Road Tripping
My friend Jolien Blankestijn visited me from the Netherlands over Spring Break, and we decided to do a 9-day road trip through Nevada, Utah, Arizona and southern California.
A fantastic sunset looking west from the Berkeley hills up above campus.
Our first day on the road was a long one, driving all the way from San Francisco to Salt Lake City via Lake Tahoe and the flat, empty expanses of Nevada.
And we’re off! Goodbye SF! Hello deserts of Nevada!
We stayed overnight in Salt Lake, had a little snoop around the next morning nothing much there!) and then drove down south to Zion National Park. We had a couple of days there and had some really variable weather. Our first day was rain and sleet so we didn’t do as much hiking as we’d like, but we woke up the next morning to find it sunny and clear so we decided to do the quite strenuous hike up to Angel’s Landing.
Not the safest hike! The valley floor waaay below…
A VERY cold shower!
Looking down Zion Canyon. Up the chains I go…
The route up to Angel’s Landing took us along this knife-edge ridge. That’s the Landing at the top.
The view from Angel’s Landing – wow!
We then took the back roads through some gorgeous country to another of Utah’s highlights, Bryce Canyon National Park. These fascinating rock features were beautifully contrasted by the snow that was covering them. It was a LOT colder than Zion NP, but then again we were a good 9000+ feet high!
After we left Bryce Canyon it was a long day’s drive (again) through the mountains and deserts of south-east Utah, across the Colorado River and into Arizona via the amazing Mokee Dugway (a road that begins at 6425ft and descends 1100ft over 3 miles of dirt road) and through Navajo country to the Grand Canyon.
The deserts and snow-capped mountains of south-east Utah.
Our first views of the Colorado River!
The expanses of Arizona as seen from The scenery of Navajo Country.
Mokee Dugway.
A chilly night @ Grand Canyon.
Brrr… But beautiful views nonetheless!
After two nights at the Grand Canyon we had our last long haul aaaaall the way through southern California and Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. On our last day on the road we drove the length of Highway 1 along the coast past Big Sur and Carmel and on to Berkeley.
