How do you like them apples?

Had a great day today. We drove the 200 miles or so from Capitol Reef to Bryce Canyon; I think we literally saw about 20 cars the whole way. The roads and scenery are just jaw-dropping, everything is on such an epic scale. Massive plains which just stretch into the distance and just the odd tiny town every 50 miles or so!

Once we got to Bryce we headed straight off for a hike, and wowzas, it was incredible. The Canyon is filled with hundreds of huge spires and spikes of red rock which they call hoodoos. They've been eroded in lots of weird and wonderful ways over millions of years. It's great because there are lots of pine trees as well, makes a nice change to see something green and have a bit of shade! It means the scenery is beautiful, as well as dramatic like the other parks have been.

After the hike, we'd booked on to an ATV tour, which was serious fun. They were massive quad things, 450cc engines which Pete tells me is quite a lot! We went roaring off down these trails, up and down hills and through a fairly sizeable river. These things could go up or over pretty much anything! We went past herds of antelope, including baby ones :-)

Time for another quick hike tomorrow morning hopefully, before we're off again to the Grand Canyon...

oh yes, and we finallllllly found some fruit, around 100 miles from where we'd been staying near Capitol Reef. That's how scanty the metropolis's of Utah are! Blink and you miss them.

Rattle snake cakes

We have found ourselves in the hamlet that is Torrey, Utah, and this really is the middle of nowhere. There is no mobile phone reception, and no fruit or vegetables. We searched all three of the stores and the closest we came to vegetation was Oreo's. Oh well, at least they have wifi.

We hiked up a trail in the Capital Reef National Park this morning- Christina chose a hike listed as 'strenuous' as she wanted some exercise, perhaps a little bullish that we could manage it. But actually, at 2500m everything is strenuous and i was dying after 20mins! We made it in the end. If I look grumpy in the photos- I was.

We found a spectacular restaurant called Cafe Diablo. It must be the best restaurant in 100miles around! The dishes were complicated and must have taken hours of preparation, we didn't try the Rattle snake cakes though. The chef was from a famous restaurant in New York.

Off to Bryce Canyon tomorrow for one night. I've booked a quad bike trek which should be good. Never happen in Snowdonia! And we'll be in Vegas on Sunday!

500 miles and counting...

Got up early today to try and make the most of the morning - it gets roastingly hot in the middle of the day. We headed to Canyonlands National Park, where the scenery was simply epic. It felt like there should still be dinosaurs rampaging around! It's absolutely huge, nothing there at all except plains, huge rocky buttresses and massive canyons. And this amazing arch (in the first photo) which really framed the view perfectly.

We got chatting to a couple from Derby who were pretty pleased to bump into an English couple so they could employ a bit of sarcasm!

It's our last night in Moab tonight and we're heading off towards Capitol Reef National Park tomorrow. First things first though; we're planning to be up early to watch the England game, which is at 7.30am our time.

The B&B we've been staying in was originally built by the Mayor of the town and is great. It has a bumper porch running along the back of the house and a swimming pool. When we checked in we asked for our room key, only to be told that 'we've never had keys for the past 25 years, and we're not planning to start any time soon'. There's something nice about not needing a key!

Did you want fries with that?

Well we've been here a week now and we do have a small admission to make. We haven't actually sampled dessert anywhere yet. Everytime we have eaten a meal we have finished feeling so stuffed that we couldn't face anything else. And most of the time we have stumbled back to the car with indigestion. We are trying hard to expand our waistlines.

Rafting on the river was great though Christina is unimpressed after her trip down the olympic course in Barcelona. I thought it was great fun, bobbing along the river! The mosquitos are cheeky and i've got a fair few bites .

Tomorrow off to Canyon Lands- allegedly the most remote place in the USA and the last to be mapped. We will have to see.

If anyone has photos or videos of the wedding we'd love to see them on google photos(picasaweb)- then sign in with username: peterandchristinaswedding and password: wedding1! , so please upload!

See you soon!

Beer and Cheese?

Travelled out into the amazing national parks- Dead Horse Point and Arches National Park. The Dead Horse overlook is beyond incredible, photos are a pale imitation. The start of Mission Impossible 2 is filmed on the point- you can see it best at 2:20 and 3:25. The race in Star Wars: Episode 1 was computer generated from the cliffs around here. Not to mention the last scene in Thelma and Louise...

The Arches in the National Park are so precarious, you certainly feel lucky to see some of them, as they won't be around indefinitely. Landscape Arch in the photo actually partly fell at the right hand side, you can see broken rocks.

Moab continues to be brutally hot in the afternoons, its was well over 100F this afternoon- no wonder everyone stays in their cars! The town is very strange, there is literally nowhere to buy groceries in the centre of town, just a large out of town supermarket. As we drove down we stoppped at a couple of Walmarts and they were quite spooky as they were identical inside... i'm sure that's consumer engineering at it's best. We had lunch in a Sports Cafe watching the Japan/Denmark game, and saw the Queen at Wimbledon. Soup choices were interesting; anyone for Beer and Cheese flavour?!

Thinking of rafting on the Colorado river near Moab in the next few days. If you don't hear from us could you call the Hoover dam? Apparently the old name for the Colorado river is simply the River Grand. Hence the Grand Canyon, and the Rio Grande.

Karma killed my dogma...the road to Moab

We rounded off our stay in Park City with a ride on the Alpine Slide and Alpine Coaster - Pete managed to achieve some serious speed!

Then we headed off to drive down to Moab, some 230 miles south. As we descended the temperature was going up and up - it hit around 94 degrees as we arrived at around 6pm in the evening! The scenery was stunning, long straight roads into the distance, desert and mountains. As got near Moab, massive red rock outcrops started appearing.

The town is geared around adventure sports, biking, hiking, rafting and 4WD. We're thinking of a bit of everything!

Oh, and the blog post title today was inspired by a Moab bumper sticker....it took our fancy :-)

Also managed to catch the England game which was on 8am this morning our time. Thank you Mr Defoe...

Mountain Biking Extreme!

Beautiful day in Park City, up at 8am to pick up some serious full suspension mountain bikes. Ended up taking the ski lift all the way to the peak of the resort, some 3500m. They hook your bike onto the chairlifts in somewhat precarious fashion! Some beautiful silver birch forests to ride through; biking is really encouraged here rather than in the UK where the Ramblers are all powerful, there are five times as many biking routes than hiking. I think anyone who likes skiing would love it :-)

The altitude is hugely energy sapping, we must said 'it's thin air here isn't it?' at least 15times today- perhaps its all in the mind!

Going to try the luge run tomorrow morning, Christina is keen on the 'Alpine Coaster'. Then off to Moab 230miles away!

Park City

This morning we had our first American breakfast in a diner near the hotel. It was amazing, I've never seen a breakfast menu like it! Ice cream floats, stacks of pancakes, eggs, bacon, all in massive quantities. Let's just say it's kept us going all day!

We drove over to Park City on the interstate. I'm getting used to the automatic gears, it makes driving a pretty relaxing experience - no danger of stalling! There are so many massive cars and trucks on the roads.

Park City is where they had the winter Olympics in 2002 and is a really nice town. They keep some of the lifts going in the summer so you can take mountain bikes up, which is the plan for tomorrow. The B&B we're staying in is lovely, the homeliest place you can imagine. The hostess literally welcomed us with open arms, she almost hugged Pete and is so interested in our trip and helping us plan what to do while we're here.

We had a wander round the town, through the market and up the main street. It definitely looks like the Western style American town you imagine, although a slightly upmarket version with expensive ski gear like in Courchevel!

Salt Lake City

So made it to Salt Lake City after a brief stop in New York. The city is dead quiet today, not many people around. It's 93F and windy.But we found an American bar serving serious Amercican food.. just what's require after a day of travelling around! Skype is very good as most good places seem to have wifi, and the quality is excellent. Even the NY to Salt lake flight had it- though they did want to charge $12!

We have a beautiful brand new hire car that is dying to be driven out of the city asap. Christina is all over the automatic gearbox and hasn't been on the wrong side of the road once.. The had a huge pickup, a ford 150 for the same price but it was way too big to park!!

Went to see the Mormon Church, but the Mormon office building across the street is a lot bigger.

Livin' on a pray-er

Final night here for a while- the pics say it all! Bon Jovi - you rock!

Off to pack now. Hopefully thank you cards will arrive soon!

Home again

Back in the flat for a bit, final day in the hotel was a chore (!) The pub down the road does spectacular venison and lamb steak, we leaped the barbed wire. And Christina's pool game is improving no end- she asked the barman to bring her drink 'to the pool room' to which he replied 'you mean the billiards room?' The little Astra served us well.

We got home to find lots of lovely cards, congratulating us on being married - all addressed to Mr and Mrs P Moreton! Christina is slowly getting used to the idea of her new name...

Cowley Manor continued

We've had a lovely, super relaxing day - late breakfast, a wander around the grounds, swimming in the pool and room service for dinner! It's been really nice chatting about the wedding and filling in the details for bits each of us missed. We even wrote out our speeches in the guest book (thank you for all the great messages!) so that we'd remember what we said...

Cowley Manor

Made it as far as Cowley Manor in Gloucestershire, the weather certainly isn't as lovely as yesterday evening! Christina's tenacity got us upgraded to a beautiful room looking out over the lake in the garden. The room is too nice to leave; the ipod is sat in the Bose dock playing the post-ceremony music and we are lazing around musing over our amazing wedding day...and eating the chocolate cake!