Arizona (plus Los Angeles/Las Vegas)

November/December 2024

Saturday November 23

With a 10 am departure from London Heathrow Terminal 5, we had an overnight stay at the Maidenhead Central Travelodge and then had trouble finding the off-airport car park. But we made the flight which was a long ten and a half hour affair. I hadn’t been to Los Angeles International airport since 1980 when the then, new, Laker Airlines allowed you to buy a one way ticket for £112. Touching down around 1.30 pm local time, it took an age to get through Immigration. Wendy was finger-printed (again) and I was asked how much money we had for the trip. The shuttle bus dealing with all the backed up airport traffic was dropping people off or picking them up, and took an age to reach the off-airport car rental. I had prebooked a car with Thrifty and we were given a medium sized Kia that seemed to love beeping at us throughout the trip and recommending that I stop for a rest after twenty minutes of driving.

With the airport and shuttle delays, we didn’t start off until after 5 pm and it was dark by 6pm. I had decided to try and find our motel in Castaic up near the Six Flags Theme Park using my nose rather than Google maps (naively thinking there would be signs). The only problem was that we were stopped by every red light for the next hour. Asking at a garage, we were still headed the right way and then at a 7-11. But it was a laborious drive, and we finally cracked and put in the hotel zip code. It took us to a dark dead end in the middle of nowhere, so we tried the road name and finally spotted the Days Inn Hotel in the one road town of Castaic. The strangest thing was that it had been raining during our journey which didn’t seem right. The funniest thing was when Wendy had said ‘why do all the car number plates have ‘California’ on them?’ She thought she was in the state of ‘Los Angeles’. Doh!

Sunday November 24

Our first destination about an hour away down the freeway, was the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. It was a lovely sunny day and following Presidential Drive with flags of all the Presidents, we arrived as it opened. Reagan was the 40th President. It was perched on a mountaintop with sweeping views of the surrounding mountains, valleys and the Pacific Ocean. We had a major reason to come because the old Airforce One was located here. Bypassing the Library, we made straight for the 90,000 square foot Airforce One Pavilion and boarded it. We had it to ourselves. The aircraft was also used by six other Presidents in its active service from 1973 until 2001 including Nixon in his second term, Ford, Carter, Bush, Clinton and W Bush. At the time it was probably state of the art technology, but now looked quite quaint with a small kitchen to prepare meals for the President and another kitchen for the other passengers. Computers had been installed late in its life. The cockpit had a sextant in case the pilots lost their electronic communications.

The Presidential Library is the repository of presidential records for the Reagan administration. Holdings include 50 million pages of presidential documents, over 1.6 million photographs, a half-million feet of motion picture film and thousands of audio and video tapes.

The exhibit began with Reagan's childhood in Dixon, Illinois, and followed his life through his film career in California and military service, marriage to Nancy Davis Reagan, and political career including his eight year as the Governor of California followed by his 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns, as well as his inauguration suit. News footage of the 1981 assassination attempt on his life was shown. It also emphasised his relationship with Gorbachev and what they achieved. There was a replica Oval Office which you could only view from one side. Apparently, Reagan had to have the ‘Endeavour’ desk raised to fit his knees under. Outside were the graves of both Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

We had previously visited the Presidential Libraries of George W Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. This was an excellent one to tick off from the sixteen Libraries. We returned to our hotel in Castaic and slept off more of our jet lag.

Monday November 25

Setting off for Las Vegas via Victorville, we passed through the Mojave Desert which was much cooler than the 120’F I had experienced back in 1980. We stooped to take in a strange structure at Bakersfield that advertised itself as the ‘World’s Tallest Thermometer’. The dull Highway 15 was packed with cars but moving. As we crossed the Nevada Border, the clocks went back an hour. We stopped at Primm for petrol. Outside California, it cost around $20 to keep a half empty tank topped up. It was as low as $2.54 a gallon in Arizona but $4+ in California. Petrol was about the only thing cheaper than in the UK. Primm was the first indication of gambling, but the place looked half built and deserted. The traffic got heavier as we approached Las Vegas.

The Rough Guide summarised Las Vegas: “Shimmering from the desert haze of Nevada, like a latter-day El Dorado, Las Vegas is the most dynamic, spectacular city on earth. At the start of the Twentieth century, it didn’t even exist. Now it is home to over two and a half million people. Boasting sixteen of the world’s thirty largest hotels, it’s a monument to architectural exuberance, whose flamboyant, no expense spared casinos lure in well over 40 million tourists a year.” I call it ‘Lost Wages’.

Back in the summer of 1980 as a twenty year old, I had rolled into Las Vegas on a Greyhound Bus one evening. You could see the neon lights from miles away and it looked like a vast multi coloured spaceship had landed in the Nevada desert. My mate Steve and I got out with our backpacks and tried to enter various places to get a beer. We were always turned back because we weren’t twenty one years old which was the drinking / gambling age. We were back at the Greyhound Bus station within two hours ready to leave town. I remember that the waiting area had a red carpet which I never saw in any other bus station.

So now I was back aged 64, with my wife in tow. This time we arrived mid afternoon under an overcast sky using Highway 15 parallel to the Strip. I had read that the traffic in Vegas was bad and it didn’t disappoint. We sat in traffic jams as we made for ‘Downtown’, the original centre of town. I had booked a room at the Apache Hotel which was one of the few remaining original hotels (built 1932). It had its own car park and the reception was in the modestly sized ‘Binion’s’ casino. The first shock was that punters could smoke in the casino. The receptionist said if I ‘joined’ the casino (for free), she could waive the parking fee and I’d get $5 to bet with. I managed to find the person who issued the membership, but got lost in the casino on the way back to the receptionist. There were banks of huge slot machines which all looked the same, a couple of bars, a restaurant, blackjack tables and roulette wheels.

The room above the casino was spacious but the view from the ‘window’ was a brick wall. The next revelation was that we were a stone’s throw from Fremont Street. As the Strip evolved from strength to strength with huge casinos, the original downtown was neglected so the Freemont Street Experience had been built to attract the tourists back. Five entire blocks of its central street have been roofed over to form a ‘Celestial Vault’ studded with 16.4 million LED pixels to create a screen that was illuminated in dazzling nightly displays. The casinos (like our one at Binion’s) were on a smaller scale than on the Strip.

Walking five minutes from our room, we entered the ‘Experience’ to see the curved ceiling that was an endless barrage of fabulous colours and images. At one end was ‘Slotzilla’, at 120 foot tall and claimed to be the world’s biggest slot machine, but was really a two tier zip line ride. The street was full of ‘artists’ such as the frozen ‘statues’, Michael Jackson impersonators, a couple of men dressed in huge gorilla suits, someone reading the bible, and ‘Chippendale’ models angling for women to have their photos taken with their buff and bare torsos. There were souvenir shops and casinos on either side of the street. The atmosphere was relaxed with lots of smiling tourists and locals. When I bought a $1 fridge magnet, the shop owner thanked me enthusiastically.

Ducking in and out of a couple of casinos, they seemed to blur into boring nothingness, men and women sat in front of slot machines looking disillusioned as they pressed buttons. Originally, I had been tempted to drive down the Strip that evening to see the lights, but the local TV news reported a ‘road rage’ shooting on the Strip and that the police had shut down a section creating horrendous traffic jams. We had seen enough flashing lights at Freemont Street.

So, we had excellent BBQ ribs, carrot cake and ice cold beers at our casino restaurant and then took our $5 Card to try our hand at a slot machine. Neither of us are gamblers, too mean to even do the lottery and we were clueless on how to do it. I think you now needed a qualification to operate these complicated machines. We ignorantly pressed buttons and within thirty seconds, our $5 was gone. Fortunately, it was the casino’s money. It didn’t inspire me to take up gambling.

Tuesday November 26

The following morning, we set off for the Strip which started a couple of miles away and did a tour of the casinos. The Strip looked positively unappealing without the neon lights but we could take in some of the more famous casinos and attractions. In no particular order, some of the more famous were: The Stratopshere was a 1000ft tall structure (the tallest structure west of the Mississippi) where you could jump from the top (the ‘SkyJump’). There were also thrill rides on top where you were dangled over the edge strapped in as you thought you were about to fall. Not for the faint hearted. The Luxor was guarded by an impassive Spinx. The twin golden 40 storey sentinels of Mandalay Bay looked huge. It was now infamous for a mass shooting in 2017 when a ‘madman’ unloaded 1000 rounds from the 32nd floor, killing 60 and injuring 413 people. The ensuing panic bought the injured up to 867. The sniper shot himself before the police arrested him.

The MGM Grand was (I assume) still the world’s largest hotel (with at least 5000 rooms) but has a small frontage on the Strip. Its size in not revealed until you are in it. New York-New York had a fabulous (‘exuberantly meticulous re-creation’ – Rough Guide) impression of a mini Manhattan, with twelve separate skyscrapers and fronted by the Statue of Liberty. It made ‘Paris’ look almost ordinary with its half size Eiffel Tower straddling the Arc de Triompe and Opera House. The Venetian and Palazzo were equally impressive with facsimiles of six major Venice buildings as well as the Rialto Bridge and Bridge of Sighs. On the top was a recreation of the Grand Canal.

Caesar’s Palace which had been around for fifty years is probably the most well known hotel/casino with fountains and Roman deco outside. It overlooked Gordon Ramsey’s ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ restaurant where fish and chips cost an ambitious $50. Other sights included Trump’s International Hotel, Circus Circus, and Treasure Island. We saw signs advertising strippers, wedding chapels and the ‘World’s Largest Gift Shop’. At the end of the Strip near the airport, we came across the famous ‘Welcome to Las Vegas’ sign. Tour groups were lining up to have their photos taken so we ‘photo-bombed’ them.

Outside Las Vegas, we pulled into Boulder City, still in Nevada, and found the ‘South West Diner’ for a late breakfast. A modest fry up with unlimited coffee plus service cost $40 for the pair of us. While a nice change, it was going to be a lot cheaper to have breakfast in the motels.

Beyond Boulder City across the rocky ridges of the Black Mountains and into Arizona and the ‘Lake Mead National Recreation Area’ was the Hoover Dam. Started in 1931, the Rough Guide said it was “Completed in 1935 and designed to block the Colorado River and provide low-cost electricity for the cities of the Southwest. It’s among the tallest dams ever built (726ft high) and made of enough concrete to build a two lane highway from the west to east coast”.

The concrete arch gravity dam was as impressive in reality, as it had always looked in the photos and for its time was a staggering piece of engineering. We walked out across the Mike O Callaghan Memorial Bridge for a spectacular view down over the complex. Then we drove across the dam itself. For a Monday lunchtime, it was packed with tourists and with the queues, we abandoned the idea of a tour.

We had passed Lake Mead en-route. As the largest reservoir in the U.S it was created after the completion of the Hoover Dam. The reservoir stretches 112 miles long, has a shoreline of 759 miles, and a maximum depth of 532 feet.

We had now entered Arizona, known as the ‘Grand Canyon State’. With an area of 113, 635 square miles it is the sixth largest state and more than 50% lies above a 4,000ft elevation. 5% of its 7.3 million population are Native American which is the third largest Indian population of the 50 states (after California and Oklahoma). They live on 21 Indian Reservations (about 26% of the state’s land) Arizona achieved statehood in 1912 as the 48th state.

On the way to Kingman down the flat Highway 93 in the Detrital Valley, we took a side turning to Chloride. Established in 1862, it is Arizona’s oldest mining town and also has Arizona’s oldest still functioning post office (since 1871). The Cerbat Mountains nearby had produced gold, copper and lead. Now it was a ‘ghost town’ (pop 353) with a ramshackle Wild West appearance and tumbleweed bouncing around. There were quite a few ‘Trump’ signs from the recent US Presidential election. A sign also warned “Attention Hunters – It is illegal to discharge a firearm, a pneumatic weapon over .35 caliber, all archery equipment and hybrid devices with ¼ mile of an occupied structure while taking wildlife.”

Thirty miles from the Californian border, Kingman (pop 30,000), lay at the intersection of interstate 1-40 with both the historic Route 66 and Hwy 93 – the main Phoenix-Las Vegas route. It now publicised itself as a major Route 66 town. Outside the Visitor centre, you could drive your car through an arch which proclaimed ‘Route 66 – Kingman’ and get a stamp for your Route 66 ‘Passport’. The historic Route 66 known as ‘The Main Street of America” was once the main highway between Los Angeles and Chicago. The longest remaining stretch runs from the Californian border to Seligman via Oatman and Kingman. We found a Super 8 to crash in and wondered where they had filmed some of the ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ movie in this town.

Wednesday November 27

From Kingman after breakfast, we followed the original Route 66 for 25 miles west, back over the Black Mountains to ‘one of Arizona’s most appealing ghost towns’ (Rough Guide). Crossing over a vast flat river bed area, there was a sign that warned ‘When flooded turn around. Don’t drown’. Once we climbed into the rugged hills and arid landscape, there were lots of tricky mountain bends (191 over 8 miles) Midway, we crossed the Sitgreaves Pass at 3550ft.

Once gold was discovered, Oatman was established in 1906, and two million ounces of gold were extracted before the mine went bust in 1942. Despite the population leaving, it has survived as a movie backdrop and tourist stop. False fronted structures lined both sides of the road while semi wild burros (donkeys) still roamed around, descended from the miners who left them. It was a lovely little place with lots of character and humorous signs (‘Jackass Ron’s Knives and Swords’). There was another Presidential election sign “Trump: I’ll be back”. When we stopped for photos, the burros would approach and stick their noses through the car windows looking for snacks.

We had to retrace our tracks back to Kingman but felt that the detour had been worth it and gave us an idea of how primitive the original Route 66 must have been. We still had to get to Williams for the afternoon so used the Interstate I-40 to make up time pulling into Seligman after which Route 66 ended shortly afterwards. Seligman’s attraction was as “the Birthplace of Route 66”, although freight trains of over two hundred ‘double decker’ containers pulled by four engines would rumble past the town near the one main street. Many of these containers would have the ‘Amazon’ logo. We were also amazed how many ‘Amazon’ delivery trucks were on the roads. They were everywhere. Apart from the endless Route 66 souvenirs, Seligman had a unique place called “The Roadkill Café” whose motto was ‘You kill it, we’ll grill it”.

The 1-40 took us onto Williams. Thirty two miles west of Flagstaff, it is the closest town to the Grand Canyon and was the last part of Route 66 replaced by the Interstate. A railway to the Grand Canyon 60 miles away was opened here in 1901. It had been rejuvenated to take tourists there now as well.

On the other side of Williams lay ‘Bearizona’ which was Arizona’s Drive-Thru Wildlife Park established in 2010 and covered by a ponderosa pine forest. We’d never done one of these. You could do the three mile loop as many times as you wanted. The animals were sectioned off into separate parts but had plenty of space to roam. The animals we saw were: Black and Grizzly Bear, American and White Bison, American Burro, Bighorn Sheep, Coves and Mule Deers, Proghorn, Reindeer, Rocky Mountain Goat, Alaskan Tundra and Arctic Wolves and Rocky Mountain Elk. We did two loops and on the second one, some animals had come closer to the narrow driving lane. It was wonderful to see all these majestic animals close up. For the wolves and bear sections, we had to keep our windows closed.

There was also a ‘walk through’ section which was more zoo like. Here we saw Rocky Mountain Elk, Jaguar, Javelina, Porcupine, North American River Otter, Racoons, Red Foxes and Beavers (which carried bits of wood around to build structures). It was a cold but wonderful way to spend an afternoon. I wondered how the animals coped with the high Arizona summer temperatures.

We stayed at America's Best Value Inn which had excellent heating in the room. A nighttime exploration revealed that the town had made an effort to put up some lovely Xmas lights and decorations even if it wasn’t December yet.

Thursday November 28

Up early for breakfast, we met three Germans who were also setting off for the Grand Canyon. They had been there yesterday and saw nothing due to the fog. All the helicopter flights had been grounded as well. Today was Thanksgiving Day, a national holiday. I thought that the National Park would get very crowded, so we wanted a good start.

As we motored down highway 64 which had minimal traffic, there were clear blue skies above and white frost on the edges of the road. At the entrance around 8am, there was a small queue, but we were through quickly and took up the offer of ‘National Parks’ annual pass for $80 which would give us admission to any federally run National Park in the USA for the next year. It was $25 (per car) to enter the Grand Canyon which seemed a bargain. The car told us it was -3’C outside.

The Grand Canyon is arguably the most famous natural attraction in the entire country. Despite the impressive statistics of 227 miles long, 10-ish miles wide and a mile deep, it is really the incredible spectacle of differently coloured strata, buttes and peaks within the canyon itself which provides the amazing views. Arriving this early, we decided to do the 23 mile Desert View drive around the South Rim. At the first lookout point which we had to ourselves, we got our first glimpse of the canyon and our mouths dropped. The red sunrise was shadowed over the strata yet everything was vivid. It was an awesome beginning to five hours of pottering along the rim taking in every lookout many of which had few other tourists.

Early on, six elk, one bull and five females, crossed the road right in front of us. We pulled up to take photos without having to leave the car. There were quite a few small unnamed look outs and some named such as Grandview Point (where the first ‘hotel’ was built in late 1890s), Moran Point, Lipan Point and Navajo Point. Every view was slightly different, but I think the joy was having clear blue skies and fresh air which emphasised the detail and silence to take the time to enjoy the views without hoards of tourists chatting away. Occasionally, we would catch a glimpse of the Colorado River.

By the time we reached Desert View the tour groups and tourists were everywhere. This is the first place you’d see if you were coming in from the Eastern entrance. They were lining up to enter the Desert View Tower built in 1932 and clogging up the viewing platform, obsessed with selfies. We couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Heading back, we stopped for a picnic in a deserted look out and then tackled the Grand Canyon Village. This is the central tourist area with a Visitor’s Centre and hotels/lodges. The massive car parks were packed. It was around 1pm. The most famous lookout here was called Mather Point. It is the closest to the Village, so it gets the most tourist traffic. With the sun high overhead, the view was blurry from the heat and not as nice as we had seen earlier. But I suppose that is one of the joys of the Grand Canyon, the brightness and shading changes throughout the day.

From the Grand Canyon Village, you can descend into the Canyon via the Bright Angel Trail which drops from 6900 ft at the surface to 3800ft (Indian Garden – 4.6 miles away), then down to the Colorado River, nine and a half miles from the South Rim where you started. Back in August 1980, my mate Steve and I had tackled this trail in so many wrong ways. The recommendation was that you set off early before the sun got too high, carried plenty of water and food and took your time. If you were going as far as the Colorado River, you should camp overnight and then climb back up the next day.

As 20 year olds, we’d had a late night in the bar and woke up late. We took small bottles of water, no food and decided in the heat of the day that we would ‘jog’ down the trail to make up time. We found two water stops early on and nothing after. No matter, we were going downhill and it was easy apart from dodging all the tourists descending on mules along the steep rocky trail.

I remember us reaching the Colorado River and only spending 45 minutes there. I had a dip to cool down because the humidity in the heat of summer was so ferocious. We left about 3.30pm. Now it was 9 ½ miles climbing back up. We were already dehydrated and hungry. In the early evening, about two miles from the top, I suddenly collapsed with cramp in both legs and arms. I’d sweated out any salt I had left. Four French pensioners got me to my feet and gave me water and a snack. Steve was too busy laughing to help. They supported me until I could walk again. Now in 2024, I was interested to see a warning in the Visitor Centre about the Bright Angel Trail “Hiking to bottom and back in one day is dangerous. Rescue is not guaranteed.” Tell me about it. Fun fact: Located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, is the village of Supai, the only place in the country where mail is delivered by mule.

Many months before our trip, I had booked Wendy and I a helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon. Neither of us had ever been in a helicopter and it seemed fitting to do one here. It was booked for 4pm with Papillon Helicopters in the small village of Tusayan. As we left the Park entrance around 3pm to drive south 15 minutes, we were shocked to see two queues of cars trying to get in which were both at a least a mile long.

In the ‘Welcome Centre’ we were weighed and watched a safety briefing. We were also given a fold up life jacket which seemed a little strange. The Colorado River would be a mile beneath us. If the helicopter went down, I didn’t think I’d be worrying about drowning. I had booked a 30 minute flight. Our time came and went and a few groups arrived and departed. Finally, around 4.30pm we were directed to a red Airbus A-Star helicopter and climbed aboard with two other men. We were told to put on headphones and mic so our Canadian pilot Dominic could talk to us or hear our questions, play snatches of music and a couple of narratives.

Before we knew it, we were up and away in a gentle motion, then turning on our side and heading to the Canyon over forests of pine and fir trees around the ‘no fly’ zone of the Village. It probably took ten minutes to get to the edge and suddenly we were over the canyon. We spent at least thirty minutes circling around different parts. With the size of it, it was as if we were doing it in slow motion. We saw good stretches of the Colorado River, which we hadn’t really seen from our earlier lookouts. Dominic told us that in the height of summer, he rescued at least two tourists a day who got lost or injured hiking into the canyon. I thought it best not to mention my experience in 1980.

The sun was starting to set, so the rocks were getting covered in bright red shading which made it look very different from earlier. Then it was back to the ‘airport’ and return ten minute flight. We swooped in over the clearing and descended like a feather onto the helipad. I calculated that we had been in the air for at least fifty minutes and maybe they had ‘upgraded’ us as one of the last flights of the day. We were jubilant about our experience which had rounded off our Grand Canyon experience perfectly. Everybody should try and see this once in their lifetimes.

We still had to make tracks by returning to the National Park and retracing our Desert View route which was really Highway 64. Relieved that the queues had almost disappeared, we re-entered the park (using our annual ticket) and headed along the familiar road. We stopped for a ‘final’ viewing at dusk and almost immediately caught sight of a dozen deer grazing by the side of the road.

For the eighty three mile drive, I had calculated that it would take one hour and forty five minutes to reach Tuba City where we had a hotel booked. But in the pitch black we were following other cars and driving at their speed. There were no signs with mileage which didn’t help. At Cameron, we found Highway 89 but didn’t see the mountain called ‘Black Knob’ because everywhere was black. About sixteen miles north I spotted a turn off onto Highway 160 and then into Tuba City.

We were in Najavo country and were staying at an Indian Hotel called the Najavoland Hotel. I had to use a luggage trolley to wheel our suitcases and ‘stuff’ around two of the lengthy corridors. But we had made it without having to backtrack to Williams. All the staff were Najavo Indians.

Friday November 29

There was an Indian run restaurant next door which provided breakfast for the hotel. We had a basic fry up, toast and coffee and discovered hazelnut flavoured coffee cream. Then we went to explore. Tuba City is the largest community on the western side of the Navajo Nation. The Mormons moved in around the 1870s and took over from the local Indians but were then were forced out in 1903 when it was added to the Navajo lands. ‘Tuba’ was either a derivative name of an Indian chief or it meant ‘Tangled Waters’ because the area’s water comes from underground channels as far away as Monument Valley. The town has the distinction of straddling two separate time zones – Mountain Standard Time, while part of the town is set to Daylight Savings Time, an hour later.

We visited the impressive looking Tuba Trading Post which dated back to the 1880s. There was even a lookout post on top of it. Inside was an expensive array of Indian based souvenirs but at the back was the one roomed ‘Windtalkers’ Museum. This was the story of the Navajo Indians who were recruited by the US Army in World War Two to come up with a communication code that the Japanese opponents would not understand. They communicated orders through the radio using their own language and formulated other codes using their own native tongue. For example, they used the names of various birds to pertain to the different planes of the Second World War. The Navajo code they created was never decoded by anyone and it remained unbroken throughout WWII. At the entrance to the museum was a touching statement by a Navajo Soldier that said “It was the Going to War Ceremony. The blessing that they gave me was supposed to put a shield around me, an invisible shield, that the bullet would come right for my nose and hit that shield and go away. And it worked. I came back. If it hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here.”

We drove back to Highway 89 and headed north to Page. The long straight stretches of tarmac allowed me to motor at 90 mph. The State Troopers tended to hang around the Interstate Highways where the speed limit was still an enjoyable 75 mph. That was one of the joys of driving around Arizona. If you had to make up time, you could really put your foot down and there were garages everywhere. The arid landscape was full of eroded, orange coloured hills with different strata. Just outside Page we saw a large billboard that said “Shoot a machine gun! 3 miles ahead”.

Three miles south of Page, the Colorado River makes an extravagant 180 degree turn in the depth of Marble Canyon. Wikipedia said “Horseshoe Bend is a superb example of an entrenched meander. Six million years ago, the region around Horseshoe Bend was much closer to sea level, and the Colorado River was a meandering river with a nearly level floodplain. Between six and five million years ago, the region began to be uplifted. This trapped the Colorado River in its bed, and the river rapidly cut downwards to produce Horseshoe Bend as we see it today”.

The local promotors were ambitiously calling it the ‘East rim of the Grand Canyon’ and now charging $10 for the privilege of seeing it. It was an easy if crowded ten minute walk down a dusty trail. I recognised some of the tourist groups we had seen yesterday. The overlook is 4,200 feet above sea level, and the Colorado River is at 3,200 feet above sea level, making it a 1,000-foot drop. I’ll admit the view was outstanding (even if we had seen a similar view in Namibia, Africa) but once you had clambered around the rocks taking photos and realising that they were all starting to look the same, there wasn’t much else to see apart from watching the other tourists taking selfies. Wendy found the massive Walmart at Page much more interesting, and we stocked up on foodstuff, snacks, alcohol and cheap clothing. It had been so cold, Wendy bought a woolly hat and gloves to keep warm.

We headed south east down the picturesque Highway 98 and rejoined Highway 160. Had we turned left, we would have eventually ended back in Tuba City, but we turned right for Kayenta. We were spending the entire day in the vast Navejo Nation. From Kayenta, it was a flat, very straight twenty mile drive on Highway 163 to Monument Valley. We could see the red and orange ‘buttes’ in the distance which stood out on the flat landscape.

We reached the Utah border and crossed over a few hundred metres before turning right to try and enter Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park four miles away, but it was after 4pm and they wouldn’t let us in. No matter, we could come back tomorrow. We marvelled at the surrounding landscape and took too many photos.

Arizona is one of the four corner states along with New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. If we had continued for another 60 miles on Highway 163 we could have seen ‘Four Corners’ but it was a long 120 mile detour that didn’t seem worth it on this trip.

We returned to Kayenta which is the tourist centre for the Monument Valley and stayed at the Wetherill Inn, not realising until the following morning that it had an indoor heated swimming pool.

Saturday November 30

We returned back to Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park as it opened at 8am. The temperature outside was -6’c and frost was on any vegetation. But we started the seventeen mile loop around the majestic landscape and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. The cloudless blue sky set off the towering red and orange buttes which changed in colour as the sun rose during the morning.

The Rough Guide was accurate when it stated that “The classic Wild West landscape of stark sandstone buttes and forbidding pinnacles of rock, poking from an endless expanse of drifting red sands, is an archetypal image. Only when you arrive at Monument Valley do you realise how much your perception of the West has in fact been shaped by this one spot, perfectly concentrated and distilled”. It provided the backdrop for all those ancient John Ford western movies and was even where Forrest Gump gave up his running years.

Monument Valley is not really a valley. There’s no permanent stream, nor higher ground to either side. The whole region was once a flat plain concealing the top of what are now the tallest ’monuments’. In the past ten million years, the ‘Monument uplift’ had pushed the plain up from below, bulging to create cracks that had since eroded to leave only isolated nuggets of hard rock.

We spent over four hours pottering around, exploring, marvelling at the shapes of the rocks, the colours, the sheer vast flat surroundings and wore out the camera. It was such a wonderful place and somewhere we had always wanted to see. It didn’t disappoint. It is still a stronghold of Navajo culture and Wendy bought her only souvenir of an ‘Dreamcatcher’ from a local Navajo man. He told us that they didn’t have running water or electricity and the state of Utah wouldn’t pay for the infrastructure. I asked if they got mail delivered and he said that they did.

Returning to Kayenta (again), we took the Arrowhead Highway 59 as the most direct and scenic route to Canyon de Chelly. We spent fifty miles skirting the northern flanks of the Black Mesa across flat desert grasslands. The Canyon de Chelly (pronounced ‘Shay’) had been touted on various websites as one of the Top 20 things to see in Arizona. I had never heard of it.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument was and is a sacred symbolic Navajo site where they lived for centuries before the Spanish massacred them in 1805. Repopulating the area, the US Army arrived in 1863-64 to defeat them in battle and then rounded up thousands of Indians and marched them into New Mexico. Hundreds died. Nevertheless. the Indians still live and farm here.

We did the South Rim for twenty five miles which ended in a dead end. By the ‘White House Ruin’ look out the canyon was 550ft deep. On a beautiful sunny afternoon, it was picturesque, and we only saw four other tourists but after the Grand Canyon, Horseshoe Bend and Monumental Valley, it was just another canyon complex that we found rather underwhelming. Others will disagree.

We’d run out of time to do the Petrified Forest National Park and made for Holbrook via the very straight Highway 191 and Interstate 40. It was really just a one strip town with five different road intersections. Pulling in at the Day’s Inn, we treated ourselves to an all you can eat Chinese buffet down the road. We had been living off a lot of sandwiches and snacks in the motel rooms so a meal out was a luxury.

Sunday December 1

Today we spent five hours at the Petrified Forest National Park where we got free entry with our National Park annual pass. Designated a National Monument in 1906, it now encompasses 146 square miles. We entered north of Interstate 40 and drove south.

The ‘petrified’ trees were conifers that date from the Triassic period (225 million years ago) and predate the dinosaurs. Washed by floods that flowed into this area, logs were buried by mud and then volcanic ash, and later became fossilised by the action of mineral-laden water that left colourful deposits around the wood cells.

The Park also included picturesque stretches of the Painted Desert, an area of multicoloured Badlands that covers much of northeast Arizona. The blue tinged clays and crumbling sands support little vegetation or life and continue to rapidly erode. At different times of the day, the undulating expanse of clay topped mounds took on different colours, with an emphasis on blueish shades of grey and reddish shades of brown.

We pottered along a twenty eight mile scenic drive across an eerie desert scape. There were eight overlooks providing views of the park’s colourful Badlands, buttes and mesas. Route 66 had even originally come through here, symbolised by an old rusty 1932 Studebaker where the road had been.

It took a while to actually spot any of the fossilised trees but eventually there were acres of them. Most were chunks of tree truck lying on the ground fully emerged, others were gradually appearing out of cliff sides as erosion made its impact.

South of I-40, we continued to Newspaper Rock where (with binoculars) you could see more than 600 petroglyphs, some of which date back 2,000 years. These petrographs were rock carvings made by Navajo Indians by pecking directly on the rock surface by using stone implements. We moved onto the ‘Tepees’ overlook with tepee-shaped rock formations before heading to the Blue Mesa detouring around a 3.5-mile loop road to take in more views from overlooks. At ‘Agate Bridge’ we saw the famous 110-foot long petrified log that spanned a gully, and at the ‘Jasper Forest’ overlook, finally came across a panoramic view of acres of the glittering fossilised trees. The vivid colours, different shapes and sheer scale of the area were outstanding, along with the opportunity to marvel at ancient relics. The National Park was difficult to describe but our photos capture its essence. It was so much better than I expected. Recommended.

We had been spending a lot more time at our ‘sights’ than I had anticipated. I am usually guilty of travelling vast distances to not spend much time at the destination - a ‘been there, done that’ attitude, but with the Arizona sights, we took as much time as we wanted to without needing to rush on But now, we were falling behind with our time and we decided to skip Flagstaff and the Meteor Crater. We had visited one in Namibia which had the largest piece of meteorite on earth. This privately owned ‘crater’ in Arizona charged a hefty admission price for what was essentially the opportunity to take a few photos. We passed on that.

I had also listed the possibilities of visiting the mountain resorts of Sedona and Jerome. The local TV had promoted Sedona as a wonderful place to come and do your Xmas shopping and then interviewed the locals complaining about the traffic jams and hoards of tourists. We could definitely skip that. Missing those unfortunately meant that we also missed somewhere called ‘Happy Jack’ which isn’t really a place but just a tiny community in an old logging area. They have now built the Lowell Discovery Telescope here. Arizona is known to astronomers for it’s clear night skies. The planet of Pluto was discovered from the Lowell observatory in Flagstaff in 1930.

It was tempting to take Highway 77 to ‘Snowflake’ (where Millennials go to die?), but we took the more direct Highway 377 down to the Tonto National Forest. After a week of flat desert landscapes, it was a bit of a shock to drive through miles of fir and pine trees growing on large cliffs. On Highway 260, it was like driving through Europe in and out of forested valleys.

Around 5pm, we pulled into Payson for the night at the Rim Country Inn. Payson lay at 5000ft altitude with the surrounding National Forest. It was ninety miles north east of Phoenix and seemed to have nothing but fast food restaurants and motels. The friendly young owner told me that “we have plans to develop night clubs on this road. We think that there could be lots of potential.” I didn’t like to say that it was a long way to drive from anywhere to sample Payson’s lack of tourist sights the morning after the night before.

Monday December 2

We had no intention of visiting Phoenix. It is the only state capital in the United States with over a million population and is also known as the ‘hottest city’ in the US. A city is a city to us, and we were more interested in the scenery than shopping malls and museums. From Payson, we followed Highway 87 south to Scottsdale but turned off before the centre. Scottsdale, ten North east of Phoenix has a population of 250,000 and stretches twenty miles north to south. It was now really just an extension of Phoenix.

On the outskirts, we had come to see Taliesin West which was the vast home of architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). When I had lived in Buffalo, New York in 1978-79, I had visited one of the homes that Frank Lloyd Wright had designed including the furniture and I had been hooked. I had also visited the superb Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan that looked like a huge ice cream swirl which was one of his finest designs.

He designed more than 1000 structures over a creative period of seventy years and played a key role influencing architects worldwide through his works and mentoring hundreds of apprentices. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called “organic architecture.”

The Rough Guide said of Taliesan West “On the far northeastern edge of Scottsdale, set on 600 acres of desert, it is still a splendidly isolated spot where his trademark ‘organic architecture’ makes perfect sense”. Apparently, Wright and his students camped out and assessed the terrain long before building any permanent structures and the complex blended seamlessly into the desert by using natural forms to shape its structures. It was Wright's winter home and studio from 1937 until his death in 1959. It is now on the World Heritage List “deserving protection for the benefit of all humanity because of its Outstanding Universal Value”.

Wright felt very strongly about the connection to the desert. Wikipedia says “The structure's walls are made of local desert rocks, stacked within wood forms, filled with concrete – colloquially referred to as "desert masonry". Wright always favoured using the materials readily available rather than those that must be transported to the site. Natural light also played a major part in the design. In the south-facing dining room, Wright did not take the masonry walls from floor to ceiling, and designed the roof to hang past the walls preventing unwanted sun rays from penetrating but allowing for horizontal light to pass through the room. Wright believed natural light aided the work environment for his apprentices, keeping the inside of his building in touch with the natural surroundings.” Every part of Taliesin West had Frank Lloyd Wright's personal touch. Upon every return after a summer in Wisconsin, he constantly changed and improved on his design. All of the furniture and decorations were designed by Wright who got his apprentices to build them.

We arrived just after it opened. The guided tours had been replaced by an ‘audio’ tour which took you through each room and the outside features. Wright himself would often be used to comment on his ideas on why something had been designed. It was nice to take pause the commentary, take as long as you wanted, wait until rooms had emptied of other tourists and just sit there and take in the room. I was pleased to see that a few school groups were being taken round by their teachers.

The final room was the marvellous cabaret theatre. Built with six sides, out of the standard rock-concrete mixture, in an irregularly hexagonal shape, the theatre provided its occupants with brilliant acoustics. Someone sitting in the back row could hear the lightest whisper from a speaker on stage. The unique red seating (also with hexagonal shaped backing) and lighting was also designed by Wright. It was a great experience to explore the complex and made me want to research his other designs. Recommended.

We found our way back to Highway 87 headed south and skirted around Phoenix and joined Interstate 10 heading Southeast (eventually to El Paso in Texas). Before Tucson, we saw a sign to our next destination ‘Saguaro National Park’ and then the signs stopped. We passed a small airport and stayed on the road. There were cacti by the side of the road but no sign of the National Park. Miles later, the road suddenly finally ended at the entrance to a mine. The security guard told us the turn off was back down by the airport. We retraced our route and guess what, there was a sign indicating the park coming from this direction but not coming from the other side. Which is why we hadn’t seen it.

The Saguaro National Park has two sections on either side of Interstate 10 - Saguaro East and Saguaro West. We did the West section and got free admission using our National Parks pass. It was around 4pm and we’d have until sunset around 6pm to explore. This park had desert ‘forests’ of monumental, multi-limbed saguaro cactuses, which are only found in Arizona. Preferring sloping foothills, they begin growing slowly taking about fifteen years to grow to a foot and around fifty years to reach seven feet. They are almost hundred years old before they begin to take on their typical many-armed appearance. Most of the saguaros in the park were old ones. We followed a three mile sand trail to various spots and got out to walk amongst the towering cacti. As the light fell, it got more atmospheric and we were finally treated to a wonderful red/orange sunset behind the huge plants.

Finding our way back to the Interstate, we found it gridlocked with rush hour Tucson traffic. We crawled along finally pulling off for the airport where we eventually found a Days Inn motel. It had been another long day and didn’t inspire us to explore Tucson.

Tuesday December 3

The traffic was moving this morning and we were heading sixty seven miles south away from Tucson. At Benson, we turned off Interstate 10 and made for our next destination – Tombstone which the Rough Guide described as “Perhaps the most famous town in the Wild West.”

Edward Schieffelin prospecting in the mountains in 1879 was told by soldiers that he would just find his own tombstone. Ironically, he then made Arizona’s largest silver strike and called the budding town Tombstone which by 1880 had 10.000 people. Wikipedia said “Within two years of its founding, Tombstone had a bowling alley, four churches, an ice house, a school, two banks, three newspapers, and an ice-cream parlor, alongside 110 saloons, 14 gambling halls, and numerous dance halls and brothels. All of these businesses were situated among and atop many silver mines. The gentlemen and ladies of Tombstone attended operas presented by visiting acting troupes at the Schieffelin Hall opera house, while the miners and cowboys saw shows at the Bird Cage Theatre and brothel.” Well over a century since its mining days came to an end, “The Town Too Tough to Die” still clings to an afterlife as a tourist theme park which became a National Historical Landmark as far back as 1962.

Our first impressions were very favourable. It was a sleepy Tuesday morning with minimal tourists. Locals dressed as cowboys or lawmen patrolled the half dozen dusty streets. The main strip ‘East Allen Street’ is at the centre of Tombstone, featuring three blocks of shaded wooden boardwalks lined with gift shops, saloons with swinging doors, and eateries. This historic district is closed to motor traffic. Most of the buildings date from the 1880s.

Tombstone is most famous for its ‘Gunfight at the OK Corral’ where on October 26, 1881 the ‘lawmen’ Earp brothers and Doc Holiday took on the Clanton Cowboy gang of cattle rustlers and horse thieves. The gunfight was the result of a long-simmering feud between five outlaws (including two sets of brothers Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury) and four representatives of the law, including three brothers (Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp). The trigger for the event was the local marshal's (Virgil Earp) decision to implement a city requirement that prohibited the carrying of weapons into town. To enforce that ordinance, the lawmen (including Wyatt’s close friend Doc Holiday) had to disarm the Cowboys. During that brief battle, three men were killed, three were wounded, two ran away, and one fought but was unharmed. The historic gunfight is often portrayed as occurring at the O.K. Corral, though it actually occurred a short distance away in an empty lot on Fremont Street.

There was an ‘reenactment’ of the gunfight three times a day nearby to where it happened. An outside museum of western artifacts and a mannequin display of the ‘characters’ in the positions that Wyatt Earp described many years later kept us occupied until we were all led into a small compound with three wooden facades proving the backdrop. The ‘audience’ was told to boo the Cowboys when they appeared/disappeared and cheer for the lawmen so everyone got involved. The Cowboys drinking heavily, had comical scripts and slapstick moves. A very dapper Doc Holiday provided the narration and Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp were serious about their task. It was a fun twenty minute performance to watch but when the rapid gunfight started, the loud sound of the guns (obviously with blanks) stunned everyone. After the gunfight with bodies lying in the dust, a child as shocked as everyone by the bangs was crying in amongst the tourists. Doc Holiday looked over his shoulder and said ‘Sorry kid’.

The $10 ticket also included the ‘Historama’ a quaint twenty six minute presentation of Tombstone’s history using animated figures, movies and narrated by Vincent Price. It had been built in 1963 and was still going. In addition, the ticket let you into the Tombstone Epitaph Museum which housed the newspaper presses of the town’s first newspaper. You were also given a replica of the Oct 27 1881 edition of the Tombstone Epitaph which reported the gunfight in detail.

Wendy fancied the ‘Stagecoach’ ride which took you for a mile long ride around the streets with the driver pointing out the famous buildings and the history of Tombstone. We pretty much walked the entire town as well. Three buildings stood out. Bird Cage Theatre was Tombstone’s leading venue for entertainment. It got its name from the fourteen bed sized, draped cages from the ceiling used by prostitutes to entertain their clients. A bordello, gambling den, dance hall and saloon during the 1880s it was known as the ‘wildest place in the West’ in those days. The second building was the original imposing 1882 Courthouse in red brick and white trimming. It had been abandoned in 1931 and restored in the 1950s. The third was Big Nose Kate’s saloon. She was Doc Holiday’s girlfriend and was a big nose because she was ‘nosey’ about everyone’s affairs. Outside one bar was a notice that said “Ha’Kuna Ma Vodka – it means no memories for the rest of the day”. Another sign said ”Politicians! Please scrape shit from shoes before entering!”

The other novelty thing we did was to have our photo taken as 1880s characters. Wendy was dressed in a bright red dress clutching a big bag of gold while I had an overcoat and hat and clutched a rifle looking foreboding. We had various photos taken by the friendly ex Ohio citizen who had been doing this for thirty two years and opted for the Bob looks miserable, Wendy looks happy. With a surrounding wording of “Wanted dead or alive $25,000 reward” it looked perfect. We were in Tombstone for about five hours. I could have stayed the night and trawled the saloons. Someone I work with took their kids and they stayed three days. I can see why. It was very well done.

We had added an additional place. Twenty five miles south of Tombstone and seven miles from the Mexican border, the town of Bisbee was crammed into a narrow gorge at 5300ft. It was built on the wealth of a copper mine. In 1910 with 15,000 people, it was larger than both Phoenix and Tucson. The wealthy residents built many elegant Victorian brick buildings many of which have survived allowing the Rough Guide to conclude that Bisbee is “among Arizona’s most atmospheric Victorian towns.” I just liked the name.

After taking in the crammed architecture, I set to on my real purpose of visit. I knew that one of my favourite comedians Doug Stanhope lived in Bisbee, and it seemed rude not to check it out. During our Arizona travels, we asked various people if they had heard of Doug Stanhope and they gave us blank stares. As we were driving around Bisbee, we spotted an elderly man and asked if he had ever heard of the comedian. “Of course. He lives out in Warren. His address is on the internet if you want to find him. I’ve seen the Funhouse where he entertains people.” We looked up the address which was 212 Van Dyke. He obviously didn’t have anything to hide.

En route we passed a massive open cast mine called the Copper Queen Mine. It had opened in 1877 and closed in 1975. Six billion dollars of minerals had been extracted. Apparently, Cardiac Hill, a staircase with 1,000 steps, was used by miners to climb from their underground workplaces within the mine.

Doug Stanhope’s home was up a narrow road. Outside the spacious compound was a variety of ‘tat’ – signposts, an old petrol pump, parking meters etc. It even had a sign saying Stanhope Place on the wall. We took some photos and peered over the wall to see the multi-coloured ‘Funhouse’ and his neighbours who were out in the garden started chatting. “We drove all the way from Los Angeles to see this” I joked. “That’s’ where we are originally from” They replied. We told them we were from the UK. “Doug loves to have company. I think he’s home. Yes” she pointed “that’s his red car over there. If his gate is open, you should knock on his door.” “I don’t want to bother him” I replied but Wendy said “Let’s take a look.” The gate was closed. Wendy still wanted to knock but I would feel like a stalker if we did. Still, it was nice to see where he lived – not something on most people’s itinerary of touring Arizona. And if I ever meet him…

It was 5pm and we had to make tracks. We had reached the far south east of Arizona and needed to start heading west and make our way back to Los Angeles. Instead of retracing Highway 80 back to Benson via Tombstone, we took Highway 90 via Sierra Vista and back up to Interstate 10. As we approached Tucson, the traffic thickened and we were stuck back in the gridlock we had experienced last night. With no choice but to sit in the crawling traffic it seemed to take hours to get past Tucson and finally take Interstate 8 south of Phoenix to head due west. In the darkness, our side of the road just had the occasional truck. We roared down this road at 90 mph in pitch black making up time.

We pulled into Gila Band which was a minor agricultural centre where cotton was an important crop and checked into the Gila Band Lodge on the main strip. It was our seventh wedding anniversary today and even though Tombstone had been somewhere we would both always remember, I wanted to take Wendy out (and spare her from sandwiches again!). The hotel receptionist said that there was a good Italian Sicilian restaurant ‘Little Italy Pizza’ just down the road.

Since it was getting on for 9pm, there was only one other table occupied. When we looked at the menu, we noticed a tag that said “Prince Harry’s favourite” against the ‘Meat Feast’ pizza. Then on the wall, we noticed a large cut out of a younger looking Prince Harry with a Union Jack and the words “Keep calm. Yes! Prince Harry ate here”. I love pizza and ordered the ‘large’ 14” Meat Feast. Wendy opted for a Caesar Salad. That won’t be enough I thought. “Shall we get a starter?”. We looked and couldn’t decide and ordered the dish that contained some of everything. A huge bowl arrived. We had tackled half of it when a very large salad and a massive pizza arrived. Even I was struggling. We had eaten about half of it and I must have looked like Mr Creosote from Monty Python’s ‘Meaning of Life’ movie, because when the waitress walked over, she said “I think you’ll be needing to take this away with you” and went to box it up. I think they wanted to close and had an image of us still trying to finish at midnight. Fortunately, our motel rooms had microwaves, so I was able to finish the left-overs during the next two evenings.

Wednesday December 4

After a very small breakfast, we had a driving day ahead of us with no idea what we would see. Our ultimate destination was Lake Havasu City. As we left Gila Bends heading directly north on Highway 85, we started to see cotton fields. I had no idea that they grew cotton here and wondered how much water it took. There were also bright green crops whose colour was juxtapositioned against the yellow desert backdrop. We would be driving on flat roads all day. We picked up Interstate 10 heading west (eventually to San Deigo) near Buckeye and joined the endless Amazon delivery trucks. The scenery must have been nothing special because we have no photographs.

We pulled in at Quartzite, where in January, the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous comes together to sell gems and minerals and hold ‘swap meets’ (whatever they are). It attracts around one and a half million tourists in January and February (to a small town of 2,500 people). Lots of RVs were parked because for some reason it attracted them as well in the winter months. I could think of more scenic places to hole up. There were signs to the Hi Jolly Monument everywhere. This is the burial place of er, Hi Jolly (real name Hadji Ali), an Ottoman citizen who took part in the experimental US Camel corps as a camel driver. I guess they don’t have many famous people here to boast about. They did, however, have Joanne’s Gum Museum which featured a large collection of gum wrappers from around the world. Somehow, we missed that because they weren’t any signs.

Just before the California border, we joined Highway 1 to head north along the Parker Valley. This all fell within the Colorado River Indian Reservation which had been here since 1865. Agricultural crops of alfalfa, cotton, lettuce and sorghum seemed to be grown. Local elections to the Indian Council were on the horizon and the roadside was littered with small placards promoting two dozen candidates.

Almost twenty miles out of Parker, we came across the Parker Dam which was a Depression-era project finished in 1938 which created the forty six long Havasu Lake. It is the deepest dam in the world, dug 235 ft into the riverbed. Consequently, 70% of its structural height is buried beneath the original riverbed. The dam was designed to divert the Colorado River to the cities of southern California. Since 1985, it has also provided water for Phoenix and Tucson.

Ten miles from the Californian border, Lake Havasu boasts the old grey stones of London Bridge which stretches across part of the damned Colorado River. While the Rough Guide was unimpressed, I thought it looked wonderful and classy. A developer called Robert P. McCulloch wanted to build a new town on the lake and thought a centre piece would promote it. He bought the old 1831 London Bridge in 1968 for $2,460,000 and had 10,000 numbered blocks of granite shipped across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles and then moved overland. It was reconstructed by 1971 around a concrete infrastructure. Lacking any appropriate stretch of water for the bridge to span, a channel was dug beneath it. An urban myth arose that McCulloch thought he was buying the Tower Bridge, but he knew what he was getting. He had the last laugh, because London Bridge now ranks second among Arizona’s tourist attractions after the Grand Canyon. Lake Havasu City which didn’t really exist before London Bridge arrived now has a population of around 57,000.

Thursday December 5

It was time to return to California. We headed south and turned onto Highway 62. The clocks went back an hour, and our petrol rose a dollar a gallon in price. I noticed that we could take in the Joshua Tree National Park on the way to Los Angeles and since we had a free ‘National Park’ pass, it would have been rude not to. Most of our generation would never have heard of a Joshua tree had it not been for U2’s 1987 album.

We popped into the Visitors Centre in the centre of Twentynine Palms (a great name for a town) before entering the park which now gets over three million visitors a year. The Park was located where the ‘low’ Colorado Desert meets the ‘high’ Mojave Desert and protects 3,200 square kilometres of “grotesquely gnarled plants which aren’t trees at all but a type of yukka, an agave” (Rough Guide). They were originally named by the Mormons in the 1850s, who saw in their craggy branches the arms of Joshua pointing to the promised land.

The eastern half of the park was the Colorado Desert (less than 914m above sea level) which had various cactuses but no Joshua Trees. Once we crossed into the Mohave Desert (more than 914m above sea level), there were ‘forests’ of Joshua Trees. These ‘yukkas’ can rise up to 12 metres (40ft) at one inch per year. Its waxy, spiny leaves expose little surface area, efficiently conserving moisture. At one point we saw a ‘tortoise crossing’ sign which we laughed at. As well as the Joshua trees, there were wonderfully shaped granite rock outcrops (mostly quartz monzonite) which had been cracked into blocks from weathering. One uniquely shaped rock was ‘Skull rock’ which attracted more tourist selfies. Somehow, we spent more than four enjoyable hours just exploring and pottering around and were glad we had to come and have a look.

As the sun fell and the desert floor started to get bathed in red light we headed north to Victorville. We had booked a motel over the internet. It was dark before we got to what turned out to be a large and busy town of rush hour traffic. For some dumb reason, I thought we were staying the ‘Comfort Inn’. I found the road that it was on, but the road was miles long. We followed it in one direction until the buildings faded away with no sign of the motel. I went into a store and asked. It was at the other end of the road near a small theme park. We retraced our route down the busy road and pulled in at the Comfort Inn. “This looks a little posh” I commented before going into tell the friendly receptionist I had a reservation. She couldn’t find it and I went back to the car to find my phone to look at the booking. I then discovered it was the ‘Quality Inn’ Doh! She was kind enough to print out directions.

Twenty minutes later we pulled into a distinctly less posh motel by the side of a busy road. I’m not sure where the ‘Quality’ tag came from because this was the most basic hotel we stayed in and made Days Inn and Super 8 motels feel positively palatial. It was cheap but hardly seemed worth the effort.

Friday December 6

At least we were near Interstate 15 which took us south before turning onto Highway 91 to the strangely named district of Yorba Linda. We had come to see our second Presidential Library of the trip, that of Richard ‘Tricky Dick’ Nixon, the 37th President. I had studied Nixon, Watergate and Vietnam a lot so I was interested in how they would portray him.

Usually with the Presidential Libraries they start off with the President’s childhood and entry into politics and then what they did as President. At Nixon’s you went straight into Vietnam and then Watergate. It provided a surprisingly honest opinion that while he was a brilliant politician, he was also paranoid which was his Achilles heel. He was seen justifying his decision to start bombing Cambodia (backed up by War Crimes escapee Henry Kissinger).

Watergate was also covered extensively. They even showed some of the Frost/Nixon interviews. I thought that they were fair assessments with the whole episode of Watergate really just his paranoia setting off something that in the end he couldn’t control. I had seen his August 8 1974 ‘resignation letter’ in the National Archives in Washington DC back in 1979, but strangely, there was no copy on show in his Presidential Library.

In his ‘Oval Office’ copy, I could sit at the Presidential ‘Endeavour’ Desk. There wasn’t too much on how he made his name by hounding supposed Communists in the 1940s/50s and of his Vice-Presidential years, it seemed to be based on the ‘Checkers’ speech where he said hadn’t taken any freebies but the family had been given a dog called Checkers which he wouldn’t give back. There were good sections on his diplomatic ties with Russia and China which opened up relations that Reagan would take advantage of as well as other world leaders he was involved with. Surprisingly, his childhood and youth were covered last, almost as an afterthought.

Outside in the ‘garden’ at the other end of the water feature was his birthplace which had been constructed by Nixon's father using a home building kit in 1912 on six acres of land. It had now been restored to appear as it was in the 1910s. President Nixon and Pat Nixon are buried on the grounds, just a few feet from his birthplace. Nearby was the helicopter that took Nixon on his final flight from the White House after he had resigned.

In 28’c heat, we headed back along Highway 91 and up Highway 71 to Chino where I had reserved the Best Western Pine Tree Hotel which was far superior to the Quality Inn. We spent the evening repacking our cases for the flight home and finishing up most of the food.

Saturday December 7

It was our last day, and I had booked a tour of the Warner Brothers Studios. Although everyone thinks that Hollywood produces the movies, in reality many of the big studios moved out of Tinseltown long ago and much of the business of making films and TV shows is located in Burbank. Although it was supposedly only an hour from Chino, based on the horrendous traffic we had sat in around Los Angeles, we gave ourselves plenty of time. Since it was a Saturday morning, it was quiet to start with as we took Highway 71 to Interstate 210, past Pasadena and onto Highway 134 into Burbank.

It cost $15 to park the car. Each level had a cartoon character. We were parked on the Bugs Bunny level. As a warm up, there were various exhibits from recent movies that we hadn’t seen and then you waited into a room with posters of their most successful movies and TV shows – Dallas, West Wing, Blazing Saddles, Chariots of Fire, Unforgiven, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit. Then we were led into a small arena where an over enthusiastic female ‘guide’ exuberantly told us how wonderful this was going to be, followed by an impressive ten minute movie on all their movie history. Then we were led to our ten person ‘buggies’ for the tour.

The Warner Brothers Studio Tour took us around a vast plot of sound stages, and outside sets for movies and TV shows. There seemed to be an emphasis on ‘Friends’, ‘Gilmore Girls’ and ‘The Big Bang Theory’ TV series, none of which we had ever seen. We started off with a ‘jungle’ area where some of a Jurassic Park movie had been filmed. Then we went past individual ‘suburban’ houses – all facades from the front. I didn’t realise that all the ‘red brick’ houses you see are really plastic boards of pretend bricks so they can redesign the outside of houses quickly. We got on and off the buggy and taken around streets.

Then we moved onto a town square with church, town hall, band stand etc. I didn’t know any of the TV shows mentioned. We were told that in the old days, the pretend ‘snow’ used to be asbestos dust! Nowadays, they use mash potato. The trees were real. There was a whole section of smaller packed streets that could be used for ‘old style’ US towns or period pieces. Some of ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ was filmed here in 1967. There was an entire façade for an inner- city school, complete with yellow school buses (they just switched the name of the cities on the bus/school). An edifice with six large white columns which looked like a courthouse or important building had a dozen steps leading up to it where Ben Affleck had filmed a scene from ‘Argo’. Much of this movie had been filmed on these sets.

We drove through a vast warehouse where they were building sound stages. There were some huge film studios which we couldn’t go into. We were told that ‘The Perfect Storm’ was filmed in one of these in a massive container of water that held the boat. Apparently during the filming Mark Wahlberg and George Clooney both discovered that they suffered from sea sickness.

Midway during the tour, we got off and entered a building where there were various things such as the main ‘Friends’ set with couch etc, a section on the Batman movies (costumes and three of the vehicles) and a large section on Harry Potter that pleased Wendy immensely. I’ve never seen the movies or read the books so was clueless. Wendy had a ride on a broomstick in front of a green screen that brought her flight to life We had our photos taken, holding the real and surprisingly very heavy gold Oscar for ‘Lord of the Rings’.

After four hours we needed to leave. Wendy asked if we could go and see the famous ‘Hollywood sign’ on the way to the airport. It is quite difficult to see. It began life in 1923 as a billboard for the ‘Hollywoodland’ development, but the ‘land’ was removed in 1949. Since then, it has been renovated various times. I knew that you could get a decent view from the Griffith Observatory. Unfortunately, it appeared that every other tourist in town did as well. We had to sit in a traffic jam before we could park and take the ubiquitous photo. It was 29’c in temperature under roasting sunshine.

Driving through Hollywood, we passed Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard. I wasn’t sure where the car rental place was so we headed for the airport on Interstates 110 and 105 and stumbled across it by accident pretty much on time. We had driven 3066 miles in a fortnight. It was a lot easier to catch the shuttle and check in than get out of the airport. Leaving around 6pm we flew overnight and arrived 12.30pm UK time in the pouring rain and the remnants of a storm. Welcome home.

Conclusion: Arizona is an outstanding destination for a holiday. The individual areas of scenery from the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley (technically Utah), Petrified Forest and Saguaro Cactuses were all different but wonderful. Throw in Tombstone, Frank Lloyd Wright, Route 66 and London Bridge and you have a full itinerary with time to take in the cities if desired. Very Recommended.