We were really looking forward to this part of the journey, otherworldly landscapes so different to where we are from, sunny warm days but freezing cold nights – we were checking the weather each day to make sure we would survive the night in our 1969 VW bus :).

Luckily our bus behaved during this part, which was lucky indeed in hindsight as we were so often without signal miles away from any civilisation.

Driving days consisted of crazy skies, starting with wintry windy storms between Colorado and Northern New Mexico, to actual black sky thunderstorms on the border with Arizona. We experienced strong winds shaking the roof of our van at night or moving us a lane or two on the highway!

Some of our favourite photos ever were taken in the desert. Watching stars and milky way in the sparsely populated desert is like nowhere else, we stood outside for hours only jumping back inside when we realised our fingers and toes were cold.

From Monument Valley we headed to Page, which was extra crowded on a Thanksgiving weekend, so after a quick pitstop on the very touristy Horseshoe bend we continued to Zion National Park and spent a few days camping and hiking in this beautiful place. We really enjoyed the choice of awesome food in Springdale (pankakes, coffee and Thai mmmmm) after our time in wilderness.

Zion was probably our favourite national park, ok maybe together with Yosemite. By late November, Utah and Northern Arizona were getting slowly but surely colder each day and we tried our best to follow the warmer weather.  We chose to skip the Grand Canyon as preferred wilderness to tourists and headed for the California coast.