Summer Road Trip Overview

We’re back from our summer road trip, the laundry is done, and the stack of mail has been whittled down. We’ve given a first pass through our more than 4,000 photos, but I’ll only share a few.

Grand Canyon


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: Grand Canyon

This is actually our fourth trip to the Grand Canyon. It impresses us each and every visit. We stayed at Maswik Lodge in a tiny cabin on the rim.

Glen Canyon Dam/Lake Powell


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: Glen Canyon Dam

The Glen Canyon Dam and its reservoir Lake Powell (behind the dam) are part of the Colorado River Storage Project for the Upper Colorado Basin.

Antelope Canyon


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: Antelope Canyon Light Beam

We took a pre-arranged photography tour led by a Navajo guide through Antelope Canyon in Page, Arizona. It is a Navajo Tribal Park. The famous light beams inside this slot canyon occur mid-day during April to September.

Bryce Canyon


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: Bryce Amphitheater Vista Point

This is just one part of the Bryce Amphitheater view; the following Paiute Indian legend explains the rock formations here:

“Before there were any Indians, the Legend People, To-when-an-ung-wa, lived in that place. There were many of them. They were of many kinds—birds, animals, lizards, and such things—but they looked like people…For some reason, the Legend People in that place were bad. Because they were bad, Coyote turned them all into rocks. You can see them in that place now; all turned into rocks; some standing in rows, some sitting down, some holding on to others. You can see their faces, with paint on them just as they were before they became rocks…”

Red Rock Canyon


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: Red Rock Canyon

Red Rock Canyon is in Utah's Dixie National Forest. There are also three Red Rock Canyons in Nevada, one being very near Las Vegas.

Zion National Park


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: Majestic Zion

Originally named Mukuntuweap National Monument by President William Taft in 1909, the name was later changed to Zion—an ancient Hebrew word meaning a place of refuge or sanctuary. This park truly fits its name.

Valley of Fire State Park


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: The Arch at Valley of Fire State Park

Valley of Fire is Nevada's oldest state park and an unplanned detour we took on our drive to Las Vegas from Zion. The eroded sandstone formations and sand dunes are more than 150 million years old. In sunlight, the valley does look like it is on fire due to the rich red color of the rocks.

Las Vegas


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: View of Las Vegas from Paris’ Eiffel Tower

Las Vegas at night as viewed from the observation tower of the Eiffel Tower where we stayed at the Paris Casino Hotel for a couple of nights. You can go up to the observation deck day or at night—we opted for the latter.


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: Tubing the Lazy River

Here’s my sister Connie floating around Mandalay Bay Beach’s Lazy River which moves at 2½ miles per hour as it circumnavigates the beach/pool areas and through waterfalls. Connie and her husband met us in Las Vegas for this leg of our trip, arranging a Cabana Day experience for us on the Lazy River as well as a massage in our cabana as our anniversary gift. Total bliss!

Hoover Dam/Lake Mead


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam straddles the Nevada/Arizona border. Dub and I looked for the famous line painted across the road marking the border of Arizona/Nevada as seen in the movies, but it’s no longer there. We suspect it proved too much of a photo opportunity for visitors, thus impacting traffic flow.

London Bridge


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: London Bridge

London Bridge in Lake Havasu, AZ is #10 on the Travel Channel’s World’s Top 10 Bridges list. Built in the 1820s for walking and traveling by horse and buggy over the River Thames, the bridge became too small to accommodate London’s traffic so the city put it up for auction. It was bought for $2.5 million in 1968 by Robert McCulloch, founder of Lake Havasu City. The bridge took three years to make its way, piece by piece, to Arizona.

Lake Havasu City


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: Sunset at Lake Havasu

Lake Havasu offers the requisite summer experiences: camping, swimming, boating, jet skis, dinner/casino cruises (it’s very near the California border), charters, and other assorted water adventures. We ate lunch at Barley’s Brothers Grill and Brewery, a micro-brewery at one end of London Bridge. The afternoon was spent swimming and relaxing, and then we wandered around taking sunset photos.

Tucson’s Fourth of July Fireworks


© June Scroggin, All Rights Reserved: Tucson Fireworks

We planned our road trip to end July 3 as July 4 is our wedding anniversary and we wanted to celebrate it in Tucson for the first time (having always been off on some travel adventure elsewhere in previous years). We packed a picnic supper and ventured forth to watch the fireworks. My fireworks photos came out looking like abstract flowers which I think is fun.

Other Places Visited

• Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Page, AZ and Big Water, UT
• Montezuma Castle National Monument, Camp Verde, AZ
• Rainbow Bridge National Monument, Page, AZ
• Navajo Bridge, Lee’s Ferry, AZ
• Marble Canyon, AZ
• Grand Canyon, North Rim
• Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, Marble Canyon, AZ and Big Water, UT
• Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Kanab and Big Water, UT
• Paria Canyon, UT
• Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Boulder City, NV

If you’re still reading this vacation post, thank you so much for your patience.