Springdale

It was fun to wake up in Las Vegas and look out on the big hotels. The warm sunshine made a nice change and the area round our hotel was quite birdy - a northern mockingbird and a great-tailed grackle kept up the musical entertainment over breakfast.

At the car rental place we were able to take our pick of small SUVs and we chose a Chevrolet - it's a fairly basic car without many frills (it doesn't even have remote central locking) but it goes well enough. A three-hour drive through the desert brought us to Springdale, next to Zion National Park. We haven't been in the national park yet but the landscape is stunning even here. This is more or less the view from our hotel room.