I spent a week in Utah, my first time out to that part of the country. I stayed with two friends I had met in Peru (http://www.reocities.com/paylors/peru.html).

Vegas

As soon as you depart the airplane into the Vegas airport, you see slot machines. These are sprinkled liberally throughout the building, especially in the gates. We drove down the famous strip to see the large casinos and then drove east on I-15 to Cedar City, Utah.

Zion

This state park was a short drive on Monday and my first official introduction to the canyons, mesas and buttes that make up a lot of the southern Utah topology. I was content to follow around the general sightseeing tour because it was so different. The giant rocks are so majestic. It's so incredible to think what this must have been like for someone coming from the east.

Moab

A reasonable drive east is Moab, a city surrounded by rafting biking and 4wd trails. Both parks we visited here had some off road trails but we stuck to the hiking paths. First was Arches National Park, where we walked to some of the arches in the area.

That night we camped in some BLM lands in a canyon like some cowboys or outlaws of the 19th century. It was a clear night, so we skipped the tent only to get about ½” of dry snow. It was well worth the inconvenience though because of all of the animal tracks the next morning. We rarely saw wildlife, but there were lots of tracks from rabbits, mice and at least one bobcat.

We drove into Canyonlands Nat'l Park and let me tell you, things are far apart in the West. The park might have been forty miles off of the main road. We did our share of sightseeing. You can look off of the cliffs here and not see anything that reflects the hand of man. In the US, you can almost always see something manmade, like clear cutting or at least a road. In Nepal there were signs of farming, terraced slopes on the mountain. Here, nothing.

We went next to the other part of Canyonlands, and camped a couple miles from the trailhead. I was leery about an official campsite, since they are so worn-looking back East. But here on tough desert sand, there were no signs of wear. In fact let me also be clear about how deserted these parks were. There was often another car at a trailhead or stop, but not always. Very rare to see other people on the same trail.

We set up the tent but no precipitation. It seemed pretty cold; water would freeze as we cleaned our pots and the whole inside of the tent was covered with frost from our respiration. But the stars were so bright, especially after the moon set. We did the most amount of hiking that day, perhaps around eighteen miles. There was a circuit to finish up our campsite and then a one-way hike from a trailhead to see the Colorado & Green Rivers converge. It was getting dark as we got back to the car to drive home.

Rounding out the trip was some snow shoeing.

Big old arch.

Security at the airport (note shoes also been searched).

Aforementioned snowshoeing.