Saturday, 2 October: Bryce Canyon to Monument Valley, Arizona

Today's drive was the most incredible experience. The landscape changed constantly, literally at every turn a different scene lay on either side of the road. The road climbed to great heights and dipped. At times it went straight for miles, and at others it twisted and turned. The cliffs on either side were different shapes too, sometimes sharp and jagged and at others rounded.  We travelled through mountain forests of autumn colours which changed as we got higher to tall Ponderosa pine forests.

Most of the way however was through landscapes of rocky desert. The colours of the rocks changed constantly with each change of landscape. Sometimes the cliffs were black, at others red, pink, white, blue or purple. At one stage it looked like we were driving on the moon's surface! One part of the road was called 'Hell's Backbone': it climbed steadily to 2,745 metres (9000 feet), then ran along the very top of the ridge, with cliffs falling away steeply on either side. Then it went steeply downhill. Some parts were quite flat for miles, then climbed steeply again. It was impossible to be bored for a minute of the 6 hours it took to get from Bryce Canyon to Monument Valley.

One stretch of road was so steep and winding that signs instructed drivers to drive at 40 Km per hour (25miles per hour). The road on our GPS looked like knitting! The road descended sharply and took us to a very flat landscape many metres below the start of the gravel road.

When we approached Monument Valley, the landscape, although high, was quite flat with huge outcrops of rock sticking up, widely spaced. It has been an amazing day.