Tuesday 17th October - day 28. Navajo monument to Moab. Woke to beautiful sunrise with pink skies reflected all around us from our hilltop desert camp. The Navajo Monument free campsite turned out to be an absolute treasure - secluded forest parking amongst pines and Navajo Juniper trees at 7270 metres with great views and - to our surprise - an extraordinary historical site too. Before breakfast, we set off to run round the local area to explore and made o...

Monday 16th - day 27. Flagstaff to Grand Canyon to Navajo National Monument, Monument Valley. Well, that was a very short night! Despite this we all seemed to wake up easily enough considering it was 4.45am! It was very dark outside - the stars and a fine sliver of a crescent moon seemed very bright. We drove the hour or so to Flagstaff airport, and Chris checked in. After fond and sad farewells and many hugs we waved Chris off and watched his plane take off t...

Off exploring 15/10 Sunday 15th October - day 26. Las Vegas to Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon. We set our alarms early. Partly because we had a long drive today, and partly because we wanted to remove ourselves from the Flamingo Casino employees parking lot before the daytime parking attendant turned up for work. The car park was quite busy. Groups of workers coming and going - presumably the night staff leaving and the day staff arriving. We provoked a couple of...

Saturday 14th October Day 25 - Deep Creek to Las Vegas. We woke at first light after a cold night. The sun was just rising over the mountains illuminating our remote desert surroundings, along the dusty rutted track that we had driven down last night. We got up and dressed, turned the van around (not easy!) and drove back down to Bowen Ranch. At the deserted ramshackle crazy hillbilly ranch we stopped and picked up a map / information leaflet (“No fireworks...

Friday 13th October - day 24. San Diego - surfing at Tourmaline Beach. Sunset at Torrey Pines Beach. Up at 6.30 to check out of our camp site, ready to surf at Tourmaline Beach (just round the corner from Chris’s flat) by 7. We arrived at what seemed an early hour, to find the car park full and some kern surfers already packing up to leave. The beach was sandy with loads of space and enough surf to please everyone. Chris had produced three surf boards and ...