Road trip, driving from the Grand Canyon to Zion - USA

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Our first US road trip.

In Europe the word road trip does not bear the same meaning as in the US. Compared to the US we live in small countries, so traveling to family or friends does not take a long time. If we go on holiday, we never go unprepared. Every hotel or hostel is booked months ahead. When my wife and I went on our honeymoon we drove to a few National Parks. I did not expected that it was more than a journey from point a to point b.

We almost did not get a car. My wife booked one. Everybody told us this would not be a problem. Unfortunately it was. Her credit card could not be used, because she did not have a driver’s license. I did own a driver’s license, but not a credit card. The law of Arizona forbids a driver using someone else’s credit card, even when the owner of the card is in the car. Lucky for us the lady behind the counter found a solution. We had to get a few hundred dollars out an ATM and use it as a deposit.

In the parking garage I discovered that the breaks in an American car are totally different than in European cars. Every time I only touched the pedals we almost hit the windscreen. However, after changing to another car and driving in the parking garage for half an hour I felt confident enough to go.

Desert or not.

Before our honeymoon my wife and I already had a discussion if the area we had to drive through was a desert. I said it was and she told me I was a sissy. Because I insisted we bought a case with 24 bottles of water. Lucky for us the car never broke down. And so we had water for our entire trip. Because of the volume it was very cheap. For a stingy Dutch guy that was a bonus.

I did not expect we had to stop for gas that often. The gas prices are very cheap in the US compared to the Netherlands. But the car used way more gas than European cars do. Our own Fiat Panda can drive 25 km on 1 liter of gas. But this car could not even drive 12 km on 1 liter gas. One time I thought: “The gas tank is half full. We can get gas further down the road.” There are not many gas stations in the desert so after a few hours I started to think we were not going to make it. Of course we did find a gas station and we did not die in the desert. I am still of the opinion that the water was needed in case of an emergency. My wife still tells me that was not the case.

Married to an amateur photographer.

The photos in this album are made during the road trip from the Grand Canyon to Page, Bryce and Zion. We really loved the scenery on our road trip. We could not stop often due to traffic, so most of the photos are made by the designated photographer and lovely wife Roosje. My contribution to this album is shouting at her that she should take a photo only seconds before we passed an interesting view or bird. She often tried to take the photo, failed and was angry that I did not tell here sooner. Nowadays, after years of training, my wife just ignores my shouting and does not attempt to take that impossible photo.

The journey continues.

This is the 50th photo album I’m posting on Travelhartphoto.com. I hope you like our sites. We will continue to post content to our sites. We hope you like reading and viewing them. For now: enjoy the photos!