Street section of the narrows was just as spectacular as we had hoped it would be and we thoroughly enjoyed our hike. From Zion, we drove towards the Grand Canyon. This was our first time seeing the majestic canyon and it did not disappoint. Our sunset perch at Moran Point was perfect and we equally enjoyed sunrise at Yaki Point. Mather Point, Hopi Point and Powell Point were equally as impressive which made us wonder if any of the Grand Canyon lookout points were subpar? After being on the go for so many days, we took a minibreak from camping in Flagstaff, enjoying all you can eat Mongolian BBQ and a comfy bed. Since Sedona was a short drive away, we did a day trip to hike the Airport Loop, visit the famous Chapel of the Holy Cross, admire souvenirs at Son Silver West Gallery and Tlaquepaque Village. Sedona was gorgeous and well worth a visit but we still had more of Flagstaff to check out, specifically some street art in the historic downtown area. From Flagstaff, we drove out to White Sands National Park to see sunset at the world’s largest gypsum dune field. It was a beautiful spectacle to behold! From White Sands, we drove to El Paso where we had a fun reunion with family for a few days. Carlsbad Caverns was our last national park of the trip and it lived up to our lofty expectations. As Will Rogers once quipped, Carlsbad Caverns is like the Grand Canyon with a roof over it and we agreed! It was phenomenal and even better than we imagined it would be. We especially liked being able to hike in on a self guided tour and ride the elevator out afterwards. The cave formations were phenomenal and we were very glad we included this on our itinerary. From Texas we drove back to Florida with another short break in Panama City Beach. This was our first time visiting this part of Florida and we really enjoyed it. We drove 7500 miles in 24 days on our whirlwind road trip and are now inspired to buy another campervan before we do our next US road trip!

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