UPON arriving in Escalante, we found we were still in Mormon-dominated Utah, and, while they do serve alcohol with food, some motels do not countenance the serving of coffee or tea and we did not have the makings for either in this motel.

After freshening up and catching up on emails, we headed up the road and ordered two t-bone steaks. It was the best I have had since our US-based friends Pete and Marilyn took us down a-ways in North Carolina a couple of years ago and their friend turned the request to make mine ‘rare’, into an eight-syllable word.

It was a great meal and again some nice micro-brewery beer. I’m not remotely a fan of the lager in England, in fact I find Indian and Chinese superior but US micro-breweries come up with some very palatable offerings, although still not a patch on a decent real ale.

However, there was a cloud hanging over us in both senses. The forecast suggested heavy snow-falls throughout the area, and we had the beautiful, highly recommended Bryce Canyon just 40 miles down the road.

We are up on the Colorado Plate, a large wedge of land that includes the north of New Mexico and Arizona and a whole mess of Utah, which some 60 million years ago was pushed up from the sea, doing awful but fabulous things to the rock and strata in the process., enabling the four states to have a lion’s share of the natural wonders.

In plain English, we were high up, well above the snow line and it was a long way to go before we could get down.

We were extremely fortunate. The forecasts were not good and at the highest part of Bryce Canyon, two inches of snow had fallen overnight and there was talk of more coming.

We set off at nine and drove the 49 miles to Bryce in good time. The roads were sound but we could see the snow-line above us and we were rising to meet it. The prospect of getting locked into canyon lands for an unspecified time was a concern.

More stunning countryside of course and then we reached Bryce (25 dollars for us and the car with no reductions for overseas, just US, pensioners).

The visitors’ centre had a film show, which we watched, while absorbing the fact the high end of the canyon was closed. Bryce is really a rising mesa and it is the cliffs and the canyon below it that are the attraction. It contains hundreds of hoodoos, the name given to pipes, statues or columns of sandstone that rise out of the valley floor like a sandstone army. Ridges in cliffs become separated from the main cliff after erosion sets in and gradually they end up like columns, sometimes with a peculiar-shaped cap on top.

It is another variation on the sandstone theme but where we were fortunate was that they all had a powdering of snow.

At one place you were supposed to be able to see Mexico on a fine day. I often wonder how these conclusions are reached at such places. It is not as if they have telescopes or a Lee Majors-type bionic man focussing in at a pre-arranged spot on a Mexican in appropriate hat waving an enchilada.

Anyway, we could see a long way, across snow-dusted Dixie Forest and all the way to the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

Where we were lucky was that the sun came out while we watched the film and, by the time we had progressed along various viewing sites, they opened the high end of the canyon. On a hunch I drove to the end, saw the most spectacular of the views and headed back to the middle. Behind us for some ten miles, the mists swirled in and snow started to fall. It was almost as if it were chasing us.

So we completed the Canyon viewing and headed out around 2pm and drove down to Kanab and then to Page. Both were linked with snow in the forecasts, but it was said to be on high ground.

We drove the 150 miles and passed Pink Coral Sand-dune Park, another slice of Dixie Forest, the Vermillion Cliffs, the White Cliffs, the Escalante Staircase and the Henry Mountains, enjoying a clear view of all of them. Behind us it boded a bit umpty while we were cool and skoshe, as someone used to say.

There is so much spectacular scenery. We were dropping down towards 4,500 feet and, when almost at Page, we came over the breast of a hill to have another magnificent view – this time the other end of Glen Canyon, with the lake made by the dam and large red buttes sticking out in the middle of it.

Somewhere or other we had gained another hour. We were in another time zone and when we opted to stop in Page at 4.15, it was in reality 3.15.

We had driven over the bridge above the dam with a great deep canyon the other side.

We sat in the motel, enjoying the fact we were in Arizona and they provide coffee without a second thought, and reminisced over the trip and trips, coming to the conclusion that the Beartooth Pass and Black Hills of a previous year were outstanding and the Grand Canyon, which we will not be returning to having each seen it twice, is amazing. But the 36 hours, or perhaps the last 500 miles we had driven from Monument Valley was unrelentingly stunning and different to any scenic experience in our lives, We did 266 miles that first day heading for Escalante, and did not really notice it, because the journey was so absorbing.