USA on wheels – part 1

We have just finished part 1 of USA on wheels. An anti-clockwise journey in the western states.

Our journey took us through the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and we ‘touched’ New Mexico.

For those who like statistics, in 32 days we slept in 21 beds, drove 4909 miles (7900 kilometres) averaging 153.4 miles per day (246.9 kilometres per day). We used 126.51 gallons (478.9 litres) of gas (petrol) at an average cost of $USD3.38/gallon (approx $AUD1.24/litre).

After exploring Los Angeles prior to returning home for Ev& Steph’s wedding, and with a lot of good advice from our good friend Ian, we hit the road in a Nissan Versa with a dodgy speaker system.

First stop was the glitz of Las Vegas. From there we drove Route 66 to visit a friend from Honeywell days, Ruby and see the Frank Lloyd Wright’s West Taliesin house in Scottsdale near Phoenix.

We drove through the amazing Red Rock Canyon and beautiful Oak Creek to the even more amazing Grand Canyon, and then to Monument Valley, a place held sacred by the Navajo Indians.

We touched the Four Corners, states Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado before spending time at the ancient houses of the Cliff Dwellers of Mesa Verde and then watching 4th July celebrations in Durango.

We then toured the amazing Arches National Park and walked miles over rocky formations.

Changing our focus from outdoors to indoors we visited Salt Lake City for an insight into the Family Search Center.

We travelled through lush farmland to reach the famed parks of Wyoming, Grand Teton and Yellowstone.

We crossed the dry harsh potato land of Idaho and followed the Colorado River to Portland where we did some city sightseeing and refreshed ourselves each evening at the craft breweries.

A quick stop in Oregon’s wine country, for coffee, and then the long 1360 mile drive down the coast through rugged coastlines, tiny fishing villages in Oregon and old red gum forests in California.

We did taste wine in the Napa Valley and we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, before viewing the calmer coastline to Los Angeles.

It’s been hard keeping our blogs up to date. Long tourist days and a plethora of decent craft breweries in the evening combined with surprisingly poor internet in many places have made it difficult to get stories written and pics uploaded. So now we will make an effort to update our sites as we embark on phase 2 from Seattle to New York, on an as yet unplanned route.