The Great Southwest Canyon Road Trip - Cedar City to the Grand Canyon

[Oh dear, it's April and I still haven't finished my tales of last year's road trip. Apologies if this post is a little rushed, but I can't really tell you about this year's plans until last year is done and dusted. To remind you, a 'clerical error' (I booked the wrong hotel) meant we didn't end up staying in Bryce, as planned, but in Cedar City instead ...]

[Out of the clouds on Hwy 14]

It's telling that I don't have a single photo of Cedar City (the place we never planned to visit). It's a charming enough Mormon town, neat and tidy.

I can recommend the craft beers and pizza at the Centro Pizzeria without hesitation. But it never inspired me to take a picture.

We drove out of town on Hwy 14, along another scenic route that's only open half the year.

As it wound up back onto the plateau, to record breaking altitudes, my passengers were strangely quiet - was it perhaps they're now used to narrow winding roads with sheer drops on one side, and almost zero visibility as we climbed into the clouds? Or perhaps sheer terror had rendered them numb?

The highway takes you through high plateaus and ancient lava flows to join US-89, and then on to Kanab - once known as the most remote town in the USA, until US-89 reached it. Now it's a collection of little cafes and camping shops, and quite charming.

[Navajo Bridges]

From Kanab, there's two routes - US-89 and US-89a, and the windier roads and the promise of the Navajo Bridge made 89a the obvious choice. This is beautiful but desolate country, with the Vermillion cliffs towering over us on the left for miles and miles. Imagine the surface of Mars, but with the occasional glint of metal in the distance from the roofs of the Indian trailers. The poverty of the Indians in these inhospitable places is shocking - but I'll save my thoughts on that for another post.

We got to see another side of the Indians at the Cameron Trading Post, a popular stop just outside the east entrance to the Grand Canyon's South Rim. This place is a slightly tacky emporium for all things Indian - dream catchers, Navajo rugs - but after seeing their living conditions out in the desert, it's hard to begrudge their desire to make a quick buck from the tourists.

How we didn't crash on the approach to the Canyon, I do not know, as it's hard to drive safely while always looking out the right for glimpses of the world's largest hole in the ground. And when the clouds cleared and we had a chance to stop, woah, what a vast hole it is.

The next three days were spent taking photos that failed to capture the awe and majesty of the Canyon - but that didn't stop us, and thousands of selfie-stick waving tourists, from trying.

[A Very Big Hole]

The Grand Canyon South Rim is not a place to escape the masses, but the village has a strange charm.

This is where American mass tourism was born - with the Bright Angel Lodge and El Tovar Hotel complexes catering for the USA's first major tourist attraction in the early 20th century. The newly completed railroad brought thousands of tourists from the east and west coasts to gawp at the Canyon, much like we did.

Catering at the Bright Angel Lodge was enthusiastic, robust and a bit amateur - school dinners with a smile. The waiters were particularly sweet - each was a foreign student, with their name and country of origin on their badge. Alas, poor Svetlana from Sweden had no idea how idea how to open a bottle of wine and Rudy from Romania forgot our order, but you couldn't help but forgive them.

From the Canyon, we drove down to Flagstaff, for a little bit of Route 66. I've travelled the Mother Road before, and was hoping that Flagstaff would be as lovely as I remembered it - and of course it was. There's two historic hotels in the centre - last time I stayed in the Weatherford, and this time we stayed in the Monte Vista. I would recommend either!

After Flagstaff, we wound down the windows, pumped up the American rock classics, and powered down Route 66 towards Seligman. Well, we did for a bit, until I was told to turn off the 'old man music'. Seligman is the home of Route 66 kitsch, and always worth a stop for '66 t-shirts, coasters, bottle openers, badges and all the other paraphernalia you need for your friends back home.

[I can't have one, apparently]

I got a double fix of Route 66 in Kingman, as the town was the host to this year's Route 66 festival (I was lucky enough to catch it in Galena, Kansas, the year before).

This gave me a chance to coo over some shiny American classic cars, before the final haul across the desert back to Las Vegas - including the obligatory stop for a vertigo inducing view of the Hoover Dam.

So that was it, Road Trip 2015 had come to end. I gave back the keys to the trusty Mazda CX-5 - we'd done 1,163 miles together - 2,410 if we include my Texas trip.

Time to start planning 2015 - oh, who am I kidding, it's already booked. I'll tell more later.

Krispy Kremes in the Waffle Maker and other Doughnut Musings

[Worth the messy waffle maker!]

Last night I put a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut in my waffle maker. Why? Because the Internet told me to.

Now, obviously I don't do everything the Internet tells me. That could get messy. But this I would wholeheartedly recommend - the end result is sticky, chewy and quite delicious. Many thanks to OhBiteIt for the tip!

(Oh, and it did get messy - don't use your much loved, American import, can't be cleaned with water Waring Pro for this, whatever you do. The waffle iron fills with sugar that's almost impossible to get out and burns horribly. Many thanks to my lovely wife, Angie, for eventually getting it clean).

[My photo isn't as pretty]

Cambridge has been invaded by US sweet-and-fast food recently - first Cinnabon at Lion's Yard, the Dunkin' Donuts at the Grafton, and now Krispy Kreme at the Grand Arcade.

Personally, I find all of these just too sweet - I'm more of a fan of American savouries - and all push you to buy in ridiculous quantities.

For our waffle experiment, we needed just six doughnuts - but we left with twelve. Why? Because twelve is just 45p more expensive than six. So we now have six in the freezer waiting for me to come up with an easy clean solution to the sticky waffle problem.

However, like bacon and pancakes, that cloying sweetness leads to another very American idea - combining them with something intensely savoury.

I first encountered this at District Donuts Sliders Brew in New Orleans. We had their 'fancy' doughnuts - if memory serves me correctly, I had apple and cinnamon and my wife had salted caramel - but what everyone else seemed to be eating was their 'Croquenuts'.

[Mmm. Doughnuts]

These were griddled doughnuts filled with ham, cheese and bechamel sauce - obviously inspired by the French croque monsieur, but served in a way that could only be dreamt up by Americans. They look delicious - and dangerously messy. All I could see was cheese and sauce dripping out of the ring doughnut's hole ...

I've since discovered that this savoury doughnut wasn't a one off. My friends on Facebook didn't share my enthusiasm for this - the 'The Bacon Mac & Cheese Donut' by Philly based PYT. I thought it looked awesome.

So this was my prediction - Doughtnuts will be the next Cupcake. The next food trend to cross the Atlantic will be the artisan Doughnut, that we'd see Doughnut pop-ups in Hoxton within the year, and I was right - here's Dum Dum Doughtnuts on Bethnal Green Road.

So come on Cambridge, let's join in. Let's not let the Americans take over. Cambridge needs a proper, local-run doughnut shop, selling both sweet and savoury. And will I volunteer to do the taste testing.

Bread & Meat, Cambridge - A Review. And a Very Good Sandwich.

[Mmmm. Meat]

My original title for this post was going to be 'the best sandwich in Cambridge' - but not only would that set off a hyperbole alarm, I worry I'm not qualified to make that judgement.

I haven't tried the delicious looking focaccia at nearby Aromi, or the ciabatta at Urban Shed (currently rated no2. place to eat on Tripadvisor!) or the pizza-oven baked breads of Charlie's on Burleigh Street.

But I will say one thing for sure - this was a seriously, no joking, not messing, hyperbole free really really good sandwich.

Bread & Meat sits in the trendy Peas Hill food quarter, along with independents like Aromi and Smokeworks (and chains like Cau, Jamie's and Zizzis). Sitting there, I was again reminded of the Eriana Taverna (where Smokeworks now resides) - a Cambridge institution with a menu the length of the Old Testament. Now the fashion is towards much smaller, or even single item menus. Flatiron and Burger & Lobster in London leap to mind, or even Steak & Honour closer to home, with its almost zen like simplicity (cheese - or no cheese?).

[People at Tables]

So Bread & Meat is not a classic sandwich bar of old, with tubs of gloopy fillings in a refrigerator cabinet, ready for ladling into your choice of white, brown or baguette. At its most basic, it's simply a choice between pork or beef. Porchetta or topside. There's a veggie option, a daily special, wedges or slaw for sides, but that's it.

Now I love restaurants with short menus, because that should mean they've had to a chance to practice, to get it right, to tinker and tune and get their dish close to perfection. Bread and Meat did not let me down.

I went for the roast pork - in my mind a sandwich well overdue a re-invention. The novelty of the hog roast at the village fete has long passed - soft white bap, flavourless meat, teeth endangering rock hard crackling, salty grey stuffing and ladles of baby-food like apple sauce. Well let me assure you, if that was the nadir of pork baps, Bread & Meat was its apex.

[Bicycle in Cambridge Cliche]

Here we had freshly baked ciabatta that actually tasted of olive oil. Pork that tasted of pig, a lovely mixture of meat and unctuous fat. Light as air crackling, of the sort I wish I could produce reliably at home. And no baby-food sweetness - instead a vinegary salsa verde to cut through the fat.

This was an extremely good sandwich - but is it really the top dog (or pig)?

There's a sense we're having a bit of a local sandwich revolution at the moment - and obviously, as a service to you, dear reader, I feel I should try them all so I can feel truly qualified to judge the very best sandwich in Cambridge. Watch this space!

5 American Christmas foods you won't see in the UK - and 5 UK foods you won't see there!

 [All American Christmas Lunch!] 

We in the UK have had a long love affair with American food. The latest trend is Thanksgiving - there might not be a single Wampanoag indian in the whole of London, but that doesn't stop us giving thanks that we can gobble down more turkey - Amazon tell us that sales of Thanksgiving foodstuffs are up 804% since 2011.

So what about American Christmas traditions? aren't they the same as ours? We've all seen plenty of Christmas dinners in American movies. There's a big turkey in the middle of the table, just like ours, and plenty of bowls of steaming, err, stuff. There's the question - what exactly is in all those steaming, delicious bowls? I had to investigate ...

[Green Beans and Onions]

1. Green beans. Now the Americans share our love/hate relationship with the Christmas sprout - but there's another vegetable even closer to their hearts. The green bean. Now I'm ambivalent about this humble bean - occasionally I'll have them gently steamed alongside my steak, but that's it. Well, it's on every American Christmas menu I can find - and no simple steaming here.

Nope, to be completely authentic we need Green Bean Casserole. This dish was originally created in 1955 by the Campbell soup company and even has its own Wikipedia entry. To simplify, take 2 cans of french beans for 1 can of Campbell's mushroom soup and half a tin of French's French Fried Onions. Stir. Bake. Eat. If more is more, add cheese.

2. Candied Sweet Potatoes. I can imagine how this one happened. Someone, somewhere, complained that their sweet potato wasn't, well, sweet enough. Ha, that's an easy problem to solve. Like the green bean casserole, the basic dish is almost brutal in its simplicity. One can of sweet potato or yam. Half a cup of brown sugar. A quarter of a cup of butter. And the all important secret ingredient - one and a half cups of marshmallows. Bake. Eat.

[Candied Yams]

I've actually eaten this delicacy in Memphis, and I'll tell you now, it's not subtle. It's like cake filling. Don't over do it.

3. Corn. Like most English people, I've got half a bag of icy sweetcorn in the freezer. Occasionally we've been known to boil a corn-on-the-cob. But what had never occurred to us was to mix it with the same weight of whipping cream. Oh, and add butter. And parmesan. Bake. Now we're looking at a proper Christmas dish.

4. Dinner rolls. You'd think, after all the sugar, butter, cream and cheese above, you'd never need more carbs? Don't be silly. You need bread. It's not optional. If you want, you can get seasonal and bake them into a wreath. The word I keep seeing in the recipes is 'buttery', and I suspect we're talking unsalted buttery too - to my tastes, American rolls are strangely sweet. But don't you dare leave them out.

[Christmas Jello Salad]

5. Christmas jello salad. I've never seen salad on a British Christmas table, but my idea of salad isn't the same as an American's. We're not talking a bag of Tesco salad leaves and a gloop of salad cream here. Instead, there's rich and creamy salads, such as the Waldorf, salads with cheese, nuts and rich dressings. Of course!

But the salad that made me stop in my tracks is the Jello salad. Described to me by my American friend, Chris, I thought this might be a peculiar Texan dish, so strange it might only unique to their family? Nope, a quick Google shows me a hundred recipes, but the approach is always basically the same. You need a green jelly (lime), a red jelly (cherry) and a clear jelly (lemon). Create and set a green layer, then mix cream cheese and marshmallows with the clear jelly to make the white layer. Set again. The pour on red. Then you have the three layer festive delight pictured!

So why is this a salad? Is this eaten with the main course or the desert? Chris, help us out here!

And in return, what dishes are we unlikely to see travelling back across the atlantic?

[I want these]

1. Roast potatoes. Mash is the American potato dish of choice, and it's likely to grace our table too. But one thing this anglo-irish house would never be without is roast potatoes. We might replace our turkey with beef, but would never, ever skip the roasties.

To my American readers, a word of advice - if you've never had these, then either try cooking them yourself or try them in Englishman's kitchen. Never eat them in an English sunday-lunch pub or an all-you-can eat carvery. These hard, leathery, bland frozen-and-deep-fried pockets of nastiness should be avoided at all costs. The best roasties are always homemade. In goose fat. I am so hungry right now.

2. Roast parsnips. The rest of the world considers parsnips as animal feed. Yet we roast them, along with our potatoes. What does that tell you about the British? Sweet, slightly chewy. That's parsnips, not the British.

[These pies aren't made of meat]

3. Mince pies. Right, let's get this straight. Mince pies haven't contained mince since the 18th century (except, perhaps a little suet if you're being authentic). This little pie has a long history, brought back by the Crusaders from Middle East (where the combination of fruit and meat is more common). The minced tongue and veal is now replaced (and perhaps improved) by alcohol soaked fruit.

Eating them - in our house certainly - has a degree of tradition. First, you gently peel off the lid. Then you cram in the same quantity of brandy butter, and perch the lid back on top. The butter melts into the hot pie, which you then liberally douse with cream. Now I'm feeling faint.

4. Brandy butter. What do you mean you don't have brandy butter in the US? It's pretty much what it says on the pot - brandy, butter and sugar, whipped together. Christmas pudding wouldn't be the same without it.

[Flaming Pudding]

5. Christmas pudding. Ah, but of course you don't have Christmas pudding either! This isn't a pudding in the American sense. It's more like a heavy cake comprised of dark sugars, bread crumbs, alcohol soaked fruits (again) and nuts. It's served hot, with lashings of the aforementioned brandy butter. Oh, and we set fire to it too. No, really.

And as a bonus - Christmas Crackers! Now, these crackers aren't food, like saltine or Graham, but they are a tradition that seems to stay firmly on this side of the Atlantic. My friend Chris (of salad jelly fame) tells me the story of when his family attempted to introduce a little 'old fashioned Englishness' into their Christmas - having spied these, no doubt, in some British period drama.

[Don't eat this]

During dinner, each cracker was carefully unpeeled and unwrapped, the hats worn and the jokes told. This tradition went on for years until Chris' English wife demonstrated their proper use - two people take hold of each end and pull - inside the cracker is a little bit of gunpowder, as used in a cap gun, which goes off with a satisfying crack. At this point the cracker then sprays its contents across the room, and you're sent scurrying under the table to find the small plastic gift. Such fun!

And finally, you really need to start celebrating Boxing Day. No, we have no idea why it's called that either. But it does mean you can eat the same food all over again.

Happy Christmas!

Further reading (and inspiration)

Christmas Traditions: Britain vs. America
10 Ways Brits Do Christmas Differently to Americans

Fantasy Road Trips - Dallas to San Francisco, via the Loneliest Road.

[Cadiz Summit]

For me, the picture on the left is the archetypal American road trip image. The empty road stretching to the horizon, no cars, no white vans, no roundabouts, no sudden changes of direction to accommodate ancient medieval field boundaries. It's not a view I'd ever get in England.

This particular view is just over the Cadiz Summit on Route 66, California - but I've seen countless versions of it in my journeys. And it's like a drug. I need more. So it's Fantasy Road Trip time.

There are few rules to Fantasy Road Trip. It shouldn't really take more than two weeks. I guess it should involve some mechanism for dropping my daughter off at camp, and meeting my wife at the end. And it really really needs a long, empty road.

When I discovered there's a road through Nevada that Life magazine called 'The Loneliest Road', I just knew I had to drive it. To quote - "It's totally empty. There are no points of interest. We don't recommend it. We warn all motorists not to drive there unless they're confident of their survival skills...". Well, here I come.

The Loneliest Road is 287 miles across Nevada with very little on it - but not, as I've discovered, nothing. But first things first, how do I get there? Well, I'll list all the articles I used for research at the end, but like all Fantasy Trips, it involves compiling a dream team of must-do American roads, and then using Google maps to work out how to connect them all together. So here goes ...

This time I'd start in Dallas, drop my daughter off at camp, and get to Oklahoma City as fast as I can for probably most famous of the classic American highways - Route 66. I'll use this to travel the 500 odd miles to Santa Fe - with the added bonus that this now means I will have driven all of 66 between Santa Monica and Springfield, Missouri (and we all like that sort of added bonus on a fantasy trip). Maybe I'll break the journey in Amarillo and see if I can eat a 75oz steak!

Once in Santa Fe, I need to head north west to pick up Route 50, so here's a chance to see what Colorado has to offer. A clickbait article offering me '21 Roads to Drive Before I Die' introduces me to the 'Million Dollar Highway' (no. 18), and how can you resist a name like that? Especially when it involves some of the highest roads in the US. The wonderful MyScenicDrives suggests a way of connecting all together, and now I'm on my way to Utah, ready to join US-50.

[The Route]

The Million Dollar Highway - US-550 - takes me through Delta to Grand Junction, and now the once-US-50-now-I-70 delivers me to, yes, Delta again. But this time Delta UT, not Delta CO. America, are you messing with me? You give your roads multiple names, but give the same name to two towns just a few hundred miles apart?

The Loneliest Road, proper, starts when I cross the border on US-50 into Nevada - but first, I need to stop at the Border Inn. It's the first casino I'll find in Nevada, just feet over the border. Yet the rooms are still in Utah, in a completely different timezone (oh, you are messing with me, I knew it). A definite coffee stop.

Another definite stop is Ely - the only real civilisation I'm likely to encounter for some time (the only supermarket  forthe next 250 miles) and home to the (alleged) UFO crash site just outside of Area 51.

From here, we're following the path of the Pony Express (and possibly detouring to see the ruins of a few Pony Express stations too), not forgetting to get our passport stamped! Presuming we cross Nevada without incident, accident or alien abduction, we'll arrive at Reno - "The Biggest Little City in the World", whatever that means.

From there, it's a home run across California to San Francisco, and another 2,115 miles clocked up. So - fantasy or nightmare? Will I survive the Loneliest Road?

• RoadTripUsa - The ultimate guide to driving Route 50.
• Pony Express Nevada - Loneliest road history, and how to get the passport.
• Stay on Route 6 - Delta to Ely guide.
• Route 50 - Detailed guide to Route 50.
• Road Trippers - another guide to The Loneliest Road.
• Take My Trip - A great guide to The Loneliest Road.
• A Joy Ride down America's Loneliest Road - Great photos.
• My Scenic Drives - The route across Colorado. I love this site.
• Man vs Food - That 75oz steak!

Five Guys come to Cambridge - A Review.

[Busy people building burgers]

When I was a teenager, the choice was McDonalds or Burger King - like the Beatles or The Stones, it was one or the other, not both. Although (or perhaps because) I'd been employed by McDonalds, I was a Burger King boy - mushroom double-swiss for me, thank you very much!

But no one will be surprised to hear that the US has a lot of chains - both national and regional - nor that I've eaten in many of them. Texas chain Whataburger is probably my favourite - in Waxahachie they called me Sir and brought my food to the table. Oh, that Southern service!

Off the top of my head, in Texas alone, we've also eaten in a Sonic, Mooyah, Riscky's, Dairy Queen, In-n-out and, of course, a Five Guys. So please forgive me if they start to blend together. Five-in-a-riscky-queen-ic.

When I heard that we in Cambridge were getting a Five Guys, I was convinced we'd eaten in one in Allen, just north of Dallas. Oh yeah, Five Guys, been and done that. But Google maps tells me that must have been a Mooyah. Whoops. My family are convinced we ate in one in Rockwall, and I know better than to argue with them. So at best, I can only compare my experiences here in Cambridge with a vague and confused memory from about five years ago ('it was fine'). Perhaps that isn't a good sign?

[We love self promotion]

So this evening, I took us all for a slap up meal at the newly opened Five Guys in the Cambridge Leisure Park to see if it stirred any memories. It's cheaper than hypnotherapy.

The Leisure Park is a strange beast. When I first moved to Cambridge, the area was marked on maps with 'there be dragons'. It was Cambridge's stockyards, a derelict area of disused cattle markets and railway sidings. The only reason to go there was the Junction nightclub, and many a night we'd stumble out at 2am not having the faintest idea how to get home.

Now that's all been swept away, to be replaced by leisure-centre-by-numbers. There's a multi-screen cinema, and the usual hangers on. The Restaurant Group's Frankie & Benny's and the execrable Chiquito (where once we asked a staff member what she'd recommend, and she said 'none of it'). Add to that Nandos, Bella Pasta, a buffet Indian and Chinese and you have a pretty bland eating out experience probably replicated countless times across the country. Oh, and there's Alimentum - it looks like an upmarket hairdressers, and has a Michelin star. A more out of place restaurant you couldn't hope to encounter.

And there, in the middle, where Pizza Hut used to sit, is Five Guys.

[Small and messy burger]

Will Five Guys succeed? Well, they already have twenty branches across the UK - small fry (ha) compared with the big boys, but ousting our Pizza Hut was a bold move, and if they follow the multiplexes around the UK, they'll soon grow. They're the fastest growing food chain in the USA, so I don't doubt that rapid growth is firmly on their agenda.

But, but, what was it like? Well, obviously, I can't comment on the loud music for fear of sounding old (but Toto for heaven's sake?). It was big, bright, brash, buzzy and very very busy. I can be sure the other eateries in the leisure centre dreamed of queues at 7pm on a rainy Tuesday. It's classic fast food - you order at a till and wait at a counter for your brown paper bag. The choice is simple - plain, cheese or bacon, one patty or two, and a wide range of toppings. I had a 'small' (one patty), plus cheese, mushrooms, onions, lettuce, mustard and ketchup. Fries come in giant, vast and enormous. We chose the largest to share between three.

The burger was firmly in the messy camp - I bit on one end and all the toppings slid out the other. I found myself thinking about the next time - maybe just one sauce, maybe no mushrooms, that might make a more manageable burger. Therein lies the magic of Five Guys. Because all the toppings are optional, you're forced to choose, to personalise, to make your own creation. So although I'm eating in a multi-national chain, it's an individual experience - my Tony-burger isn't your-fave-burger.

[We love peanuts]

And it's this that makes them stand out - not the meat (it's better than many, but not up to gourmet burger standards), not the fries (skin-on, but over salted), but the customisation. I think they're going to be huge, and every twenty something in Cambridgeshire was queueing up to agree.

What did my fellow diners think? My tweenager declared it the best burger since Riscky's in Fort Worth. But give her free peanuts and she's anyones. My wife said it was 'fine'. And it was. It was 'fine'. My memories from the US weren't failing me after all.

The Great Southwest Canyon Road Trip - Bryce and Beyond

[Bryce Canyon Amphitheatre]

So, where did I leave you? With the screams and and cries for help that accompanied our journey out of Zion Valley on Utah's beautiful winding Highway 9, I think.

Peace returned as we reached the green fields of the High Plateaus of Colorado (in Utah). The road snaked along the Long Valley though peaceful Mormon towns and their immaculately clean and tidy farms. We arrived at Bryce Canyon Lodge in the late afternoon, checked in and retired to our delightful little cabin.

The Lodge was state of the art holiday accommodation in the 1920s - a smaller example of what we would see later at the Grand Canyon - and although a little faded and scuffed around the edges now, it still has considerable charm. We stayed in one of the cabins - no TV, no internet - dotted around the site among the trees. There's definitely a story to be told about America's early tourist industry, when places like this were hugely popular - I'll do some research, so watch this space.

We didn't really know what to expect from Bryce Canyon - we certainly didn't expect the most famous view, the Amphitheatre, to be just yards from our cabin. A short walk through the woods, then a clearing, then wow! Especially beautiful as the sun started to drop.

[Our Lodge]

Now, technically, Bryce isn't a canyon, but a collection of 'amphitheatres' - we're now at the edge of the sandstone that makes up the plateau, which water and ice erosion have eroded into curved half-bowls, full of hoodoos, towering spires of rock. The effect is like looking over the edge of a cliff into a forest of giant red-orange totem poles. It proved hard to photograph, and capture the scale of what we're looking at - especially as I was forever being admonished for standing too close to the edge.

The failing light and the thunderstorm in the distance sent us inside, in search of food. As we discovered both here and at the Grand Canyon, the food inside the National Parks is more about refuelling exhausted hikers than entertaining English foodies like us. The food was cheap, old fashioned - I hesitate to say 'school dinners', but perhaps just a little institutional. At Bryce we opted for pizza - freshly and enthusiastically made and slightly amateurish, served in a brightly lit hut a little distance from the main Lodge. We drank warm red wine from plastic beakers. I'm sure, if we'd spent the whole day hiking through the hoodoos, it would be just what needed.

[Lovely weather at Rainbow Point!]

During dinner the storm we'd spied in the distance arrived, quite dramatically - now I do love a good storm, but this one did ruin one of the treats of Bryce for me. The Lodge is one of only a handful of 'dark skies' parks in the US, where light pollution is kept to an absolutely minimum, and the night sky views are apparently unparalleled. Well, alas, for me, the skies were a uniform grey and not a star was to be to seen. It was also frustrating because we'd paid a little extra to stay at the Lodge rather than the much cheaper Best Western just outside the park. That said, it was still a charming place to visit.

The next day the weather was, quite frankly, awful as we bundled back in the car to explore the rest of Bryce. Leading away from the Lodge is a 20 mile or so one way drive to various rain blasted view points - we'd stop, dash out in the deluge to take a photo or two, then race back to the car. As the road climbed to the final viewpoint, the visibility dropped, but it was obvious we were traversing a narrow ridge with sheer drops on either side - much to the pleasure of my more nervous passengers. I'm not sure if the lack of a view helped or hindered - perhaps it's worse when the imagination is given full reign.

I'm sure the view from Rainbow Point is spectacular - and we did brave the weather as long as we could, to soak up what we could without becoming completely soaked ourselves. But we were glad to get back in the car and head back to civilisation.

[Try the Chubby Cheese]

It's at this point things starting to go wrong. We had a minor medical emergency (and because this is a food blog, and you might be eating, I won't tell you what went wrong, save to say that it was icky), and that meant a 50 mile round trip to the charmingly named Panguitch.

If that had a little silver lining, it was that it gave us a chance to see a little bit of small-town America we would normally have bypassed. We had lunch at an authentic little local's diner (Henrie's, home of the Chubby Cheese!) and explored the General Store that really did have a bit of everything (including a much needed and very helpful pharmacy).

After all that excitement, we headed back to Bryce, eager to put our feet up at the Best Western and dry out and relax. Ah. My first and only booking error of the holiday (don't forget I had twenty one to organise). When I'd tried to book the hotel in Bryce, I hadn't noticed the hotel was full, and it had instead recommended the next nearest, in Cedar City, over 70 miles away.

Well, the staff in Bryce's Best Western couldn't have been more helpful - one tried everything she could to find us something closer, while Jennifer went all dreamy eyed at the mere mention of Cedar City. It was the nearest real town, it had shops, it had restaurants, it had (gasp) a Wal Mart. We could tell Jennifer was jealous of our unexpected side trip to real civilisation.

So, we bundled back in the car, drove back through Panguitch and on to Cedar City. And what we found there can wait until my next post ...