hi we travelled to Arizona accompanied by a thunderstorm.It travelled with us for 159miles. Anyway were here and it’s a lovely afternoon and evening. we are in a hotel run by the Navajo Indians and have a great view from our room balcony over towards Lake Powell. We are now 8 hours difference from you.

  
We walked about a mile and a half to see Horseshoe Bend. There is a steep sand dune to climb up and then a long trail down to the cliff edge. Neither of us dare go up to the edge but vince held his arms up high and shot this fabulous picture.

  It was a struggle to walk back up the hill but I made it and felt proud of myself. More news tomorrow love you all and thinking especially about Anona taking her exams xxx
PS these are 2 lovely pictures Grandad took yesterday of the forest fire and one of the many kinds of wild flowers we are seeing xxxx 

   

well today we treated ourselves out for breakfast! We had egg and bacon sunny side up and it came with watery shredded potato (yuk). I tried biscuits and gravy. It was in reality scones with white parsley sauce…hung very heavy in my stomach all morning😄. Vince tried bread pudding yummy.

We headed for the Panguitch lake in the Dixie National Forest. You drive 7 miles down an unpaved road to reach it. It was beautiful and we saw so much wildlife. 2 eagle nests with Eagles sitting on them, Canadian geese and their goslings. Squirrels deer and crested grebes. Lots of birds and a forest fire!

   
 In the afternoon we went to the red canyon. it is close to where we are staying too and is full of hoodoos.  

 We talked to the park rangers and they said “oh were you in the little white car by the lake earlier on. we passed by you.” We told them about the Eagles nests and they are going to look out for them. They told us The fire was started deliberately  to burn away the ground cover in the forest .

  
We followed the trails and walked right up high in the canyon. There were lots of wild flowers lizards and birds to see. 

Tomorrow we travel 140 miles to Page and we’re staying there 4 nights.

Hope you like this photo Lilyana 😎 xx

  

hi we went exploring today and found 2 state parks that you travel to on Tarmac roads and then explore by dirt tracks .

We only went a short way on the dirt track and quickly decided they were only for 4 wheel drive cars!

Anyway we walked to a cave and a waterfall and saw some wild life.  

 A chipmunk a lizard 4 different birds we had not seen before. 

We stopped at a view point to see high up in the cliffs the ancient peoples drawings and grain store.

Love our cowboy hotel room it feels like a real home from home. Managed to speak to Lilyana via Skype and hope you are feeling a bit better now. Good luck with your exams Anona soon be over for you xxx

It is cold today! There is a very cold icy wind even though the sun is shining.brrrrrr!

We spent 5 hours visiting all the view points and chatting to other people, mostly French today.

It is Mother’s Day here in USA so perhaps that’s why we didn’t meet so many Americans.

Hope you are having a rest this weekend Anona, your mum told me you have been working all hours on your design work xxx

I’m going to let my photos do the talking today…… Love to all xxxxx 

     

Hi we are at the quality inn Panguitch US Highway 89 . It is past Panguitch and near the Red Canyon which leads on to Bryce Canyon.  So pleased that Lilyana is following us on Google Earth 😀👍🏾🇺🇸🌎

We love it here. We are in a cowboy wooden ranch type room with a veranda. We are here for 5 nights. 

   
 The journey here was quite fast and we passed by the” big rock candy mountain”, Trevor  will know this song. We also travelled along a huge salt marsh where the most dinosaurs in the world have been dug up.

We saw mule eared deer with long ears and another chipmunk that we nearly ran over in a car park! Geese flying over and ordinary buck deer.

    We have already peeped into the first view point at Bryce Canyon as we arrived too early to go to our hotel

The road first leads through Red Canyon which seems to be full of red rock hoodoos. Bryce Canyon has more orangey rocks. 

    

We got to Dead Horse Point first and it was so impressive. It was like looking at the Grand Canyon. You can see the River Colorado doing horse bends and the Green River has just joined it . It is soooo far down to look and then goes down further. The rock forms are amazing

If you love horses don’t read this next bit…(Lily and Anona).. It’s called Dead Horse Point because Cowboys herded up loads of wild horses onto this headland as it made a natural corral, the sides all round drop 2000 feet! They selected the best horses to keep and sell but didn’t let the other horses free and left them to die of thirst looking down on the huge Colorado river which they couldn’t reach. 

Next we went further along the road to Canyonlands. This is a huge area of plateau covering 114 square miles with huge canyons down deep inside it. The 2 rivers, the Green River and the Colorado have eroded it over millions of years. You can only visit 3 main areas by tarmaced roads. The rest is by very scary dirt tracks which need 4 wheel drive cars and we could see several cars doing this half way down before the deep fall to the river. I don’t know how they dare to do this! 

    So just when we thought we had seen the most wonderful sights ever we have found more today.

Tomorrow we travel to Panguitch  which is a good place  for visiting Bryce Canyon, Zion NP in Utah and other places, so we have booked in there for 5 nights. More travel news soon ☀️☀️😎😎👀👀😜😜

Love to you all will be skyping you Saturday after 3pm your time as we get up xxx if we don’t manage this we’ll try on Sunday at same time onwards xxx

We went back to the Arches NP today and walked along some of the tracks to find the arches. Vince took many many photos. we must have walked a long way as I’m whacked out this evening😝. There is not so much wildlife to spot in Utah as it is mostly desert and the animals come out at night and early morning to avoid the heat. But we see birds and lizards oh and a chipmunk.

We went to Moab and sat in the shade eating pizza and drinking coffee and diet coke.

Tomorrow we are visiting dead horse canyon in the Canyonlands National Park it’s supposed to be lovely

Hope everyone is ok 

Currently following the election results via BBC online.

Hope you like my pictures.      Love to my grandchildren et al xxxx 

     

Today we headed for Canyonlands National Park, but didn’t get there😎😎😎

The road marked on our map didn’t exist or we didn’t find it, perhaps it was one of the dirt tracks we are not allowed to take our hire car on.

We noticed a road sign posted Goblin Canyon and went there instead. To reach it we crossed the San Rafael Desert. With the recent rain there were lots of different coloured wild flowers. We had plenty of water with us Matthew! ☀️☀️☀️

As we got into the canyon it was full of sandstone shapes which did look like men,goblins and Et like shapes.

We could walk right up to them and around them .At first it was cool and then the sun shone really fiercely but we didn’t notice as we were so intrigued with the sandstone goblins. So now we have both caught the sun on our faces arms and necks 

On the way back as in the past 2 days the whole area darkened and terrific thunderstorms happened. I love thunder and lightening!

We sat by the Green  River river between bouts of torrential rain and then visited the museum in the town

Another lovely day

Lots of love from Green River Utah

  
     

it rained all the way to the Arches national park, but then stopped and the sun came out. We were tired after travelling but what we saw was mind blowing. You have to walk to some of the arches and as we had not much energy we will go back again another day. Here is just a taste of what we saw 

   

We are in a hotel at Green River. We are here until Saturday and a bit disappointed with the hotel but never mind the countryside around more than compensates for it.xxxxx

yesterday we headed up to the Mesa Verde   

 
 

  We climbed up via horse shoe bends and saw right across the plains to the Rockies in the distance. we could see about 35 miles all around 360degrees.  There was a storm in the distance and it didn’t reach us for about 4 hours but we watched it close in.

We saw the ancient pueblo remains high up in the cliffs and we were able to walk up to one  community.

When we got to the  Temple of the Sun, the thunder started and loads of fork lightening. Hail and thunder and lightening….. I loved it   WE STOPPED AT THE NEXT information centre and drank coffee while it passed over. back in Durango it was dry but over night it has rained continuously and now we are on the way to our next hotel passed Moab and visiting arches national park. More pictures of the day at Mesa Verde soon