A man's gotta do

The highlight of this trip for my Dad was always going to be Monument Valley.  It was his first time here, but being a massive fan of westerns he recognised it all; it's something of a pilgrimage for him as he retraces the steps of the big Johns - Ford and Wayne - from Stagecoach to She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and The Searchers.  Dad saw them all on first release.

I'd been here once before, when I tried to drive Vince and Christine's Honda Civic along the 17-mile Valley Loop dirt road (sorry about that) so this time we booked a tour.  It was worth every penny, not just for seeing the right way to drive up a sand dune but also for the off-tourist route that official guides are allowed to take.  We saw the mesas, buttes and arches close up, as well as traditional (and modern) homes of the Navajo who live in the valley.

Larry, our guide, also knew everything.  He took us through the geology, the myths, the politics (he's for Hillary...as I believe everyone now is) and - happily for Dad - all the stories around the westerns filmed here.  Turns out the Johns were big friends of the Navajo, even organising helicopter food drops during a particularly harsh winter.  "A man's got to have a code, a creed to live by," The Duke once said, and it seems he believed it.  You can get it on magnets in the gift shop.

Pete enjoyed playing in the red sand until he was covered, and I took another 20,000 pics.  I've seen a lot of the world (Somerset, Durham, the Isle of Wight) and I have to say that, between Monument Valley and Yosemite, the western USA does have some of the most magical landscapes on the planet.  John Wayne agrees with me, so that argument's over.

The best thing about Flagstaff?  The free childcare.

Not sure who's winning.



Ready to follow Route 66 into cowboy country.

And here we are.

Recreating the last shot from The Searchers.  Sort of.

The most exciting thing ever in Pete's life happened when he got to sleep in the top bunk.

My nighttime photography proves to be as good as ever.

The classic.

The view from breakfast.

Another 10c in Pete's acceptable family photograph account.

One day, son...

When you think of the geological age of some of things you see around here, it's staggering.

In a traditional Navajo hogan.

Down into the valley for our tour now, looking up.

More pictures of large rocks.

W for John Wayne, so Larry told us.

Pete enjoys the biggest sandpit he's ever seen.



Drawings from around 700AD.

Dad from around 1933AD.

Larry drove us, in this, everywhere.  It was humbling.

"You can take an artistic shot up there," our guide pointed out, unaware of my limitations.

More rocks.

Rocks in a puddle.  Honestly - John Ford has nothing on my cinematography.

It was flat at the bottom and the sides were steep

What the USA understands better than anywhere is that not all explorers want to be intrepid.  Some of us are very content being trepid, and so the National Parks Service was formed and any breathtaking natural monument was improved by adding a good road, concession stand and gift shop.  The Grand Canyon is the biggest and best of them all.

That said, I was disappointed that it's not dual carriageway all 73 miles from Flagstaff there, meaning I sometimes had to disengage cruise control when stuck behind a tour bus, using a hand that should have been holding my latte.  But in no time we were in the middle of the harsh, awesome landscape, pulling into a convenient spot just by the RVs.  The main challenge here was remembering which parking lot we were in.

The walk to the canyon rim required some navigational skills when it came to reading signs and following arrows, and then my rugby training paid off as I rucked and mauled my way through the tourists to the prime spots on the handrail.  Even after that, nothing could take away from the sight itself; the Grand Canyon is big, in a big big way that not many things are big.  It's big.

It was only then that I could undertake a challenge that would have left Shackleton, Amundsen and Hillary quaking in their well-worn boots: taking a decent photo of a three-year-old with his grandparents. I was mostly going for bribery, with 10c the going rate for a standing-still-and-smiling shot, although various sanctions such as not getting music in the car were mentioned.  This was effective on all three subjects.  Woe betide the unfortunate tourist that wandered into frame when I was about to fire the shutter!

Thanks to the beauty of digital I got a handful of usable images out of the 20,000 I took and we made the difficult hike back to one of the many cafes for croissants and coffee, although my espresso was a little over-extracted.  As I sipped I asked Pete if he thought he'd remember this breathtaking, horizon-expanding trip when he's older.  "No," he told me without hesitation.  Exactly, I thought.  That's why I'm taking so many photos.

On the way to the rim - this one doesn't count.

Wow!

Not bad, not bad.

Better.

More wow.

"That's my grandparenting done for the day," commented Dad.

Ah, the stuff that family holidays are made of!

Wow wow.

You're not smiling, Pete.  That's only worth 5c.

Arty wow.

The Grand Canyon - only as tall as Pete.

No Grandma in the picture, no money.

Smaller side-canyon, but still wow.

And after all that, some well-deserved refreshment.

Food of the gods

In truth, I only had one reason for coming west of the Mississippi: In'n'Out Burger.  For no conceivable reason, the best burger chain in America stops somewhere around the Colorado border, its secret menu unknown to us east coasters, its milkshakes untasted and its fries uncrunched.  Ludicrously, there's even talk of them opening in London!  When that happens I'll be on the first flight back to the UK.

After several hours of losing money with my infallible roulette system I concluded that all tables in Vegas are rigged.  Just as I was about to bet the rental car on red it was time to go so we journeyed south-east, crossing the Hoover Dam and stopping in Kingman, where the fabled burgers were enjoyed and all was good with the world.  We continued to our final destination for now, Flagstaff.

I'd forgotten how diverse the desert is around here, with the road climbing up to 7,500 feet and the vegetation being everything from nothing to scrub to Joshua and normal trees.  It's all very breathtaking...unless you're a three-year-old when all you want to do is play your new imaginative game: In'n'Out Burger ("I'm the chef, you're the server, Grandma's the customer...").  Tomorrow we're going to look at a big hole in the ground, so we'll see how impressed he is with that.

Morning, Vegas.  Can I have my money back?

Keeping tight hold of each other.

Half in Arizona, half in Nevada.

Getting his bearings.

Holding back the flood.

One of the man-made wonders of the world?



One of the man-made wonders of the world!!

Mmm, chips (fries).

There's no mandatory retirement age in the USA.

At a playpark in Flagstaff, attempting to run off energy before bed.  That's the trouble with feeding children.

Fabulous!

In an expansion of Davies Tours International's usual itinerary, I'm currently in Las Vegas.  Why?  Because I've devised a guaranteed roulette system that's going to triple my wife's annual salary, and also Mum and Dad want to see the Grand Canyon.

My parents were looking at trips around Canyonlands, and taking a coach to the places they wanted to visit was going to make a substantial dent in my inheritance.  Why not pay for me to be their tour guide, I selflessly suggested, and I'll even let them babysit their grandson when I go out every night!?  Understandably, they took the deal.

So Pete and I left Hannah behind - weeping as she contemplated no one nagging her to come home from work, a king size bed to herself, and a weekend at a Korean spa - and jumped on a plane to Sin City.  I'm looking forward to Pete's class receiving his postcard from here.

On a day with numerous moving parts I'm genuinely amazed that my parents, a three-year-old, a hire car, and hotel rooms all ended up in vaguely the same place.  I'm off to Caesar's Palace now to see if my luck will last.  Ha!  As if luck were even a factor in my infallible system...

What nutritious, sustaining breakfast should us travelers fuel up with this morning, Pete?

Five hours of sugar-rush later we're here, although photography suffers when simultaneously handling luggage and toddler.

I eased Pete gently into the gambling lifestyle with a trip to Planet Hollywood, one of the more family-friendly vice dens.

And we took in a show, of course.  One with performing rescue animals!  It was...alright.

Someone warned the supermarket that the pasty Brits were on the way.

International arrivals.  Quiet, which left me nervous.

But they arrived!

Obligatory massive hire car.  It's comparable to our Fiesta, in the sense that "five times bigger" is a comparison.  But I'm a DC driver now so watch out Nevada!