Category: Road Trips

Posts about the journey from A to B usually independently by car and the places visited whilst en route, often with accommodation and restaurant hints.

The Canyon Circle Road Trip: Part I

A Road Trip through California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada

Itinerary

The Grand Circle is known as one of the best road trips in the US. Taking a minimum of ten days, starting and ending in Las Vegas, you circle round some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world: Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, Canyonlands, and Monument Valley. We only had six days in which to visit so it was difficult working out what to leave out. It was early March and not unlikely that we’d hit snow somewhere on route which was a factor in our final decision and starting from San Diego in the south-west corner of California also meant a bit of a trek to get into the region and would mean a further overnight stop so we really only had five days. Pouring over maps, and reading reviews of hotels, motels and B&B accommodation we eventually decided on our trip.

Buy an America the Beautiful – The National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Annual Pass ($80) at the first park you enter to save you money.

San Diego to Sedona

It would be a long drive to our first overnight stop in Sedona. But a fairly easy route along Interstate 8 to Yuma, which immediately started us thinking about film and song titles we knew about the US, left at  Gila Bend up onto the Interstate 10 and then skirting Phoenix on Interstate 17 and finally up towards Flagstaff, finally getting off the highways and onto the State Route 179 (also known as Red Rock Scenic Byway, an “All-American Road”[1]).

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South Arizona Sand-dunes

We expected the journey to be fairly mundane as it was almost entirely on highways, but since it was the first time we’d driven this route there were several surprises along the way, not least the huge sand-dunes somewhere close to Yuma I think, where we spotted dune buggies and dune boards. The traffic was sparse until the Phoenix area when it was much more dense until we had passed the Phoenix Cardinals Stadium in Greendale. And the sight of the ‘three-armed cactus’ –  Saguaro Cactus – alongside the road made us feel as though we were in a Western movie.  Fully expecting Red Indians to come over the ridge! Unsurprisingly the flower of this plant is the state flower of Arizona.

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Saguaro Cactus

But the most exciting views were when we turned off Interstate 17 and onto 179 where the road winds through the pinion-covered Coconino National Forest with views of spectacular red rock buttes and mesas jutting out from the earth with names like Coffeepot, Cathedral and Thunder Mountain (you can see where they got the roller coaster idea from). We stopped off at  a couple of the scenic pull-outs to take some photos around Bell Rock and stretch our legs around the Courthouse Butte Loop before driving on and through Sedona, known for the spiritual and metaphysical as well as hundreds of miles of hiking and biking trails, the red rock vistas and scenic drives and on to the 89A to our B&B for the night in Oak Creek Canyon close to Slide Rock State Park.

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Thunder Mountain
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Entering Sedona (Oak Creek Valley)

Shortly before our arrival there had been a fall of snow in the region and on entering Oak Creek Canyon we were surprised to see it lying all around, though thankfully the road was completely clear. Because of the weather and the fact it was almost dark, we didn’t venture back down into Sedona, but had an early night, looking forward to the drive to Grand Canyon and hoping that the snowfall wouldn’t be a problem.

(click an image to enlarge)

Cathedral Rock
Bell Rock
Courthouse Butte and Bell Rock

Astonishingly I had never heard of Sedona before I started planning this trip. How on earth has it stayed such a secret to us Brits? It is definitely a place to spend more time in and explore.

[1] There are 27 of these designated by the US Department of Transport, for their exceptional and unique recreational, natural and scenic qualities.

Travel Your Way

Rhinocarhire have a photography travel competition running at the moment which closes on 31st October, so hurry if you want to join in! You don’t have to be nominated to join in, but you do need to nominate five other bloggers on your entry.

“Our competition is based around modes of transport and how you travel, whether by road, air, rail or sea, we want you to put your creative thinking hats on and show us your best snaps of each (or as many as you wish) types of transport you’ve encountered. Whether it’s from a recent trip or one from the past, we just want to see how you travel.” Continue reading Travel Your Way

Travel Journey of the Week: The Emerald Isle

This week’s place from Liberated Traveler is Ireland, so I have had to cast my mind back to the one and only time I visited this country for four days in October 2003. I could only have four days because at the time I was doing a PGCE course to become a secondary school teacher. Although it was half-term and in theory we should have had a week’s holiday, the training school insisted we went in for three days for additional lectures. So making the most of a very cheap Ryan Air flight to Dublin from Birmingham (£1 one way) we arrived in a very wet Dublin airport on an early Wednesday evening. Continue reading Travel Journey of the Week: The Emerald Isle

A leisurely drive up the Sunshine Coast

The last of my travels in British Columbia: this is the route up the Sunshine Coast on the west coast of the mainland, north of Vancouver, which we took to reach Vancouver Island in 2005. It is a truly lovely drive along with a couple of short ferry rides across the fjords along this spectacular coastline. We were fortunate to be able to buy a CirclePac ticket from BC Ferries which gave us discounted fares on the routes up the coast and to and from the island. I believe we also got discounted fares travelling to the smaller islands such as Hornby, Denman and Cormorant Island (Alert Bay). Sadly this ticket was discontinued in 2011. However, it is still a route I recommend for the scenery alone. Continue reading A leisurely drive up the Sunshine Coast

Telegraph Cove

On our first visit to Vancouver Island, way back in 2005, we moved northwards after spending a week in the Comox Valley area to spend a few days in Alert Bay, a small settlement on the Cormorant Island which lies off the northeast corner of the Island in the Inside Passage, a 40 minute ferry ride from Port McNeil. (See the map on the Victoria 1 post). Our main reason for going there was to go on a boat trip to look for killer whales (Orcas – the lovely black and white ones).

Before we reached Port McNeil though we decided to branch off at the Nimpkish Lake to the small community of Telegraph Cove which is about 130 miles northwest of Campbell River. Historic Telegraph Cove is British Columbia’s last boardwalk community. It grew out of a one-room station at the northern terminus of the Campbell River telegraph line in 1911 into a chum salmon saltery and later a small sawmill. It hasn’t changed much over the years. Its history is well-remembered and the homes reflect the original era. The sawmill closed in the mid 1980s and the only future seemed in tourism. Today its economy is primarily based on tourism with its proximity to the Robson Bight ecological reserve.

Whale watching, grizzly bear viewing excursions and kayaking are popular activities on the Johnstone Strait and Knight Inlet and most of the cabins on the picturesque boardwalk are holiday rentals or tourist shops and cafés. The Johnstone Strait and Broughton Archipelago are home to a bounty of nature’s magnificence including humpback whales, Steller sea lions, dolphins, porpoises, bald eagles and so much more. The sheltered cove and the chance to see a pod of killer whales have attracted many people to this delightful boardwalk village.

When we visited we encountered the Telegraph Cove Road Improvement project and had an interesting drive on gravel and unpaved diversions past logging yards and sawmills to reach the unique boardwalk resort. Now you will be pleased to hear it is a wide, realigned and paved road all the way. Although I actually quite liked the adventure of “off-roading”.

So here are a few pictures of Telegraph Cove and I will follow with a few posts about Alert Bay as it really is a gem of a find.

Telegraph Cove