Time for our fourth annual summer trip, this year to the American desert southwest. This will be similar to our first trip in 2010, in that we are flying to a city (in this case Las Vegas), doing a huge loop, and flying back out from that city. In addition, like in 2010, it’ll be heavily skewed towards National Parks and natural beauty with very few cities and people-stuff in between.
Our route is shown below. Basically we’ll start in Las Vegas, travel to Bryce Canyon NP, Zion NP, and Arches NP in Utah before crossing into Arizona to visit Monument Valley. After that it is on to the Four Corners so we can all be in four states at once (wheee!) and then Mesa Verde NP with its cliff dwellings. We’ll be white water rafting (tame river, however, especially with the drought out there) in Durango on the Animas River before we venture in to New Mexico. There we’ll be visiting more Indian ruins at Chaco Culture before heading down to White Sands NM. We’ll dip into Texas a tiny bit (don’t worry parents, no trip into Juarez or anything) to get the kids that state. Then it is off to Arizona where we’ll see Tucson’s cacti at Saguaro NP, Petrified Forest NP, Painted Desert NP, and of course the Grand Canyon. We head back via the Hoover Dam and a final day in Las Vegas where we hope to visit the Pinball Hall of Fame and walk the strip and gawk at the lights.
Route for our 2013 Summer trip to the desert Southwest
Stay tuned for daily updates soon!