We spent the full day, from 8:45 to 21:30 at Universal Studios Hollywood. A great day for everyone, with great entertainment. We watched the shows (special effects, animals, waterworld, did almost all the rides, took the traditional bus ride. We had a long, busy day!

Some queues were long, I can imagine the nightmare it must be on weekends. We were lucky to arrive early, we could do many attractions before lunch.

Best show for me was the waterworld, where they catapult a plane over the wall and in the water. The best ride was the Simpsons, funny and impressive.

Last week of our holidays id starting today. The plan is to relax, pretty much!

We left Las Vegas before lunch, drove on busy highways to L.A. where we arrived late afternoon.

No time for much else than a short tour to Hollywood.

Once again, we had a slow start, enjoyed the breakfast, the swimming pool, and the gym with Timothé.

We left the hotel before noon, drove to Las Vegas with a detour via Zion again, such a beautiful road it was worth an extra half hour.

We arrived at LV mid afternoon, checked in at our hotel and went to Circus Circus. Fun for the kids, but crowded and noisy…

We took the kids back to the heart of Las Vegas, on the strip, to the M&Ms store. We had diner at the Hard Rock Cafe (first time in my life).

We ended our day by a night walk along the strip up to the Bellagio where we stopped a few minutes for the water show.

It was quite a long day. Tomorrow, we will drive to the west coast, finally!

In our original plan, we were supposed to get to Bryce Canyon early. Since Canyonland however, we’ve seen that late afternoon is a very good time for visiting the parks. It’s cooler, with fewer people. So we stayed at the hotel this morning, enjoyed the swimming pool and the sun.

We arrived at Bryce Canyon early afternoon, spent some time at the geology day fair, went for a ranger-led walk about the geological history of Bryce Canyon, the vegetation and the park’s history.

We went for a long hike in the hoodoos. It was a bit cloudy at the start, but the sun appeared in the way back, changing the scenery completely.

During that hike, we met a family who were speaking both French and Norwegian. That puzzled us, and even more when Sarah recognized one of her classmates from the French school in Oslo last year… Quite a coincidence.

The kids completed their 7th junior ranger program, the last one, hopefully, for this holiday.

Before heading back home, we ate our diner looking at the sunset.

Bryce Canyon marks the end of the first part of our holidays, the great parks of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Arizona. Next is Las Vegas and the Californian coast.

We left Tusayan and the Grand Canyon this morning, heading northwards. We stopped for lunch at lake Powel, and drove to our hotel which will be our base camp for the coming days. A very short break, just the time to drop the bags.

We then drove to Zion National Park for a late afternoon visit – we arrived at 16:30. We took the shuttle bus to the trailhead of the temple of Sinawava.

We hiked for 30mins until the Canyon was too narrow and the trail stopped… and then, inspired by many others, we continued, barefooted, up the river. The hike became magical.

We walked for another hour before turning around.

We came back to the hotel quite late, after a stop at McDonalds.

The hotel provided some entertainment during the night with a fire alarm at 00:29. Thanks to our well trained kids, we were out not more than 1 minute after we woke up. Sarah was the faster to react. We were the first ones out, by far. It turned out to be a false alarm, but it took 30min before we could go back to the room.

In the morning, we woke up a bit earlier than usual and caught the first shuttle bus to the park. We followed a ranger led walk about fossils, where the kids went hunting for old marine fossils.

We took the shuttle to the western part of the south rim, had lunch, and went to the geology museum.

The kids got their 6th junior ranger badge. We, parents, are almost getting tired of it. It’s a lot of work, actually 😉

Since the hotel was just 15min away, we had decided to break early, enjoy the swimming pool, eat diner and go back to the park, by car, for the sunset. The sunset was a magical moment, with beautiful colors on the red rocks, a quiet crowd enjoying these precious minutes.

We’re leaving the park, and Arizona, tomorrow, going back to Utah. They’re both in the same time zone, but Arizona has summer time, which got us seriously confused on the way to the Grand Canyon. The clock on our phones and in the car updated automatically, so we were not aware of the change before quite late yesterday.